By Ronald Drenger

The official end of the World Trade Center cleanup and recovery operation will be marked with a ceremony at the site on May 30, Mayor Bloomberg announced at a May 16 press conference at City Hall. The event, which will honor Ground Zero workers, will be attended by families of victims of the terrorist attack and thousands of workers.

The ceremony will begin at 10:29 a.m., the time that the South Tower fell, with the ringing of five bells, repeated four times—the Fire Department’s signal for an officer lost in the line of duty.

Workers will carry an empty, flag-draped stretcher up the ramp from the site, in honor of victims whose remains were not recovered, and place it in an ambulance. Ground Zero personnel will also remove the last remaining beam from the fallen towers and load it onto a flat-bed truck. The two vehicles will be driven down West Street and through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. An honor guard will represent the Police and Fire departments, the Port Authority and a range of city and state agencies, and Police and Fire Department bands will play Taps, America the Beautiful and other appropriate music. Police helicopters will execute a fly-by. "The recovery effort is not over," Bloomberg said, noting that pockets of debris will continue to be uncovered and sifted, workers will continue to search through debris at the Fresh Kills landfill, and the city’s medical examiner’s office will proceed with efforts to identify remains, a process that will probably continue for at least a year.

"This is a symbolic end, however, of the process, and a way to say thank you to those who have worked so hard and taken such risks to recover those we have lost," Bloomberg said.

The Mayor said that work at the site is being completed ahead of schedule and under budget. About 1.8 million tons of debris, or more than 100,000 truckloads, have been removed.

Workers put in 3.1 million person-hours, but none died or suffered life-threatening injuries, Bloomberg noted. The accident rate among Ground Zero workers has been half the national average for construction sites, according to the city.

During the press conference, Bloomberg and Governor Pataki spoke optimistically about the pace of Downtown’s recovery, pointing to transportation improvements completed over the last few months, rising occupancy rates in residential and commercial buildings and a recent Hunter College survey showing that Lower Manhattan residents are feeling hopeful about their community.

According to survey results cited by Bloomberg, 86 percent of residents said that Lower Manhattan, as a place to live, is the same (61%) or better (25%) than it was a year ago.

Bloomberg said that the recent reopening of more stores, restaurants and hotels, and cultural programs like the Tribeca Film Festival and the summerlong River to River Festival, which will include more than 500 events, will continue to attract people to Downtown.

"All signs show that people are coming back to Lower Manhattan to live, to shop and to work," Bloomberg said. "The more people that come, the more stores will open, and the more stores that open, the more reason there will be for people to come."