NYC-WTC_000195741

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

hazardous materials were indeed detected by EPA tests. In fact, the documents show that the EPA used a much more sensitive “TEM” method for settled dust sampling which found a “positive” result for hazardous materials, despite Ms. Whitman’s enclosures in Ae Nadler letter that said it had used the “PLKT’ method. According to Ms. Jenkins, this Ingh sensitivity transmission electron microcopy or TEM method for dust sampling was used nowhere else in Lower Manhattan, and “but for the results from the more sensitive tests, Region 2 would not have abated asbestos from its building.” That “abatement,” according to Jenkins, included, but was not limited to, HEPA vacuuming and an evacuation for some period of time.’^'* This is, indeed, in stark contrast to the DOH . cleanup guidelines that EPA officials directed Lower Manhattan residents to follow: i.e., wetrag or mon.

Either the testing and cleanup measures used at the EPA office were necessary to protect its workers, or the EPA wasted tax-payer dollars on an unnecessary cleanup. If such sensitive testing is used in EPA’s own building, why not in the rest of downtown Manhattan?

The EPA is also treating New York City differently than it has treated many hazardous contamination sites around the country. While the EPA has stated it lacks jurisdiction to test for and remediate hazardous materials in private space in lower Manhattan, it has acted on indoor air in locales without Superfund designation in numerous places such as Herculaneum, Missouri; Kellog, Idaho; and MacFarland, California

Furthermore, in Libby, Montana (a town only recently designated a Superfund site) Administrator Whitman told residents at a September 7, 2001 town hall meeting that, “It has never [emphasis added] been our plan to look to you to pay for any part of this clean-up, including the clean-up of residential properties.” *2° As previously discussed, Dr. Cate Jenkins has asserted that the levels of asbestos in lower Manhattan are comparable or in excess of those found in Libby, Montana.Why, then, are the residents of lower Manhattan, who were victims of the worst terrorist attack in American history, not receiving similar assurances from the EPA? How can the EPA continue to deny that it has jurisdiction for indoor environments when only four days before 9/11, Administrator Whitman asserted that very jurisdiction?

Jenkins, Cate (Ph.D., Environmental Scientist, Waste Identification Branch, HWID, Office of Solid Waste, U.S. EPA), “3/6/02 Draft: Asbestos in Settled Dust and Soils,” March 6, 2002. See also Jenkins, Cate, (Ph.D., Environmental Scientist WIB, HWID, Office of Solid Waste, U.S. EPA) "Memorandum, Subject: Status of Air and Dust Asbestos Testing After WTC Collapse, March 11,2002."

'^’Martin, Robert J. (National Ombudsman, U.S.EPA) “Testimony before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, and Climate Change,” February 11,2002. '2* Whitman, Christine Todd, EPA Administrator, “Remarks of Governor Christine Todd Whitman, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, at a Town Hall Meeting,” Libby, Montana, ^tember?, 2001. ** Jenkins, Cate (Ph.D., Environmental Scientist WIB, HWID, Office of Solid Waste, U.S. EPA) “Memorandum, Subject: Preliminary Assessment, January 11,2002.”

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