E-MAILS SENT R. AVALTRONI

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Officials responded to such criticism last week in off the record comments by saying that the agency was overwhelmed by the task of monitoring the outdoor air following the disaster, and that the E.P.A. was not called in by the city to do the indoor cleanup until many months after the disaster.

It’s hard to believe that the richest nation on earth couldn’t afford to come up with the resources to get the indoor cleanup plan moving faster. But it is true that the city under the administration of Mayor Rudy Giuliani was too quiet when it came to the environmental concerns. When the E.P.A. said it was up to the city to make sure apartments were clean, Giuliani should have either said the city does not have the wherewithal to do that in the face of the recovery efforts, or he should have taken on the responsibility. Instead he left it to residents to trust their landlords, or themselves, to do the right thing. This policy continued for many months into the Bloomberg administration. Critics of the indoor cleanup plan have a litany of other complaints. They want the plan to be expanded beyond the Canal St. boundaries and include contaminants other than asbestos in all, not just a sample of apartments. More controversially, some critics want the agency to force all residents near ground zero to have their apartments decontaminated under the theory that one unclean apartment could lead to cross-contamination. This smacks of hysteria and begs the question of whether the agency has the legal authority to clean someone’s apartment without his or her consent. Many people are not participating in the program, but that may turn out to be a good thing. If all but a handful of apartments are shown to be free of dangerous chemicals, then we the taxpayers will have saved millions of dollars by not cleaning and testing clean apartments. If many apartments test unsafe, however, then the E.P.A. can launch an aggressive education campaign to get more residents to agree to a professional cleaning. The agency has worked to address some of the criticisms. The cleanup will spot check for contaminants other than asbestos. But we think it makes sense to test a sample of apartments between 14“* and Canal Sts, which is not presently planned, as it can be done at a modest cost and will assuage some of the criticism. But the public deserves a clear message from E.P.A. on just why it has taken a year for the indoor cleanup plan to begin and what it will do in the future to ensure such a mistake is not made again. The agency is in charge of protecting the nation’s environment and if local officials are unable or unwilling to solve the problems of the next incident which causes environmental uncertainty, then it is up to the E.P.A. to take a more forceful role to advocate for, and protect, the public.

Brad Gair FEMA WTC Federal Recovery Office (646) 746-1888 (office) (917) 842-7947 (cell)

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