Officials Defend Cleanup Actions at City Council Hearing

By Ronald Drenger

At a March 8 City Council hearing on the Downtown environment, government officials declined calls for new action on Lower Manhattan’s two most controversial environmental issues in the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center: the debris removal operation at Pier 25, and indoor testing and cleanup.

Some residents in buildings overlooking the pier and parents at nearby school schools complain about noise and potentially hazardous dust from the barge site, and Councilman Alan Gerson, who represents Lower Manhattan and is the chair of the Select Committee on Lower Manhattan Redevelopment, focused many of his questions on the issue. Witnesses responded that measures were in place to deal with environmental hazards.

"The current vehicle wash down and tarping program has been effective at minimizing dust from the transport and dumping at the barge loading operation," said Robert Adams, director of environmental health and safety at the city’s Department of Design and Construction (DDC), which has been managing the debris removal. He added that the number of truckloads of debris being dumped onto the barges every week was down to 1,400, from a peak of 6,000.

Addressing calls to put debris in closed containers, he said there were no commercially available containers that could handle the irregular sizes, shapes and weight of World Trade Center debris, and that custom-building them would take a long time.

"We have consistently insisted on more and better dust suppression at the World Trade Center site and any other sites involved in the work, and we’ve been responding to complaints from residents and members of the community," said Richard Sheirer, head of the city’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and overall coordinator of the recovery and cleanup operation.

He said removal of the remaining 200-300,000 tons of debris—out of a total of about 1.7 million tons—will probably be finished in May or June.

"If I lived there [near the pier] I would be very concerned, but I would also understand that we’re trying to address a situation that is unprecedented," Sheirer said.

"At this point there should be an action plan in place," responded Gerson. "Non-diesel fuel, noise suppression, perhaps curtailing the hours of the most noisy operations, treating the mitigation of health hazards as a priority."

"I will look at each of those issues and get back to you on that," said Sheirer.

After Sheirer had left, OEM’s deputy director, Edward Gabriel, said the barge operation was the most efficient way to move debris, and that trucking the debris posed greater environmental risks. Using barge sites further uptown also meant more trucking through the city, he said.

When Gerson suggested that trucks be sealed, rather than covered with tarps, saying federal law required seals for the transport of hazardous material, the DDC’s Adams challenged that classification of the World Trade Center rubble.

"It’s construction debris," he said. But he added that the DDC would "take a look at the feasibility" of sealing the trucks.

Carl Johnson, deputy commissioner for air and waste management at the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said that the government had so far been unable to get trucks to use particle traps on their exhaust pipes or low-sulfur fuels to reduce pollution.

And Jessica Leighton, an administrator at the Department of Health, said that lead recently found in dust on window sills at Stuyvesant high school "is most likely coming from air and street dust," rather than from the barges.

"It’s not uncommon to find elevated levels of lead in street dust in New York City," she said. "And we don’t have data on the background levels of lead in those areas" near the pier.

Gerson and other councilmembers also called for building-by-building inspections to make sure proper cleanup and testing had been done, echoing demands by Downtown tenant leaders and other local elected officials.

"I will look at that and other options, as we get to the nuts and bolts," Scherer responded.

He said that the city had been reassured that indoor environments were safe based on test results showing that outdoor air and dust wasn’t dangerous. But Councilmembers challenged that assumption as well as the standards used to assess asbestos hazards.

Robert Avaltroni, deputy commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, said the city decided soon after Sept. 11 that "the cleanup within private property would remain the responsibility of private property owners, although the city would provide as much guidance and oversight as possible."

"Instead of giving out advisories, the government should be making sure it’s being done, and it’s not doing that," said Councilman James Gennaro, said chair of the Environmental Protection Committee.