Yes, there are many ways this marginal money expenditure could be put to a better use. Most of those scenarios, however, would never happen, because human organizations are nowhere near that efficient. The most likely outcome of closing the station would be the money getting distributed between organizational overhead and bumping up someone's salary a little bit. Or maybe another company project would get finished little faster.

I agree that we should prioritize things and aim for maximum effectiveness of our help. But humans are complex beings - we react to examples and positive stories, which often encourage us to change our behaviors. If seeing positive stories like this can make some people even a little more kind, or inspire them to do some good, then those stories are of great value. And if we can encourage people to do good by praising even somewhat inefficient acts of kindness, maybe the next group will figure out a more cost-effective way. It definitely beats no one being inspired to do anything good at all.

Eliezer once wrote a very interesting article "Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately"[0]. His point was that out of the things we get from helping others - warm fuzzy feelings, status increase and the actual results - "all three of these things—warm fuzzies, status, and expected utilons—can be bought far more efficiently when you buy separately, optimizing for only one thing at a time". I kind of agree with this approach, and I think story is mostly about buying fuzzies, not utilons. Yet we are just humans - we need some fuzzies too.

[0] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...