WTC document preservation notice, NYC Law Department

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

CONGRESSMAN JERROLD NADLER Stli Congressional District of New York

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT; .TENNIE MCCUE September 9,2003 202-225-5635

Nadler: New Whistleblower Document Reveals Failure of EPA Indoor Cleanup Program ''Best Effort" Cleanup at J J4 Liberty Street Leji Behind Dangerous Toxins; Residents Still Displaced 2 Years Later NEW YORK ~ Declaring its findings "more damning evidence emblematic of the failed premise and execution of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) so-called residential cleanup program post 9/11," Rep. Jerrold Nadler today released a new memo from 24-year EPA Hazardous Waste Identification Division veteran, Cate Jenkins, Ph.D., revealing that even the more rigorous type of EPA-Ied indoor cleanup has failed to rid apartments of World Trade Center (WTC) contamination. The memo finds that the building at 114 Liberty Street, which received the more rigorous of all EPA-Ied cleanups, still has visible WTC dust inside, containing high levels of asbestos and silica, and that the cleanup was not done to federal legal standards. The EPA has refused to take further action, even though the EPA program requires cleanup of all visible WTC dust. The report also states that the EPA made false scientific and other claims in defense of its decision not to re-clean. Residents of the building, who still cannot occupy their homes, and whose federal housing assistance has been cut off because the EPA declared the building "clean," Joined Nadler at a press conference today.

"On the eve of the second anniversary of the worst ever attack on America's soil, I stand here with New Yorkers who are still, two years later, being victimized. Only this time, it is their own federal government that is victimizing them," Rep. Nadler said. Rep. Nadler continued, "This latest example of EPA negligence is extremely damning because this building got arguably EPA's best effort post 9/11He added, "Just think, very few apartments got this so-called stringent cleanup that we now confirm is deeply flawed. Maybe another 3900 apartments got the seriously shoddy, less- rigorous cleanup. What about the other 18,000 apartments downtown and those in Brooklyn, and the thousands of workspaces, schools, and firehouses that have never received a government cleanup?" asked Nadler.

114 Liberty Street is an eleven-story building facing "Ground Zero," which sustained extensive contamination from the WTC collapse. Some individual residents paid for their apartments to be cleaned professionally before negotiating a building-wide cleanup with EPA. EPA and the City's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) began work in March 2003. EPA contractors cleaned the building two times, because their own testing after the first cleanup revealed remaining toxins. After the second cleanup, the EPA declared the building free of contaminants. Because the building still had visible dust, the residents hired their own professional testing firm. Ambient Group, Inc. Ambient Group found high levels of asbestos and silica in the remaining dust.

The EPA refused to clean again, and according to Jenkins' memo, its representatives defended their decision to take no further action "to the extent of misrepresenting test results in its reports and statements ..." and ".. .dismissing resident testing of dusts for asbestos which proved that visible dust accumulations were still present, and at higher concentrations than background." The memo also states that the EPA did not clean to legally mandated, health-based standards and "knowingly expos[ed] residents to silica, a human carcinogen, at levels higher than EPA's criterion." Dr. Jenkins concludes that "It.. .appears that EPA does not want the trouble and added expense that would be entailed by additional abatements." According to Jenkins, to justify its refusal to re-clean, the EPA even argued erroneously that the asbestos found by Ambient in the dust was pre-existing, but states that "this could not be the case” because the WTC-type Chrj'sotile asbestos had not been present in any exposed building materials.

NYC-WTC_000144796