Flushed away: New York pays $5.3 million to install toilets costing less than $1 million

These thrones are not made of gold, but they should be.

A pilot project to buy and install a single high-tech toilet in a park in each of the five boroughs could cost New York taxpayers a whopping $5.3 million, despite a quintet of toilets selling for less than a million dollars.

The city said on Monday that one of the Portland Loo branded toilets, which cost about $185,000 apiece, will be installed in each of the five parks to kick off a long-awaited project to make life easier for residents of the Big Apple.

But the overall project, including installing toilets in a city mired in bureaucratic red tape and dizzying building codes, is expected to raise the total cost to more than $5 million, or an average of more than a million dollars per pot.

A spokesman for the Parks Department blamed the big bill, at least in part, on installation costs.

“One of the important considerations is that these locations were deliberately chosen to accommodate new bathrooms in areas where they did not previously exist, so they will require completely new utilities to provide water and electricity to the toilets,” the representative wrote in his letter. . Email.

“The total cost will also include aspects of the site such as site preparation, foundation work, fencing, etc.”

And the city’s notoriously complicated rules, including those for such prefabricated structures, only increase costs because of the delays they often cause.

Portable bathroom maker Madden Fabrication told TheCity.nyc, which first reported on the bustling bathrooms on Monday, that trying to get through New York’s bureaucracy to get approval was a nightmare like no other.

“I’ve built 180 of these toilets, from Portland to Alaska to Miami, and I’ve never had a problem getting certified,” sales manager Evan Madden told the publication, which first reported the five high-priced toilets.

“New York was the hardest place to get permission.”

Some residents of East Harlem in Manhattan, where Thomas Jefferson Park is among those about to install one of the new toilets, said the whole thing stinks.

“They can spend $1 million in this area much better than building a toilet,” local resident Mike Grahn, 32, told The Post.

“It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense,” he said of the mind-blowing spending.

“They could spend a quarter of that money on cleaning the portable pots we already have, and spend the rest on horizontal bars, new basketball hoops and tennis nets.”

Another resident, Sherman Walker, 83, said the $1 million figure was mind-blowing, but no less stink from existing portable pots.

“One million dollars is a lot of money. That’s more money than I’ll ever see. Only to the toilet? Walker said. “But if other areas get it, why not us?

“Here, portable pots are the most disgusting things you will ever see in your life.

“People miss the hole. They stand and fall. All you can do is take a piss, but for that you have to hold your nose.”

The City Parks Department still needs to get several approvals, including from local community boards, to move forward with the plan, which has been in the works for several years.

The toilet maker told The City that it received a call from a Big Apple official in February 2022 demanding an explanation as to why the company still hasn’t provided toilets.

A spokesperson for the company replied that it was because no one from the city had actually ordered them, the publication reported.

The portable pots have actually been suggested as a cost-saving measure, given that a more complex and larger “comfort station” costs between $5 million and $10 million to build, according to The City.

According to The City, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio denounced the situation in 2019, saying that something “has to change” if it’s costing this much and taking this long to fix park toilets.

A spokesperson for Parks said in an email to The Post that the agency “has taken several steps to reduce the cost of the new comfort stations, including standardizing design, ditching expensive materials, ditching custom materials, limiting utility bills, and limiting landscaping work.”

“We also met directly with the contractors to understand the problems that arise during construction, which we could solve during the design process. We continue to explore alternative structures such as the Portland Loo and other prefabricated structures.

“We expect design to be completed this year and then move on to procurement.”

City parks that should receive new free-standing toilets, ideally as early as summer 2024: Thomas Jefferson Park; Brooklyn Park Irving Square in Bushwick; Hoyt Playground in Astoria, Queens; Joyce Kilmer Park near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and Macris Father Park in Graniteville, Staten Island.

“We are installing Portland Loos in one park in each area, in specially selected locations, as they did not previously have toilets,” a spokesman for the parks wrote.

“This is a pilot project to determine whether this model can be used as a cost-effective solution for building bathrooms in parks in the future.”

Portland toilets are already in use in places like Hoboken, New Jersey, and Long Island’s Shelter Island, the company’s website says.

Residents near Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan’s East Village will likely welcome any help.

Increasingly, people have been defecation and urination in the park and between nearby cars, The Post reported Saturday, as a burst pipe and malfunctioning boiler in the basement of a field house forced public toilets to close in November.