Draft EPA OIG report excerpts on WTC indoor response, Oct

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

DRAFT EXCERPTS - FOR REVIEW & DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY

before leaving the site. As a result. New York City obtained assistance from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Police, and the National Guard, to ensure that trucks stopped at the wash stations before leaving 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 the WTC. The report noted that:

Vehicles leaving the site with debris, either dumps or lowboys with large sections of steel 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 for failure 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, 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:

2 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 on September 12, 2001, and that this requirement was enforced. Furthermore, they stated that the vehicles did not require decontamination since this was not a hazardous material situation and decontamination procedures were not required.

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