Here's the latest from today's NY Daily News:
Big golf mess suits mob to tee
Costs soar as charges & dirt fly in the Bronx
By GREG B. SMITH and BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Secret recordings reveal Gambino capo Gregory Depalma boasting of mob's take in unloading of trucks.
Developer Pierre Gagne insists the tons of fill are needed.
It's a boondoggle in the Bronx but a potential gold mine for the mob.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani envisioned Ferry Point Park golf course, 222 acres of Scottish-style links designed by golf legend Jack Nicklaus, as a surefire site for future PGA tournaments.
He promised that the course would open in 2001, transforming a former city dump under the Whitestone Bridge into a pristine greensward.
But the site is still under construction and the projected cost for the developer has skyrocketed from $22.5 million to $75 million.
And so far the city has spent $6.9 million for environmental cleanup, with the costs expected to double before the project is finished.
Nary a blade of cultivated grass grows there to hint at Rudy Giuliani's vision, and the developer now says the course won't be complete until the end of 2007.
Day after day, dozens of trucks rumble into Ferry Point, dumping dirt and stone, ostensibly to sculpt a beautiful and challenging course.
Some of those trucks allegedly are run by the mob.
New York Dirt, said by the FBI to be controlled by Gambino capo Gregory DePalma and his soldier Robert Vaccaro, and JustUs Recycling Corp., reputedly under the thumb of Gambino associate Anthony D'Onofrio, have dumped hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of fill at Ferry Point, records show.
In phone calls secretly taped by the feds, DePalma boasted that the mob takes as much as $5 for every cubic yard of fill their trucks unload.
"I want $2 a yard, maybe more ...," DePalma said at one sitdown. "We may end up getting $5 a yard."
In May 2004, while the FBI was recording DePalma's calls, New York Dirt dumped 8,400 cubic yards of fill at Ferry Point. By the capo's own crooked calculations, that adds up to as much as $42,000. For just one month. New York Dirt has been raking it in at Ferry Point every month since 2001.
Legitimate trucking companies are paid to take debris from construction sites and then pay tipping fees to dump it at landfills like the one at Ferry Point.
But the syndicate receives payments at both ends - when one of its companies removes dirt and again when it dumps it, according to government investigators.
"If you got the hole, you got the gold," DePalma joked as agents eavesdropped.
DePalma, 73, was arrested in March, and is awaiting trial on federal racketeering charges. But New York Dirt continues to profit from Ferry Point. In the first quarter of this year, it added 20,520 cubic yards of fill to the site.
Developer Pierre Gagne says that ever-increasing amounts of fill are necessary to create contours because workers can't safely dig into the contaminated soil.
But to critics, Ferry Point is just an excuse to open a new, highly profitable landfill on the site of a dump that was closed in the 1960s.
"They're running a landfill with a golf course as closure," said environmental lawyer Leslie Lowe.
Gagne insists the developers are not profiting from tipping fees, which have been reported at between $7 and $15 a cubic yard.
"It's paying for the grading," Gagne said. "If we had to bring in material to the site and pay for it, it would make the project more costly."
Speaking of cost, greens fees at Ferry Point are expected to be more than double the $30 charged at other city golf courses. But the site, half the size of Central Park, offers stunning vistas of Long Island Sound and is located near highways, providing easy access for well-heeled golfers from Westchester County and Long Island.
In 1990, then-Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer proposed building a 75,000-seat stadium there as the new home for the Yankees. He called it "the Bronx's Meadowlands." George Steinbrenner quickly dismissed the idea.
Three years later, the city sought golf course developers for the site, an idea percolating since it was suggested by powerbroker Robert Moses more than half a century ago.
Gagne's Ferry Point Partners was accepted in 1998. Shortly afterward, Giuliani proudly announced that his administration was negotiating with the Professional Golfers' Association to bring a major tournament there.
"Such a world-class facility deserves a world-class tournament," Giuliani crowed.
In 2000, when the developers signed a contract with the city, it was said to be the largest license deal ever handled by the Parks Department. It allows Ferry Point Partners to operate the course for 35 years, paying the city $1.25 million the first year and up to $3 million after 30 years.
The development won support from Ferrer, the community board, the neighborhood council member and the area homeowners association.
In addition to the championship golf course, the plan calls for a driving range, a 7,500-square-foot clubhouse, a 13,000-square-foot boathouse/restaurant, a 25,000-square foot banquet hall, a manager's residence and parking for 950 vehicles. The project also includes two small public parks.
It's an ideal site. Except for one thing: The old landfill oozes potentially deadly methane gas.
The developers have had to dig trenches to control potential methane leaks into adjacent Throgs Neck Houses and more than 20 monitoring wells to keep track of leaks. They are required to submit regular reports to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Environmentalists have sued - none successfully - citing everything from the threat to the housing project's 3,500 residents to the fate of endangered peregrine falcons.
Gagne concedes the project is wrapped in "a lot of red tape," and city records show his company has paid politically connected operatives a staggering $1.3 million to cut through it.
Lobbyists on the project include John Mascialino - a former member of the city's Finance Concession Review Board, an agency whose approval was needed for the project - and Robert Harding, former Giuliani administration deputy mayor for economic development.
Bolstering their efforts was Rudy Washington, a member of Giuliani's inner circle.
Washington says that while he was deputy mayor he served "as a traffic cop" to help the developers through the maze of city bureaucracy. After he left government, he said, he continued to help as an "informal adviser." But, he added, "They never paid me a nickel."
The lobbying has paid off.
In March 1999, without any formal environmental study, the city signed a memorandum of understanding with Ferry Point Partners ensuring that the city, not the developers, would be held liable for any adverse environmental consequences arising from the former landfill.
The city Parks Department, the official sponsor of the project, repeatedly checked "No" on state Department of Environmental Conservation forms asking whether the project would have any significant environmental impacts.
The DEC accepted the assessment without requiring a full-blown environmental impact statement - which would have required public hearings.
Six months later, test borings found "high methane concentrations" 2 to 3 feet below the surface as well as the presence of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic and lead "at levels exceeding risk-based criteria."
"We live with our windows closed because of all the debris - and you breathe that," said Lehra Brooks, a longtime resident of Throgs Neck Houses. "The trucks are there at 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning."
Solutions have been worked out behind closed doors.
One example: When the developers were caught mishandling material excavated from a methane gas venting trench, the DEC forgave $25,000 of a $30,000 fine, noting that "the parties desire to settle this matter amicably."
And, when developers said they needed more fill, the DEC granted permit modifications - again, without public hearings - increasing the amount of fill allowed on the site from 1 million cubic yards to 1.5 million cubic yards, nearly doubling the number of trucks entering and leaving the site.
And now the DEC is reviewing yet another plea to allow 726,300 more cubic yards of fill.
"I don't like to think it will be denied," Gagne said. "There is no environmental impact. This will only allow us to create a better golf course."
But forget about the PGA. It ran out of patience a long time ago.
"We haven't given any further thought [to Ferry Point] and would not until probably many years after the golf course is completed," said PGA Tour operations chief Henry Hughes, who participated in talks with the Giuliani administration.
But the trucks keep coming.