Posted Jul 17, 2014, 11:53 PM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
Posts: 51,899
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/ny...=nyregion&_r=0
New York State Board Approves Reduced $256 Million Loan for Tappan Zee Project
By JOSEPH BERGER
JULY 16, 2014
Quote:
After a last-minute deal that cut the money requested in half, a key state board on Wednesday approved a $256 million loan from federal clean-water funds to the New York State Thruway Authority to help finance the building of a $3.9 billion twin-span replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge.
Environmental and transportation advocacy groups, including Hudson Riverkeeper, had assailed the loan as a distortion of the federal Clean Water Act, which was created largely for building water treatment plants and other water-cleansing projects. They were joined by legislators including State Senator Bill Perkins, a Democrat from Manhattan, and by an association of municipalities in Westchester County.
In last-minute conversations among Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat; Sheldon Silver, the Democratic speaker of the State Assembly; and State Senator John A. DeFrancisco, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the originally proposed $511 million loan was cut almost exactly in half, according to a former state legislator who spoke to all parties.
The loan was also limited to, as Mr. Silver said in a statement, “projects already undertaken and to be undertaken before the federal fiscal year.”
That restriction seemed to satisfy Mr. DeFrancisco, who was worried that financing for the bridge was dependent on still undetermined toll increases, and Mr. Silver, who was facing pressure from Assembly members aligned with environmentalists.
.....Projects that will be covered by the loan include dredging the river bottom, restoring disturbed oyster beds and installing “bubble curtains” to protect sturgeon from underwater construction noise. It will not, however, cover a bicycle and pedestrian path along the new bridge nor the dismantling of the current bridge.
Thomas J. Madison, the Thruway Authority’s executive director, hailed the loan in a statement, and called it a “first installment” on the $511 million originally requested, saying the agency planned to secure another $256 million loan in 2016.
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