Construction on the first new set of Hudson River train tunnels in more than a century will halt next week if the Trump administration doesn’t resume funding mandated by Congress, the project’s leaders said Tuesday.
The project, known as the Gateway tunnel, is near the end of its line of credit to keep the work going, officials said. The situation prompted labor unions and Democratic congressmembers to join a growing chorus of construction leaders who are pleading with the president to get the funding flowing again. Project executives warned they’d have to stop construction Feb. 6 if the logjam isn’t resolved.
In October, President Donald Trump ordered federal funding for the $16 billion project paused while his administration reviewed whether Gateway officials complied with new rules surrounding contracts for women- and minority-owned businesses. The move came during last fall’s federal government shutdown, which Trump blamed on Democrats and Chuck Schumer, the senate minority leader from New York.
The project is funded with 70% federal grants, and the remaining 30% is split between New York and New Jersey.
“This makes absolutely no sense yet here we are. There is only one person who terminated Gateway, and there is only one person who could get it back on track, and that is President Trump,” Schumer said Tuesday during a meeting of the Gateway Development Commission, which oversees the project. “It is insane.”
White House officials now blame their decision to withhold funding on Democrats’ immigration policies, rather than issues with Gateway’s contracts.
“It’s Chuck Schumer and Democrats who are standing in the way of a deal for the Gateway Tunnel Project by refusing to negotiate with the Trump administration,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai wrote in a statement. “There is nothing stopping Democrats from prioritizing the interests of Americans over illegal aliens and getting this project back on track.”
Desai’s comments came a day after Schumer said he would try to block a funding bill for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Schumer announced the move two days after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. This comes as the federal government is heading toward a partial shutdown Friday if Congress can’t make a deal.
Gateway CEO Tom Prendergast warned it would be hard to restart the project if it shuts down next week, saying 1,000 workers would be immediately terminated.
“ If you suspend a job and have to close it down and secure it to start it up, you not only lose time, but you are spending money on things you didn’t anticipate to spend money on,” Prendergast said.
The tunnel project is well underway, with tunneling expected under the riverbed soon. A custom-built tunnel-boring machine is onsite in New Jersey and ready to be assembled. A second machine is expected to be shipped in February.
Several labor leaders appeared at the Gateway board meeting, imploring Trump to save their jobs.
Richard Sirois, a Local 282 Teamsters member who helps run deliveries at the Gateway sites, said he voted for Trump twice, and was disappointed by the president’s move to cut funding for the project.
“ I’m not happy about it, ’cause I’m employed there,” he said.
John Mooney, an Ironworker Local 580 member from Queens, also pleaded for the president to save his job.
“ President Donald Trump, you said you want to make America great. Union workers go home and they can afford to make their communities better,” he said. “Money talks, bulls— walks. … So free up the money, get this tube flowing underneath the Hudson,” Mooney said.
Gateway officials said $1 billion has already been spent on the project so far, which Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer said would be a shame to toss away.
“ If we stop now, we’ll have wasted $1 billion in taxpayer dollars, and residents will be left with a huge half-finished pit in their backyard,” he said.
The entire project wouldn’t be necessary if former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in 2010 hadn’t pulled funding for the ARC Project, which also aimed to build a new set of train tunnels beneath the Hudson River.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
