NYC-WTC_000152373

I zi THEHARBOR Y I I o o Red Tape Cut and Rivers Dredged to Carry Debris by Water o co

o “0 c —X O1 By ERIC LIPTON A second contractor. Great Lakes CT ro The city has nearly completed a Th'edge and Dock Company, is sched- MANHATTAN o' co super-accelerated dredging of the finished today on the sec- Moving Debris by Barge "0 o East and Hudson Rivers to create P®'’^ which is between the 120,000 cubic yards Debris from the World Trade Center will be 3. barge ports to carry away a large Downtown Manhattan heliport (Pier ol mud and slit dredged 9L share of the 1.2 million tons of debris •i*’® Staten Island Perry terml- shipped out from five barge ports, two of ^K-WoridTradeV O from the World Trade Center site. "al on the East River in Manhattan. which had to be quickly dredged so they o Centersite , . o The goal is simple: every load of The fifth barge port is just north of were deep enough to handle the barges. c steel or crumbled concrete moved by ‘^e heliport, at a spot where the East That mud and silt are being dumped at an 3 o barge means fewer trucks clogging River is already deep enough to ac­ underwater pit in Newark. 3 aiready crowded roadways, tunnels commodate barges. . 7S,dfO,cu^ yards Of ff,ud and.. and' bridges. Already, barges have Normally, dredging permits can been used to move about a third of take up to two months to acquire, and . ..iC'' ■ z --i the 154,000 tons cleared from the site, contracts with companies that per- city officials said. form the work even longer to set up. The city has long used barges to Rht after the World Trade Center it, ^f'MANHAiT^hl:^ move trash from Manhattan to Its attack, all of this happened within is?'S'?? • Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, days, rhe process was faster in part Pissali', which closed earlier this year. Now, because the Newark Bay pit was Fliyer - ill ■? with the Staten Island landfill being available; it is a 31-acre dumping used again to handle World Trade Center debris, two former trash ground that opened in 1997. After the use of giant clamshell- SI traijsfer stations, a barge port on the shaped shovels and crews that Hudson River al 59th Street and one worked night and day in l2-hour lEWARK PORT on Hamilton Avenue in Red Hook, Brpoklyn, have been enlisted to help shifts, the water along the East Riv- er’s edge near the heliport is now at INTI Kssr*!''^ j^amllton with the barge effort. least 17 feet deep, even at low tide. A But given the immense scale of the channel has also been dug 700 feet World Trade Center cleanup job, out into the river. these ports were not enough. So the Cindy Zipf, executive director of city and federal government em- Clean Ocean Action, an environmen- 4'’ barked on a huge dredging project in tai group, said she would have pre- Lower Manhattan. ferred if the material dredged from Already, at a cost of more than $1.3 the rivers had been removed from ■ million, nearly 200,000 cubic yards of the water permanently, cleaned and mud and silt have been dug up from then perhaps used elsewhere as fill. two new sites along the East and Hudson Rivers. That mud — it would be enough to build a pile 110 feet tall if it were spread out across a football field between the goal lines — has “Clearly the material from that part of the harbor contains contami- nants,” she said. But she added that given the need to move quickly, she thought the Newark Bay pit was a i m Barge port ( J Port Authority facility BFiqOKLYfj

0 Miles?, '2 '1110 New York Times been dumped back into the water in reasonable choice. Newark Bay, in a dredging disposal A single barge can carry up to The city’s Department of Sanita- ready to carry debris, about half for pit there. 3,000 tons, although depending on the tioii is moving loads of debris from steel and half city-owned barges that Work is already complete at one of shape of the steel, it may be able to the, barge ports at 59th .Street and at will be used for lighter material. The the new ports: a barge loading area fit only about 1,000 tons. A truck, by Hamilton Avenue In Brooklyn. But steel is being taken to recycling com­ has been set up by Weeks Marine comparison, can carry 10 to 30 tons Weeks Marine of Camden will oper- panies in Port Newark and Jersey Inc. just north of Battery Park City, of steel, again depending on its ate the barges at the three other City and the other waste to Fresh at the former Pier 25. shape. , ports. The company has 23 barges Kills.