WTC contractors press release draft, September 2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

O'U.S. Environmental Protection Agency • Region 2 New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico and the U.S, Virgin islands 290 Broadway - New York, New York 10007-1866 www.epa.gov/region2

Contact: Mary Mears 212-637-3669

City Awards Contracts for EPA’s Downtown Residential Dust Cleanup Program

FOR REL£AS£:Thursday, September 12,2002

(#02: L) New York, N.Y. - The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has awarded 8 contracts for the downtown WTC indoor cleanup program, to be managed by EPA. Two contractors, one project monitoring contractor and one cleanup contractor, will work in each of four quadrants of the eligible cleanup area. These quadrants were drawn with the goal of having each contractor handle an equivalent number of requests (see map of quadrants attached or on EPA’s Web www.epa.gov/wtc). The monitoring contractors will be in charge of scheduling cleanups and testing, doing a pre-cleanup walk-through to gather information and answer questions, monitor the work of the cleanup contractor and conduct all sampling. This sampling includes post-cleanup sampling, wipe samples taken in a subset of homes and sampling in homes where only testing was requested.

As of September 10,2002, more than 4,i residents of lower Manhattan have signed up to have their homes tested, or cleaned and tested, under EPA’s Residential Dust Cleanup Assistance Program. In May, EPA and its federal, state and city partners announced a comprehensive plan to ensure that apartments impacted by the collapse of the World Trade Center have been properly cleaned. The plan — covering residential units south of Canal Street, Pike and Allen Streets, river to river - was developed in consultation with the multi-agency Task Force on Indoor Air in Lower Manhattan created by EPA Administrator Christie Whitman. A hotline to register residents for the cleanup program was launched in June. EPA has already begun testing homes for asbestos in air, and contractors that will conduct the full cleaning and testing program are in place and have begun scheduling cleanups.

The 8 contractors and contact information, listed by quadrant, are as follows:

Quadrant A Quadrant C Monitoring - ATC Associates Monitoring - Warren & Panzer Cleanup - Trio Asbestos Cleanup - Kiss Construction, Inc.

Quadrant B Quadrant D Monitoring - Cole Consulting Monitoring - Athenica Environmental Services Cleanup - JBH Environmental Cleanup - Terrmon Construction, Inc.

Contractors will have identification will give the resident the confirmation number that the resident was given when they signed up. If residents suspect that a company may be fraudulently posing as a contractor for the cleanup program, they should call EPA’s Inspector General office at 212-637-3036. For more information about the cleanup program, visit EPA’s WTC Web site (www/epa/govAvtc) or call EPA's WTC Hotline at 1- 877-796-5471 or, for the deaf and hard of hearing, TTY 1-800-396-1018.

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