The water plant under New York

It requires enough concrete to build a sidewalk from New York to Miami and enough pipe to reach the top of the Empire State Building 140 times over. Workers carved out enough dirt from the ground to fill more than 100,000 dump trucks.

The colossal effort is a water filtration plant being built 10 stories beneath a Bronx driving range, a one-of-a-kind project intended to become a nearly invisible part of the city's infrastructure.

The plant has been anything but hidden so far.

The plant's completion date has been pushed back six years, and its price tag, which early estimates put at $660 million, is now $2.8 billion. Costs, delays, seven-figure fines and a brush with a high-profile Mafia case have sharpened criticism of the city's handling of a project that three city watchdog agencies and a group of community leaders are monitoring.

"The bottom line is that to build this water plant, the taxpayers are getting soaked," state Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz said. "It's like government at its worst."

Despite the problems, officials say they will not be deterred from building what they see as the latest far-reaching project in a city full of grand monuments to civic imagination. Officials say they are making good progress despite a late start, and the cost increases are an unavoidable reflection of an industrywide trend.

"The need to complete important projects like the [water] plant has not diminished," Deputy Mayor for Operations Edward Skyler said. "We can't sit back and let others worry about the future."

The federal government has ordered the city to build what will be its first drinking water filtration facility, and the project is believed to be the first subterranean water plant in the nation. Its magnitude is hard to overlook: The pit at Van Cortlandt Park is so deep that large cranes merely peek above the rim.

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