A statistical spike in one area indicated that a population of striped bass was harbored in precisely the portion of the river slated for occupation by Westway. From this point on, the hard science gets a little hazy. To begin with, patterns of fish movement and abundance are notoriously difficult to study. The fluctuations in population and distribution from season to season; the impact of weather-a mild winter versus a severe one, say-on the sample size; the techniques for collection, with the variants of depth distribution (bottom trawling as opposed to setting minnow traps, either one of which may privilege one species over another); the use of mathematical probabilities to determine bestcasecase scenarios, all may lead to very different results, and did, depending on who was doing the study. With billions of dollars at stake, each side used the figures that best suited its argument. To the antiWestway coalition, the discovery that young striped bass seemed to hang out at an interpier area in lower Manhattan indicated it was a crucial stopover, a "winter resort" in their migration to the ocean, allowing them to rest, conserve energy, and fatten up. To Craig Whitaker and other Westway proponents, the explanation TG0ARD, OR THE BATTLE OF WESTWAY 101 that striped bass liked garbage, and the only special lure of the interna was a sewage outflow that happened to be located there. pier area vv о Scientists on both sides recognized that the projectmandated experi ents would have neither enough time nor funding to settle the point: a oupfon of science was being used to buttress a public policy decision. John Waldman, who was just starting out then as a young ichthyologist, recalls the Westway fish studies as both heroic and frustrating, because they were methodologically flawed. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers kept maintaining that it had enough data, and issuing landfill permits, while the anti Westway attorneys kept going back to court and obtaining delays, on the basis that not enough information had been collected. Two winters at minimum would be necessary for an adequate comparative study, at a direct cost of $9 million (and an additional $60 million for project delays). Above and beyond amassing sufficient data, it was in the interests of those opposed to Westway to stall. "The longer this thing is left out in the street," Ed Logue phrased it, "the more it's going to get kicked." Delays had another negative effect on Westway, driving its projected budget up, as construction costs soared in the boom years of the eighties. Had the highway been built when it was first proposed, it would have cost slightly over a billion dollars. By 1984 the projected costs had risen to S2 billion, still able to be entirely funded by federal and state agencies. From this point on, however, the more construction costs rose, the greater the risk that the city would end up incurring some financial burden.