World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

report, initiated by the OIG early in 2002, found that EPA staff did a commendable job reacting to the unprecedented disaster,” Tinsley concludes. “Nonetheless, many problems were encountered and changes should be made so that EPA can better respond to future disasters.

“Unfortunately; our country lives imder the threat of future terrorist attacks, and it is important that we use what we have learned from the World Trade Center tragedy to make improvements to our emergency response capabilities,” Tinsley concludes.

The report set off a political firestorm, both in the local New York community and among Democrats in Congress.

“This release of this report has had a tremendous impact on those of us living aroimd Ground Zero,” says downtown New York resident Pat Dillon, who lives in a high rise six short blocks of the former World Trade Center. “Many of us who had enormous difficulty raising attention to these issues in the past now suddenly have an ear from those who were at first skeptical of the environmental and health effects.”

Many New Yorkers expressed outrage at the report that the White House influenced environmental officials to downplay hazards posed by the toxic dust that fell in an avalanche over the city. Kim Todd, longsuffering downtown resident, who still lives several blocks from the former towers, says she’s angry. “I might not have stayed down here—with dust on me for days—had I known of the dangers,” she told MSNBC. “We were all lied to, and I’m afraid everybody is going to be seriously sick.”

Meanwhile congressional Democrats, including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and Committee Ranking Members John Dingell (D-MI), John Conyers (D-MI), George Miller (D-CA), and Henry Waxman (D-CA) in September 2003 called on Speaker Hastert to launch a Congressional investigation into EPA's response to World Trade Center contaminants.

In their demand for a Congressional investigation, the legislators cited studies that they said “show that 78 percent of emergency responders, who traveled from all over the country to work at Ground Zero, reported at least one World Trade Center-related lung symptom as a result of their work at the site. Doctors have also documented thousands of cases of New York City residents and workers who have become sick after they returned to their homes, offices and schools around Ground Zero.”

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi stated, "The Environmental Protection Agency knew there were air pollution risks and failed to act.”

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee recently released its oversight report of how EPA handled the aftermath of September 11. According to the committee, it “transcends the EPA Inspector General investigation, which, because of limited jurisdiction, lacked authority to question officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Coxmcil on Envirorunental Quality (CEQ), who were intimately involved in the decision making process after September 11,” it wrote in a press release.

95

NYC-WTC_000145013