Law Department notice on WTC document preservation, Oct 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

the site. Even after getting assistance, EPA Situation Reports indicated that the trucks were not stopping long enough to get completely wetted down.

Similar observations were reported in an October 6,2001, report funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which discussed worker safety issues at WTC. The report noted that:

Vehicles leaving the site with debris, either dumps or lowboys with large sections ofsteel beams, are not deconned (decontaminated)^'^ and the dumps do not have covers over the loads. As a consequence, potentially hazardous dust and debris is tracked off site or is blown from the loads during transit.

EPA Situation Reports indicated that as late as October 13,2001, this was still a problem. However, around this time period. New York City officials began issuing summonses to truck operators and their employers for failure to secure loads and to stop and be wetted down. City officials told us that approximately 300 summonses were issued and that compliance with the requirement for trucks to get wetted down before leaving the site was almost 100 percent by late October to early November 2001.

However, certain requirements for transporting debris from the site were suspended by the Governor of New York in an Executive Order dated October 9, 2001. This Order temporarily suspended regulations regarding the transportation and handling of certain solid waste resulting from the WTC disaster. The Order applied to persons working at the site under the supervision of New York State or the New York City government officials and suspended requirements to:

• Obtain permits for collection, transportation, and delivery of regulated waste to staging areas or disposal locations owned or operated by the City.

• Comply with hazardous waste management standards at the site, during the transportation of waste from the disaster site to staging areas or disposal locations owned by the City of New York, and in connection with the temporary storage of such waste at these staging area or disposal locations.

Once debris was loaded onto trucks at Ground Zero it was transported to piers and unloaded on barges that carried the debris to landfills. The manner in which these trucking and barge operations were conducted was discussed at hearings held by

12 New York City officials disagreed with the report’s characterization of the debris removal operation. They stated that the requirement for dump trucks to be covered started September 12, and that this requirement was enforced. They also said that the vehicles did not require decontamination since they were not transporting hazardous waste as defined by EPA under 40 CFR Part 260-280; and while decontamination procedures were not required, wash down procedures were mandated.

37 Report No. 2003-P-00012

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