Cleanup Controversy Isn’t Going Away

By Ronald Drenger

Government agencies last month continued to plan environmental cleanups near the World Trade Center site, amid complaints that they were doing too little too late.

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) released a list of 236 buildings below Chambers Street whose rooftops, facades or setbacks will be cleaned by the agency, based on inspections done earlier this year.

(See here for a complete list of buildings to be cleaned)

Nathalie Millner, a DEP spokeswoman, said that work would begin as soon as contracts are awarded, but that no timetable was in place.

"Obviously, we want to get this done and have it done properly, and it will be done as quickly as possible," she said.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Regional Administrator Kathleen Callahan said at a State Assembly hearing on April 12 that her agency, which has maintained that it is responsible only for the outdoor environment, may pay for indoor cleanups.

"We’re trying to determine if it’s necessary and makes sense in terms of public health," Mary Mears, an EPA spokeswoman, said late last month. She said there was no deadline for a decision.

The EPA is seeking an unoccupied building in which to test various indoor cleaning methods, Mears said, but the project will take "a number of months." She said the EPA does not have to wait for the pilot cleanup, or the DEP’s work, to be finished before deciding whether to start cleaning inside occupied buildings.

Meanwhile, a range of Downtown groups, including the Lower Manhattan Tenants’ Coalition (LMTC), the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project and the Stuyvesant High School Parents Association, formed a new umbrella group, called 9/11 Environmental Action, to pressure government agencies.

The groups, along with local elected officials including Rep. Jerrold Nadler and Councilman Alan Gerson, for months have called on the government to do apartment-by-apartment indoor testing and cleaning.

The new coalition’s aim, said Sudhir Jain, head of the LMTC, is to get the EPA to officially take over the entire environmental response to the World Trade Center disaster, indoors and outdoors. The coalition supports Nadler’s claim that the EPA is responsible for stepping in under federal guidelines for environmental emergencies.

"The city and state don’t have the capability on their own," Jain said.

On another environmental issue that has stirred controversy, Mayor Bloomberg said that the debris barges at Pier 25 will probably be gone by the end of this month, when the cleanup at the World Trade Center site is expected to be finished. The city was expected to move one barge at the beginning of this month.

This was good news to those who live close to the pier and to parents and staff at nearby schools, who for months have complained about noise and dust from the debris operation.

The Stuyvesant parents association claims that the barge is a source of potentially hazardous World Trade Center dust that is recontaminating the school. Last month the association voted to give its leadership permission to sue the Board of Education to get it to clean the school’s ventilation ducts. The Board has said the ducts don’t need cleaning.

"We hope that we can reach a settlement and that we don’t have to proceed with litigation, but the ducts have to be cleaned," said Marilena Christodoulou, president of the parents association.