Towering costs
Can you bring to mind that old poem that begins, “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost”? It charts how one small error can cascade into bigger consequences — the loss of a horseshoe, a horse, a rider, a battle, a kingdom.
We’re not in danger of losing the kingdom just yet, but this lesson in knock-on consequences surrounds a much-hailed project to build a wind turbine tower plant at the Port of Albany.
After months of delays, projected costs for the Beacon Island facility have mushroomed from $350 million to $604 million as of December. Citing spikes in the cost of concrete and steel, the project’s advocates are seeking $350 million more from the state.
Last year the port, eager to stick to an ambitious schedule that would have the plant operational by December 2023, cleared the trees from the Beacon Island site. However, because the project was in line for a $29 million federal grant secured by
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the port was supposed to have gone through a separate review by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration before it cleared the land.
After the snafu over the tree-cutting, as the Times Union reported last year, the port stopped all Beacon Island site preparation, saying it would wait to obtain all of its required state and federal permits before restarting work. And even though the port walked away from that federal grant money in the hopes of getting things moving again, the project is still months behind schedule.
Of course, the fact that project costs have now ballooned isn’t directly tied to the hasty clear-cutting. With record inflation over the past year raising the price of — well, everything, it’s a safe bet that project costs would have gone up in any case. A lawsuit and slow permitting processes have also contributed to delays. And it’s not uncommon for cost projections and reality to be out of sync, especially on a major project for a changing industry.
But it’s not unreasonable to wonder: What if the plant construction hadn’t been put on hold for months? If the project had been able to stick closer to its original schedule, might construction have been farther along, with more purchases secured, before costs started to rise so significantly? Though steel and concrete still would have cost more, that may have lowered the total amount of the increase.
An extra $350 million — doubling the original cost — is a big budgetary hole to fill. And now, with the main contractor telling some subcontractors they’re better off seeking other work for the time being, this ambitious green-energy project likely won’t get up to speed any time soon.
Developers’ initial request for $20 million to finish the site preparation work is worth the state’s attention; then at least the ground would be ready for construction. A lot of big hopes are pinned to this plan — hopes for local jobs, for offshore wind, for establishing New York as a green industry hub. Officials need to talk, and soon, about how to get this project moving again.