Rotten to the Core: The Real Dirt on Boston's Big Dig

The Big Dig, Boston’s scandalous Central Artery/Tunnel Project, was the largest, most expensive, most complex public works project in the history of America, the so-called Eighth Wonder of the World with a price tag, factored for inflation, greater than the collective cost of the Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Hoover Dam and the Egyptian Pyramids of Giza—-$24 Billion Dollars. This manuscript, titled Rotten to the Core: The Real Dirt on Boston's Big Dig, is a first-hand account—an inside story told by the project’s principal whistleblower—of the bilking of the American taxpayer with the unspoken approval of four U.S. presidents, the deception of some of the most prominent politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, and the gross mismanagement of one of the world’s largest and most politically connected engineering and construction partnerships. This is a story about behind-the-scenes reality, not the glowing Big Dig press releases, the elegant ribbon cuttings, and the praises bestowed on insiders and outsiders, who sucked the lifeblood out of our weary taxpayers. It is a sordid tale of how Boston became the laughing stock of the nation with an open-wallet of a public works project ten times over its initial $2.3 billion budget. The end result was a product riddled with defects that has been the cause to date of several deaths and dismemberments, not to mention the substandard concrete that has leaked millions of gallons of salty and corroding Boston Harbor water into Big Dig tunnels. The tunnels of the Big Dig are not safe, but no one wants to pull the plug and do what is right for the taxpayers who are footing the bill for this folly. That is the real truth and what comes in the near future will be more tragic than anyone could ever have imagined.