EPA's Whitman Defends Actions Post 9/11

By Barry Owens
POSTED JUNE 29, 2007

In a Congressional hearing late last month, former EPA chief Christine Whitman defended the handling of her job following the Sept. 11 attacks. Her testimony came in the face of criticism and one congressman’s accusation that she had “spoke too broadly, too soon” when she assured residents that Lower Manhattan air was safe to breathe after Sept. 11.

“Every statement I made was based on what experts, who had a great deal of experience in these things, conveyed to me,” Whitman told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on June 25. Her testimony was the first public comments she has made regarding the clean up in years.

She said that her statements after the attacks, which were widely published, aired on network television and taken as Gospel by many Downtown residents, were based on data from EPA scientists.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who has been a persistent critic of the EPA clean-up effort, chaired the hearing and opened by playing video tapes of Whitman declaring on television broadcasts that the air in Lower Manhattan was safe and that asbestos and lead “concentrations are such that they don’t pose a health hazard.” He asked Whitman if she regretted those words.

“I do not regret what the scientist said,” Whitman replied.

The veracity of the statements have been called into question in the years since the attacks as potentially thousands of Ground Zero workers have developed respiratory problems, at least two deaths have been linked to the dust, and a report by the Government Accountability Office released last month concluded that the EPA misled Lower Manhattan residents about the level of contamination in their apartments. Critics are made further cynical by the involvement of the White House in the shaping of the statements.

“You know that this administration that you worked for has very little credibility and accountability so you don’t wonder why we are asking questions,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat.

Whitman testified that it was “appropriate” that the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, the White House office that vetted EPA press releases, was involved in the shaping of the messages because “in a time of crisis, you need to speak in one voice.”

She was booed from the gallery when she added that the White House was correct in calling for the Financial District to reopen immediately. Otherwise, she said “the terrorists would win.”

Whitman said her assurances of air safety applied only to Downtown residents and not to workers on the debris pile who, she said, were warned by the EPA and OSHA to wear respirators and utilize other protective equipment, though neither agency had the authority to enforce the safety measures.

Many Downtown apartments and office buildings were coated in the dust from the collapse of the towers and  without proper cleaning, those spaces could pose a health risk. Whitman said she was consistent in urging residents and building managers to have spaces professionally cleaned before returning.

In 2003, following a residential clean up program, the EPA reported that only a “very small” number of residential spaces showed unsafe levels of asbestos. According to a report released last month by the Government Accountability Office, it was “misleading” for the EPA to make that claim as 80 percent of the apartments that were tested for asbestos had already been cleaned, which the agency did not report.

At the hearing, Whitman stood by her former agency’s analysis and her statements regarding the quality of air in Lower Manhattan.

“In science you are always going to get second guessed,” she told the committee. “It’s like climate change.”

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