This story has a bit of everything: fantastic views of the East River and the Long Island Sound, golf, the mob, methane gas, Giuliani, toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, and nearly 1.5 million cubic yards of dirt being dumped by the terrifically named New York Dirt company.
Prologue: After George Steinbrenner dismissed Fernando Ferrer's 1990 proposal to build a new Yankee stadium over the Ferry Point dump under the Whitestone Bridge in the Bronx (the dump closed in 1960) a number of ideas were proposed for the site. Nothing was agreed upon until Rudy Giuliani decided that an old Robert Moses plan was the best one: the dump should become a Scottish-style links about half the size of Central Park. He even enlisted Jack Nicklaus to design it, the first new links in the city in 35 years, assuring the city that it would open by 2001 and that it would certainly attract future PGA tournaments.
Flash forward: Needless to say, there ain't no links yet. There isn't even grass. And yet the city has managed to spend $6.9 million in environmental cleanup (expected to double before the links open) and the importing of landfill to the site has turned into a major cash-cow for the Gambino syndicate who run New York Dirt. Because of the toxic nature of the dump, digging is an inappropriate way for building the hills necessary for a proper course. So the city is paying NYD to dump dirt it's being paid to pick up from other places. In the meantime, PGA hasn't "given any further thought [to Ferry Point] and would not until probably many years after the golf course is completed." Who knows when that will be, but in the meantime this story should only get more interesting.
