WTC document preservation notice, Jan 2003

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

AvaStroni, Robert

From. Hoffer, Mark Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 3:26 PM To: Sturcken, Charles Cc: Ward, Chris; Avaltroni, Robert; Pecunies, Russ; Levine, Robin Subje FOIL Request for WTC-related Data from NY Environmental & Justice Project

This is 3 heads-up on a WTC-related issue:

We received a FOIL request in September 2002 from the NY Environmental Law & Justice Project (a Mr. Joel Kupferman), requesting copies of all environmental assessments, bulk sample results, air monitoring results and clean­ up surr maries submitted to us by private building owners downtown who had undertaken clean-up on their own, in respor ce to letters we sent to owners requesting such data.

Becaucc the Law Department is coordinating the responses to all WTC-related FOILS, we reviewed the request with Law, and staff from Law reviewed the types of responses we received back from owners. Their conclusion was that, except for 3 property owners who requested that their data be kept confidential under the FOIL exemption for trade secret competitive information, they had no objection to making the balance available under FOIL.

Because this particular requester is impatient, he has now filed an appeal with our FOIL Appeals Officer (Robin) essentially claiming constructive denial of his request (which is not true; it took some time to confer with Law and review the material). We will be moving ahead to make the data available, except for the data from the 3 owners who invoked the exemption, and we will be making arrangements with Mr. Kupferman for him to inspect the material at our offices (the typica’ way we handle large amounts of material).

Please rote that in the same FOIL request, Mr. Kupferman also asked for a list of owners who received our letters requesting this data (we can easily handle this by providing him with copies of all the letters we sent out), a list of those owners who answered (he can generate this himself by looking at the responses received), and a list of "ensuing inspections and enforcement actions."

This last item should be noted. Given the FOIL rquest, it is likely that follow-up inquiries will be received from the press/elected officials/members of the public concerning the nature/level of DEP inspections and enforcement activity vis a vis owners who performed their own clean-up. I suggest that Bob and his staff prepare some materials explaining what we did, how we did it, and why we believe it was the sensible approach to this aspect of the downtown clean-up effort. This v/ould be helpful in responding to inquiries.

Please .at me know if there is anything you would like to discuss.

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