The New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO) has agreed to investigate the massive cost overruns that have plagued the construction of the Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park.

This decision comes one month after the Croton Facility Monitoring Committee, comprised of community leaders and local elected officials, passed a resolution calling on the IBO, as well as the city and state comptrollers, to conduct audits on the project. Over the past year, the filtration plant’s initial price tag of $890 million has ballooned to nearly $3 billion.

“We’re going to take a look at the project and where the increases have come from to try to determine what has driven the increased costs,” said IBO Chief of Staff Doug Turetsky.

Last spring, the IBO examined the stated costs for the plant to date and determined that the numbers, on paper, added up. This new investigation will take a closer look at how the developer arrived at their figures.

A spokesperson for City Comptroller Bill Thompson’s office said they have “received a request to perform an investigation, and we are currently reviewing that request.”

The State Comptroller’s Office did not comment by press time.

The city Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which is managing the filtration plant project, claimed early last year that the rising costs for the project were the result of an unprecedented spike in construction and material costs over the past four years.

The monitoring committee, with support from Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and City Council Member Oliver Koppell, found this explanation insufficient.

The filtration plant, the largest municipal project in the city’s history, has come under increased scrutiny over the last year as contractors have abandoned the project, construction has stalled, federal fines have accumulated, and public and political criticism has steadily mounted.

Supporters of the monitoring committee’s proposal hope conducting additional probes of the cost overruns will finally give the community members some of the answers they have been waiting to receive for more than a year.

“The community’s not just asking about the overbudgeting of plants; it’s about jobs, too,” Croton Facility Monitoring Chair Greg Faulkner said. “They want to know how soon they can get back to work.”