Turning Landfill into Park Will Cost $952,000,000 More Than Anticipated

Photo: NYC Department of City Planning

According to an article in today's New York Times, the anticipated costs of plans to turn Fresh Kills into a giant park and outdoor athletic complex (which we somehow thought were a foregone conclusion), are now believed to have been wildly off base. When he moved to close the landfiill back in 2001, then-Mayor Giuliani estimated that the cost to close the plant would have been somewhere around $448 million. Today, however, the New York City Sanitation Commission estimated that the project would take five years longer to complete and would cost more than $1.4 billion over thirty years. In other words:

$1,400,000,000 - $438,000,000 = $952,000,000
Now we wouldn't say the landfill needs to be converted at any cost, but we sure think it would be helpful if it were completed some time between now and 2036.