VOC sampling locations table for Ground Zero area, Jan 2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Section III. Environmental Monitoring Within a month after the disaster, EPA’s Office of Environmental Information (OEI) began compiling the monitoring information generated by various agencies and providing that information directly to die public on the EPA web site: http://www.epa.gov/wtc . Environmental monitoring data were made available on a daily basis. EPA also developed three “trend reports,” dated November 20,2001; January 24,2002; and May 1,2002. Most of these data were made available to the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) in an electronic form for purposes of this report. These three principal sources - the web site, the trend reports, and the electronic data base - represent compilations/interpretations of much of the same data.

The sources of data that have been relied upon in the development of this report are further described below.

The “EPA WTC monitoring database” In the aftermath of the WTC disaster, many organizations and agencies conducted sampling and monitoring activities to assess environmental impacts. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYCDOHMH) initially requested that these monitoring organizations forward their results to them so they could be aggregated and made available for internal use by federal, state and local decision-makers. On September 25,2001, NYC asked EPA to assist in the management of these data by developing a database capable of tracking and reporting on the environmental data. The Agency delivered on September 28, 2001, the EPA WTC Multi- Agency Database that houses data from thirteen federal, state and private organizations (including EPA, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP) who conducted environmental monitoring after the September 11 disaster. Roughly 95% of all data in the database are from either EPA or the NYSDEC. This database has been maintained by EPA’s Office of Environmental Information and provided a clearinghouse and comprehensive site for use by all government agencies responding to the disaster. The database was provided to the authors of this report in May of 2002, and at the time, was current as of mid-April, 2002.

Environmental Data Trend Report World Trade Center Disaster (EPA. 20Q2a). These reports have been developed by IT Corporation under contract to EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. IT Corporation has completed reports dated November 20,2001; January 24, 2002; and May 1, 2002. This latest trends report is current to April 24, 2002. These trend reports focus solely on monitoring data and are summaries primarily of the data included in the EPA WTC monitoring database.

EPA web site. Most of the data in the EPA WTC monitoring database have been summarized for the general public on the EPA web site dedicated to information on the WTC site (http://www.epa.gov/wtc).

DRAFT-DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE 20 October 2002

NYC-WTC_000149101