Fax report on oil and PCB spills at Ground Zero,

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

FROM ; FAX NO. : 2120744333 Nev. 29 2001 11:15PM Pl

TO; GERRY KTJTIN AU FROM: BERNIE TUCHAIAN

Major Oil Spills at Ground Zero Juan Gonzalez More than 130,000 gallons of oil from transformers and high-voltage lines _ most of it containing low levels of hazardous PCBs _ were lost at the World Trade Cwter on Sept. 11 when two downtown Con Edison substations were destroyed. In addition to the Con Ed release, confirmed by company spokesman Mike Clendenin, the Port Authority is unable to account for 50,000 of70,000 gallons of diesel and fuel oil stored in belowground tanks at the Trade Center complex to power emergency generators.

As much as 180,000 gallons of flammable oil _ roughly equivalent to 10 times the amount ofjet fuel in the two airliners that crashed into the twin towers _ may be feeding the fires that have been burning for more than two months at the site. Con Ed and Port Authority officials say they don't know whether the contaminants seeped into the soil, burned or drained off into the Hudson River. Environmental Protection Agency officials confirmed they are searching for the oil and pumping it out when they find it. A private environmental data firm hired by the city to report on known hazardous materials at the Trade Center warned in a letter to federal and state environmental officials this week that the oil "could be fueling the onsite fires."

A copy of the letter from Walter Hang, president of Ithaca, N.Y.-based Toxics Targeting Inc., was obtained by the Daily News. "That's exactly what's burning," said a Fire Department source. "All that fuel, all those cars that were in parking lots down there, all kinds of stuff,”

Information Not Released On Monday, Carl Johnson, deputy- commissioner for air and waste management for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, told an Assembly hearing on downtown air quality, "I don't believe that we saw anything that involved a large quantity ofPCBs." After die hearing, when informed by a reporter that both Con Ed and the Port Authority said they notified the DEC about a half-dozen incidents involving oil or natural gas releases, Johnson replied: Tm not aware of that"

DEC officials have not released any information on Trade Center environmental contamination since Sept. 11.

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