EPA To Clean Downtown Apartments

By Ronald Drenger

After asserting for 8 months that it was not responsible for cleaning interiors of buildings, the federal Environmental Protection Agency announced on May 8 that it will lead an effort by government agencies to clean apartments below Canal Street that were polluted with dust and ash from the attack on the World Trade Center.

"Most residents had their homes cleaned, but many have ongoing concerns about the dust that may still lurk on their floors and window ledges," said Jane Kenny, the EPA’s regional administrator, at a press conference at the agency’s regional headquarters on lower Broadway. "No one should have to live with anxiety about the safety of the air in their own homes." Kenny said that "the scientific data about any immediate health risks from indoor air is very reassuring," but that the EPA hopes that the cleanups will alleviate residents’ lingering worries.

Under the plan, city-certified contractors will clean apartments and then follow up by testing indoor air for asbestos. All residents below Canal Street, whether or not they’ve already cleaned their apartments, will be able to request a cleanup, or just the air test.

Christopher Ward, commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), said the type of cleanup and methods used will vary depending on the conditions inside particular apartments.

An EPA hotline for people to call to request a cleanup should be in place by June 1, Kenny said.

The program will be paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Joseph Picciano, FEMA’s acting regional director, declined to estimate the total cost, which will depend on how many people request a cleanup. EPA officials estimated that about 15,000 apartments are covered by the program.

The EPA is also considering reimbursing residents who in the months after Sept. 11 went ahead and paid to have their apartments cleaned.

The announcement marked a significant change in EPA’s position. Downtown tenant groups and elected officials for months have called on the government to do indoor cleaning, but the EPA had asserted that building owners and residents were responsible for interior environments.

But Kenny said the new effort "isn’t a reversal." "There’s been a very dynamic response to the disaster," she said. "There’s been a lot of activity and we’ve been working together with other agencies to come up with a comprehensive program that made sense. It takes time."

Local elected officials and community leaders welcomed the new program but said it should have been started months ago, and they cited shortcomings in the EPA’s plan.

"Today’s announcement is a significant step forward in the long-running effort to ensure that the area affected by the fall of the World Trade Center is safe for all," Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who has been a persistent critic of the EPA’s response to the disaster, said at the press conference. But he said the cleanups will have to be monitored to make sure they’re done correctly and thoroughly.

"As we all know, the devil could be in the details," he said.

He said that entire buildings, rather than individual apartments, should be cleaned, to avoid possible recontamination from apartments that are not cleaned. He encouraged tenants to coordinate with their neighbors to make sure that every apartment in their building is cleaned.

Nadler also said that commercial spaces, schools and community centers should be cleaned. "The key thing is that now that the EPA has taken responsibility, we will be in a much better position to push them to expand the program," Nadler said.

Nadler and others, including Community Board 1 chair Madelyn Wils, the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) and 9/11 Environmental Action, a coalition of downtown residents and community groups, also said that the EPA should test apartments for pollutants besides asbestos, such as fiberglass, lead, mercury and benzene.

"We’ve identified asbestos as the primary contaminant of concern and it’s the first one we need to focus on," Kenny said. She added that the agency’s cleaning methods will also be effective for some of the other chemicals.

The EPA is also seeking an unoccupied building in which to test various indoor cleaning methods, a project that will take "a number of months," according to an agency spokeswoman.

And last month the city’s DEP released a list of 236 buildings below Chambers Street whose rooftops, facades or setbacks it will clean, based on inspections done earlier this year.