“Though Nothing Has Been Proved”

But really, when you throw around figures like $545 million for trees and $410 million for biometric punch clocks, $3 billion doesn’t seem like such a bad deal:

In a city of big projects, it ranks among the biggest. New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection is building one of the largest water filtration plants in the world in a 10-story-deep hole it blasted out of bedrock in the Bronx. When completed in 2012, the plant, capable of purifying 300 million gallons of water a day, will be buried there.

But the plant, which will filter water from the Croton watershed in Westchester County, is no Bronx treasure chest. Even as construction moves forward, questions about soaring costs and delays continue to plague the project.

The cost is now estimated at nearly $3 billion, a huge jump from the $660 million city officials estimated when they announced an audacious plan in 1998 to build the plant below the surface of Van Cortlandt Park. They vowed that the park would be made as good as new, even if that meant replacing whatever was lost during construction. They now plan to rebuild a driving range on top of the buried plant.

Some officials and others fear the final tab could climb even higher, and in the process push up water rates. On April 1, the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., announced that he was starting an independent audit to determine whether city officials understated the original price, to get the plant built in the Bronx rather than Westchester. Besides scrutinizing the complicated accounting, Mr. Thompson will have to sort through accusations by some residents and officials of deliberate distortions of costs, and intimations that the project has been tainted by mob influence, though nothing has been proved.

. . .

The city was forced to build the plant because water from the Croton watershed did not meet federal standards for safety and purity. Although the Croton system can supply nearly 30 percent of the city’s 1.1 billion gallons a day of drinking water, generally it supplies just 10 percent, mostly in the Bronx and northern Manhattan. The rest of the city’s water comes from the Catskill Mountains and the Delaware River, and is so clean that the city last year won a 10-year exemption from federal regulations requiring that all surface drinking water be filtered.

Opponents of the Bronx plant have also expressed concern about the federal indictment in February of a key manager for the Schiavone Construction Company, which was the principal contractor responsible for digging the pit and putting in the water tunnels. The company’s offices were raided by federal agents, who seized files, and the manager, Anthony Delvescovo, was charged with having committed extortion beginning in February 2005 — around the time that work was beginning on the Croton project.

Location Scout: Van Cortlandt Park.

Boys Of Bummer

But with congestion pricing . . .:

A shooting suspect blew his brains out after the Con Ed truck he had stolen to flee cops got caught in traffic outside Yankee Stadium just as last night’s game ended, sources said.

The unidentified man — who earlier had shot his girlfriend in the shoulder after a violent argument — killed himself as pursuing officers closed in on him.

The suspect had gotten into a fight with the woman near East 151st Street and Courtlandt Avenue, about 20 blocks from the Stadium, at about 10 p.m.

He suddenly drew a gun and shot her in the shoulder, a police source said.

. . .

The gunman then hopped into a Con Ed truck that was left with its engine running at a work site.

When a utility worker confronted him, the suspect pointed a gun at his head and sped off.

Shortly after, he smashed into a police car, but got away.

As he approached the Stadium, at East 161st Street near the Macombs Dam Bridge, he got stuck in traffic. When cops approached the truck, they heard a gunshot and found the driver dead with a bullet wound to the head, authorities said.

Bloomberg Can Ram Through Millions Of Dollars In Public Projects Before The Economy Totally Tanks, But One Day Later, Congestion Pricing Suddenly Seems Revoltingly Out Of Date

As the City Council decides that the national and local economy can chug along nicely no matter how much you gouge truckers, drivers on the other side of the Hudson — that cartoon-like expanse of the country that lay just beyond the New Yorker’s view of the world — suggest a different sort of congestion pricing may be ahead:

Truckers protesting high fuel prices are clogging the New Jersey Turnpike.

Turnpike Authority spokesman Joe Orlando says trucks “as far as the eye can see” are driving about 20 mph and heading south near Exit 14 in Newark.

He says truckers are also chanting and protesting at the Vince Lombardi Service Area in Bergen County.

Orlando says the protest is backing up Turnpike traffic.

Truckers have been staging other protests throughout the country.

Time Is Running Out . . .

. . . to burnish your legacy somehow, somewhere:

With time running out on Mayor Bloomberg’s dream of rebuilding Coney Island, the city is now looking to bring a controversial developer back into the plan to build America’s largest amusement park, sources told The Post.

Only six months ago, when the term-limited mayor announced his grand 47-acre rezoning plan for Coney Island, city officials said developer Joe Sitt and other boardwalk property owners weren’t qualified to build the new 15-acre park the mayor envisions there.

But with the economy dwindling and deals to buy the 15 acres — including 11 Sitt controls — far from being reached, city officials said they are suddenly open to them playing a yet-to-be defined role in the park, even through the goal remains finding a world-class operator to run it.

What Can We Give You? Ferry Service To Tottenville?

How will the mayor build support for congestion pricing? Pick a pet project — high-cost, low-impact, no matter — and “negotiate” away:

One Staten Island politician has separated himself from borough colleagues who either oppose congestion pricing or look at it with raised eyebrows.

Meanwhile, the state Assembly, regarded as the biggest legislative hurdle for a proposal that requires city and state approval, said it will introduce a congestion pricing bill today.

Insisting that the plan is the borough’s best hope of getting substantial money for mass transit, state Sen. Andrew Lanza, a Republican who left the City Council for Albany last year, told the Advance yesterday he is endorsing Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ambitious, controversial proposal.

Lanza stepped into the pro-congestion pricing camp after a private meeting Tuesday with Bloomberg and his staff in City Hall, at which the senator said he was promised the Island will not be shortchanged when the projected revenue is doled out.

. . .

Bloomberg did not offer Lanza any new transportation promises, nor did he guarantee the borough would be given a specific percentage of the money pot — a proposal Oddo and Ignizio have floated to the mayor’s office. But throughout negotiations, Lanza said he has secured several assurances from the mayor’s office, such as completing a long-awaited private ferry line into Midtown Manhattan from the South Shore.

. . .

Island gains from congestion pricing so far include the expenditures laid out in the MTA plan, as well as 33 new express buses and a study of the dormant North Shore rail line, and Bloomberg is assuring the politicians that more gifts would be unwrapped if his plan is approved.

For the assignment desk: Cost-benefit analysis of ferry service . . . start here, for example.