DEP Invoice or Financial Record, September 30, 2001

z DISASTER DEBRIS AT ERESH KILLS; Z

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90,000 tons and counting o I o o o cn 1 ro to tn o> some Staten Islanders are con­ . I ■ Officials wrestling cerned about the potential haz­ With the task ards of living near this debris, of handling waste federal, state and city officials say that there is no evidence of any It. the landfill has never seen threat to the environment or to public health. 1 4 . ..! J

As much as 3 million tons of Ra rubble, ash and other materials By DIANA YATES and HEIDI SINGER will eventually be brought to Sec­ tion 1/9, the southernmost mound 1 ^DVA^iCE STAFF WRITERS of garbage at Fresh Kills, near Ar­ den Avenue and the West Shore Expressway in Arden Heights. Al­ The pile of rubble brought to ready, 90,937 tons have been tak­ Staten Island from the World en to the dump, according to the Trade Center disaster site is Federal Emergency Management growing, as Sanitation officials, Agency. waste industry specialists and This material will not come into public health expertsgrapple with contact with the Wash already the problem of disposing of it all. buried there, however. After the The challenge is formidable: dump was closed in March, thou­ The thousands of tons of charred sands of tons of soil werd layered debris going to the now-closed Fresh Kills landfill Include build­ ing materials, chemicals, auto­ over the last loads of residential waste. iOi Most of the rubble from the dis­ motive parts and even human re­ aster scene is transported to mains. Fresh Kills by truck or barge, a Sanitation officials cannot yet process some in the waste indus­ say how the material will be han­ try say could take several months. dled because the former dump is Not everything that is brought A*

I the scene of a massive criminal to the dump will be buried there, investigation. however. On a tour of the facili­ a “Our department is saying it’s ty last week, William Allee, the ft' ■ confidential and they’re not giv­ Police Department’s chief of de­ ing out any information,” said tectives, said anything that might Sanitation spokesman Michael be used as evidence is catalogued Dendekker. But city police detectives and and handed over to the FBI. Body parts that are found are refrig- SfSaH other investigators have already begun the grim task of catego­ ADVANCE PHOTO ■ IRVING SILVERSTfil rizing the wreckage. And although Workers sift through debris at the Fresh Kills landfill in their search for clues.

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