Well, not exactly. The 9.8 Bil was not the estimate, it was the upper limit of the range of the State's estimate, which was 2.9 to 9.8 billion. And that btw was the highest of the three estimates the PUC looked at which actually started at half a billion. But the PUC essentially accepted the State estimate as the most complete. It established a range, not a single estimate, based on the following (quoted from the page on which the PUC's assessment appears)
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It's not just a crazy number: its a fantasy number: some critic just made it up.
So what was that you said about the number simply being made up out of thin air?
On top of which, I am hard pressed to think of any public works project that came in anywhere near what the first estimates were for it to cost.
