Mueller Lake Park Outdoor Amphitheater
Study Was Fatally Flawed
RECEIVED Fri., Sept. 23, 2011
Dear Editor,
[Re: “Council Opponents Concede on WTP4,” News, Sept. 23]: The study on the costs of postponing completion of Water Treatment Plant No. 4 was fatally flawed. Virtually any ongoing construction project, regardless of how ill-conceived it is, will be cheaper to finish immediately than to finish it after mothballing it for several years.
The fatal flaw in the study is that it did not consider abandoning the project completely.
The supercollider north of Waco is a good example of deciding that a project, already well under way, was not worth completing. In 1993, Congress decided that project, conceived during the Cold War, was no longer justified, even though almost $2 billion had been spent and 14 miles of tunnel had been dug.
[Re: “Council Opponents Concede on WTP4,” News, Sept. 23]: The study on the costs of postponing completion of Water Treatment Plant No. 4 was fatally flawed. Virtually any ongoing construction project, regardless of how ill-conceived it is, will be cheaper to finish immediately than to finish it after mothballing it for several years.
The fatal flaw in the study is that it did not consider abandoning the project completely.
The supercollider north of Waco is a good example of deciding that a project, already well under way, was not worth completing. In 1993, Congress decided that project, conceived during the Cold War, was no longer justified, even though almost $2 billion had been spent and 14 miles of tunnel had been dug.
Philip Russell
