The 40-story tower, which faces the World Trade Center site, must be razed to make room for an $11 billion office tower, memorial and transit hub under plans by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., a New York state agency overseeing Ground Zero redevelopment.
Proposals to strip the tower of its internal materials behind double plastic sheeting, to contain contaminants, must be bolstered to prevent ``an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and the environment,'' Pat Evangelista, the EPA's World Trade Center coordinator, said in a letter today to the development agency.
"It is evident that there is significant potential for releases of contamination,'' the letter said.
The EPA decision won't affect the 2009 completion of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower and a Sept. 11 memorial, redevelopment agency spokeswoman Joanna Rose said in an interview. The agency had told lower Manhattan residents that it expected demolition to start this month.
"We're working with all the regulatory agencies, and as soon as we have an approved plan, we will move forward with the deconstruction,'' Rose said. A response to the EPA should be ready in "a few weeks,'' she said.
15-Story Gash
The tower, once the headquarters of Bankers Trust Corp., suffered a 15-story gash across its front facade when girders fell from the trade center's collapsing south tower. The opening exposed the interior to a blast of toxic dust, which investigators found laden with asbestos, lead, dioxin and other hazardous substances, and rain that introduced mold and bacterial contamination.
The development agency's plan for separate air monitoring procedures for the cleanup of the interior and the stripping of building materials from the skeleton was unacceptable, the EPA said. It called for the monitoring plans to be merged and resubmitted for review.
The EPA said the development agency must tighten its sampling of particulates, such as dust, to as small as 2.5 microns. A human hair is 70 microns in diameter, according to Mary Mears, an EPA spokeswoman. The agency must also monitor for mercury, a poisonous metal, in addition to scans for asbestos and other toxic metals, the EPA said.
Recommendations
The EPA also directed the development agency to expand its air testing sites to include nearby Battery Park City, a neighborhood of high-rise apartments next to the World Financial Center, plus schools at Chambers and West streets, and shopping areas east and south of the site.
Evangelista, in an interview, said the development agency's consultant, TRC Solutions, is working on plans that incorporate the EPA's concerns.
I don't think we're looking at major surgery or small refinements,'' he said. ``I think it's somewhere in between.''
David Newman of the labor-backed New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, who has criticized the EPA over Ground Zero issues, praised the government's decision.
"This is not tinkering around the edges,'' he said. "This goes to the essence of the plans.''
The development corporation bought the tower from Deutsche Bank AG in August for $90 million and at the same time took over a $45 million contract to demolish it.
Timeline
New York Governor George Pataki has said construction of the Freedom Tower and the Sept. 11 memorial would be completed by 2009, and the site would be fully restored by 2015. Pataki has said he considers redevelopment of the World Trade Center site the key to downtown's economic future.
Neighborhood residents, as well as environmental and occupational safety advocates, have pressed regulators for stronger emissions monitoring and to set up a warning system in case a work accident released toxins into the vicinity. There are residential buildings across two narrow side streets from the tower.
Caught in the Smoke Employees, Residents Cope With 9/11 Fallout, by Michelle Chen, The NewStandard.com, January 31, 2005
http//newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1423
Part Two of a Three-Part SeriesOn the eve of a renewed push for a government response to the health and economic needs of 9/11's heroes and the victims of its poisonous aftermath, experts and activists explain why so many feel frustrated and abandoned.
New York City , Jan 31 -
Today, like the eerie pit marking the former site of the Twin Towers, the environmental imprint of the collapse still haunts the surrounding communities -- and, many say, continues to threaten their health.Three years after the initial impact, advocates remain determined not to let the issue fade from public view under the second Bush administration. On Tuesday, a citywide coalition of health, environmental, community and labor organizations, including the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and the New York State Public Employees Federation, will head to Washington, DC to attend the President's State of the Union address and demand that the White House and Congress finally act on the public health needs of the "Ground Zero Community." The mission is the latest marker in a protracted struggle between government authorities and concerned residents and workers.
Rushing into the Aftermath
In the panic that enveloped the city after September 11, 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moved swiftly to reopen lower Manhattan's financial district. But when a strange affliction began to sweep through the community, people questioned whether Washington's eagerness to revive downtown Manhattan came at the expense of public safety.
Since then, official probes into the health dangers posed by the collapse, along with reports from local communities and the press, have revealed that people were encouraged to return to the area before the contamination had been thoroughly cleaned or even assessed.
Just after the disaster, even though only limited environmental testing had been conducted, the EPA issued public safety reassurances about air quality. On September 21, then-EPA Chair Christine Todd Whitman, with the backing of the city government, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Federal Emergency and Management Agency, declared, "New Yorkers and New Jerseyans need not be concerned about environmental issues as they return to their homes and workplaces."
Two years later, an investigative report of the EPA Inspector General's office charged that the White House Council on Environmental Quality intervened in the EPA's outreach effort and edited the language of public safety statements to downplay the dangers of contamination.
Responding to the Inspector General's comments, EPA Acting Administrator Marianne Horinko wrote that the EPA's statements about the supposed safety of the air were necessitated by public pressure "The public sometimes wants information that is not scientifically available, or is not available quickly."
Critics observe that the government's response to another urgent matter was evidently more rapid just one week after a national catastrophe of unprecedented scale, the New York Stock Exchange was back in businesses.
Caught in the Smoke Screen
Mavis Gordon, who was on her way to class at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) when the Towers crumbled to dust just a few blocks away, wishes the EPA had offered the truth rather than what critics say were deceptive reassurances.
Nowadays, the 49 year-old does not need to knock when she returns at night to her Brooklyn apartment. Her son, she said, knows when to open the door because he recognizes his mother's footsteps over the past two years, her once-easy ascent has acquired a pained, belabored rhythm.
Gordon said she often finds herself struggling to breathe and is easily exhausted "Whenever I go outside, I cannot walk … half a block; I'm out of breath." She has trouble sleeping at night because she wakes up coughing and wheezing. "It's really horrible," she said, "and it just continues."
Since Gordon was evacuated from the campus that morning, her transformation has been both physical and psychological. She abandoned her coursework in human services at the end of the semester because the trauma had left her too disoriented to concentrate on her studies. Over the next few months, she said, her respiratory health began to deteriorate steadily, and by the middle of 2002, she had developed a persistent, inexplicable cough.
Now, she relies every day on a rescue inhaler whenever her lungs start acting up. Her doctor has tried unsuccessfully to diagnose her for two years, suspecting allergies and then heart trouble. She alerted her doctor after watching a news report on World Trade Center-related sickness, and now awaits the results of a new set of tests.
The cause of her health problems, Gordon now believes, is simply that "I breathed in the air that day … and I breathed [it] when I went back to school." Though she noticed the change in air quality, she said, she believed the official safety messages. She recalled, "The government said that the air was clean. … If I knew that it wasn't clean, I wouldn't have gone back to school."
Robert Gulack, a 51-year-old attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), was one of the thousands of area employees who streamed into lower Manhattan shortly after it was deemed safe again. On October 17, 2001, he entered the new SEC regional office in the Woolworth Building, overlooking Ground Zero. Though Gulack had never experienced breathing problems, after two days in the new space, his lungs began seizing up.
Doctors have since diagnosed Gulack with Reactive Airway Disorder, for which he takes several asthma medications. He has repeatedly battled bronchitis and pneumonia and suffered permanent lung damage.
"In my life, I have never had this kind of continuous asthmatic condition," said Gulack. He stressed that his symptoms worsened significantly when he was in the office. In 2003, the SEC administration allowed him to work at home three days a week, but when the arrangement was terminated later that year, he fell ill again upon returning to his office. He has stayed home on workers' compensation benefits since early 2003.
Gulack is convinced it was not the collapse itself that caused these problems. On September 11, he noted, after being evacuated from his workplace in 7 World Trade Center, he says he avoided exposing himself to the smoke plume by walking opposite the direction of the wind. Gulack claimed he "wasn't exposed to anything on September 11 or during the month that followed," when he worked from home in New Jersey.
The source of his asthma, he said, is dust from Ground Zero trapped inside the Woolworth Building -- circulating through the central ventilation system and open spaces, and settling in the offices. Scientists have determined that the extreme alkalinity of the dust -- in combination with other contaminants -- probably caused the airway burning and irritation Gulack and many of his co-workers experienced when they began working in the space.
In addition to the immediate effects of the dust, the threat of airborne asbestos has also surfaced. Tests commissioned by SEC management in 2001 and 2002 detected extremely high levels of asbestos, a long-term, carcinogenic contaminant, both inside and on the exterior of the building. The management eventually had the six floors it leased professionally cleaned. But since other floors were not treated, said Gulack, recontamination was inevitable as people circulated between floors and as asbestos caking the building's exterior blew in through the windows.
Both the landlord and the SEC, said Gulack, have repeatedly ignored employees' demands for a building-wide clean-up, even though in January 2003, independent testing on the elevators and air systems, specially sponsored by the employee union, uncovered asbestos concentrations of up to 850 times the laboratory-defined "clean" level.
Since then, Gulack, a union steward, has campaigned on behalf of employees for thorough testing and cleaning of not only his workplace, but of all potentially contaminated buildings in surrounding areas.
"We are not soldiers," he said. "We did not volunteer to risk our lives. … And we're supposed to have -- according to the federal law -- a clean, safe worksite."
Science Breaks the Silence on Ground Zero Illnesses
The dimensions of the pollution's long-term impact on community members are just beginning to take shape through public health investigations, which indicate that the worst effects may have yet to emerge.
In a survey of respiratory health patterns in residents living near Ground Zero, conducted by the New York University Medical Center in mid-2002, over half of 2,520 respondents reported experiencing at least one new respiratory symptom, such as coughing or wheezing, compared to only one-fifth of an unexposed control group. Over 25 percent said they were still experiencing "persistent" symptoms until the time of the survey -- three times the rate in the control group. High rates of post-9/11 respiratory and mental health symptoms were also found in the preliminary results from the World Trade Center Health Registry, a less formal, government-sponsored survey of over 70,000 people exposed to Ground Zero dust.
Studies on younger exposed populations suggest that the adverse health effects may extend well into the next generation.
A study by the State University of New York at Stonybrook on pediatric asthma among Chinese American children in Chinatown, just blocks from Ground Zero, found that cases of asthma, along with asthma-related clinic visits and prescriptions, increased significantly in the year after September 11. The number of children with asthma in the area increased 66 percent, while the number in a control group actually decreased by 11 percent.
New York City's Mount Sinai Medical Center examined the effects of contamination on pregnant women and discovered that while there was no significant discrepancy in birth weights, mothers who were at or near Ground Zero on September 11 were twice as likely as unexposed mothers to have babies with low weight for their gestational age -- potential evidence of restricted growth due to exposure to carcinogenic chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The collapse released an estimated 100 to 1,000 tons of PAHs. Follow-up studies on these mothers will determine what impact the contaminants might have on the physical and mental development of the babies.
Philip Alcabes, an epidemiologist at Hunter College who served on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the World Trade Center Health Registry, thinks the work of parsing the health issues emerging from Ground Zero has barely begun. "It's impossible to say ten years down the road what's going to turn out to be the most important health consequence," he said.
Activists Say Politics and Money Hold Public Health Hostage
Activists contend that the EPA -- not private businesses, workers or community members -- must assume responsibility for dealing with Ground Zero contamination and consequent health issues.
The dilemma, said Robert Gulack, "is that individual landlords have a financial interest in minimizing the problem," and "employers have a vested interest in keeping everything quiet, so that employees will be productive and not frightened." A brewing public health crisis, he argued, must be resolved through public institutions.
While mounting scientific evidence has shed light on the magnitude of the quandary, it has not-yet stimulated policy solutions. An investigative report by the national environmental group Sierra Club noted that despite the federal government's "compelling duty to respond to the adverse health effects of the WTC pollution," no special health treatment resources exist for local residents and employees, or for clean-up workers and volunteers who did not meet the rigid criteria for a federal Victim Compensation Fund award.
Labor representatives like Jimmy Willis of the Transport Workers Union, who advocates on 9/11-related health issues, argue that the government's economic priorities have consistently trumped public health concerns.
"Everything that has gone wrong with this process from day one … all comes down to one thing money," said Willis, specifically citing rejection of pension claims for emergency responders, conflicts over workers' compensation, and medical care burdens as the bureaucratic hazards stemming from Ground Zero's ecological fallout. "Follow the money, and you'll find out where the problem is."
Community and labor advocates claim that since conventional health institutions like private insurance and workers' compensation have proven inadequate for addressing the health effects of the September 11 attacks, the government must launch special public programs to provide compensation and redress. But three years on, both public and private resources for 9/11-related medical assistance are drying up faster than public concerns are dissipating.
Some members of Congress are working to move money out of federal coffers into the hands of workers and residents. Last March, Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney (D-New York) and Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut) proposed the Remember 9/11 Bill, which would fund medical monitoring and treatment of all residents and workers affected by the disaster, coordinated by a special federal authority.
The bill was stalled in Congress last year, but Maloney has moved to reintroduce it in 2005. She told TNS, "The shockingly high levels of respiratory illness and other emerging sickness" among people made ill by Ground Zero "constitutes a national health emergency, but so far the federal response has been tragically inadequate."
Still, past experiences campaigning for federal assistance have left activists pessimistic. In 2002, the White House used a line-item veto to block Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-New York) $90 million proposal to support the health monitoring of rescue and recovery workers. In approving the budget bill, the president refused to include the health initiative in a "national emergency" funding package.
Though current federal funding for the major health monitoring programs -- mostly through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health -- will last until 2009, the work will probably require more sustained support. At a 2004 congressional hearing on 9/11-related health issues, Dr. Steven Levin, co-director of Mount Sinai's WTC Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program, testified, "This group of responders has to be followed for at least another 20-plus years, since [related] cancers most often occur 20 or more years after the onset of exposure."
The American Red Cross, through a private donation pool known as the Liberty Fund, has supported a number of community-based programs for Ground Zero-related health issues, including limited medical insurance subsidies and a $1.5 million grant to Mount Sinai for a treatment program serving about 1,300 workers screened by the hospital.
Nevertheless, Dr. Robin Herbert, co-director of the screening program, told members of Congress, "philanthropic funding simply cannot provide all the resources necessary to provide care to all who need it," noting that patients seeking treatment must wait two to three months just to see a doctor. She added that 40 percent of the first 350 patients treated were uninsured, and one-third unemployed. Current funds for the treatment program, which receives no federal support, will run out in the middle of this year.
There are signs that the severely ill are so burdened with medical costs that they have difficulty covering basic living expenses. This winter, the nonprofit New York Disaster Interfaith Services established a program to provide food and clothing vouchers to recovery workers struggling with health care costs.
Labor and community advocates have also criticized the distribution of federal funds, arguing that the $20 million WTC Health Registry project, basically a large-scale phone questionnaire, merely saps funds that could be spent on more in-depth scientific studies or treatment programs.
Israel Miranda, health and safety coordinator for the local EMT and paramedics union, expressed impatience with programs that treat workers as research subjects but not people in need "We were monitored after 9/11, and they want to continue monitoring us for years and years to come. … But what are they doing aggressively to treat the people and get these toxins out of these people's bodies? They're not doing much."
"The public just hasn't grasped onto it yet," reflected Willis of the Transport Workers Union. The Bush administration, he fears, will continue burying the issue of Ground Zero contamination until it develops into a full-blown crisis.
The people who will be most deeply affected, Willis predicts, are
not organized workers like those in his union, but ordinary people in communities with
fewer legal and political resources "Maybe it'll start resonating with the rest of
the country when … the first- or second-graders that were down there start getting
sick with long-term illness in a few years. I don't think I'm painting a bleak picture; I
think it's going to happen."
UM
study links Libby asbestos, immune disease risks, by Mea
Andrews, the Missoulian, Jauary 31, 2005
http//www.missoulian.com/articles/2005/01/31/news/local/news02.txt
University of Montana researchers have documented a link between asbestos and the red flags for autoimmune diseases that the human body sends out, a study of interest to Libby residents and people with such diseases as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.
The study looked at blood samples from 50 residents of Libby - a town contaminated by decades of vermiculite mining and asbestos - and compared them to samples from a control group, matched by age and sex, of 50 people living in Missoula.
What the study found, said UM researcher Jean Pfau, is that the Libby residents were much more likely to have certain proteins in their blood - autoantibodies known as antinuclear antibodies, or ANAs - that the body mistakenly sends out and which attack tissues, organs and cells.
Those antinuclear antibodies occurred 28.6 percent more frequently in the Libby group than in the Missoula group, said Pfau, a researcher with UM's Center for Environmental Health Sciences.
It is one step toward understanding the role that environmental exposures may play in triggering autoimmune diseases such as the joint-attacking rheumatoid arthritis, the skin-and-connective-tissue disease scleroderma, and lupus, which can affect the whole body, from skin to organs to joints.
Does this mean more bad news for Libby?
It could mean that Libby residents' long exposure to asbestos may, in some people, trigger diseases in which the immune system makes a mistake and begins attacking itself.
More study is needed to be certain, Pfau said.
For Libby residents, the more information available, the better. Understanding potential problems means that people can begin treating and managing illnesses earlier, slowing or stopping the progression, Pfau noted.
UM's study is small, but researchers intend to embark on a larger-scale study to determine whether higher ANA levels translate into actual autoimmune diseases.
Libby residents sense they have a higher incidence of such diseases, but that needs to be studied and documented, Pfau said.
A registry of Libby residents collected years ago includes more than 7,000 people, about 500 of whom said they've been diagnosed with autoimmune diseases.
UM is applying for grants from the National Institutes of Health to follow up with those residents. Results could take four or five years to publish, Pfau said.
UM's findings for this first study are printed in the January 2005 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.
The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association called the UM study promising. Heredity aspects of autoimmune diseases are well-known, but environmental triggers are less understood, according to the association.
Copyright © 2005 Missoulian
Verizon Seeks Coordination of Downtown Street Work, by David W. Dunlap, January 30, 2005
http//www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/nyregion/30rebuild.html?oref=login
Verizon has warned public officials that telephone service downtown and the development timetable at the World Trade Center site may be in jeopardy unless government agencies better coordinate rebuilding efforts.
"There is a significant risk that the restoration projects planned for Lower Manhattan may be delayed and that telecommunications services, including emergency E-911 services to Lower Manhattan, may be again disrupted," said Stephen Lefkowitz of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, lawyers for Verizon, at a hearing on Wednesday before the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. (E-911 refers to the enhanced 911 system.)
He said a coordinated approach to tearing up and replacing streets was needed. "This is a request that Verizon has made for several years that still does not seem to have been acted upon," Mr. Lefkowitz added.
At stake, he said, was service to about 150 buildings from the Battery to the civic center. A map provided by Verizon of the 37-block area shows that it would include the Federal Reserve Bank, the American Stock Exchange, the Bank of New York headquarters, 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, 1 Liberty Plaza and Trinity Church.
One of the greatest difficulties, Mr. Lefkowitz said, was not knowing whether a bypass tunnel for through traffic would be built by the State Department of Transportation along West Street-Route 9A, nor where the tunnel would begin or end.
It was the second time this week that an influential business interest took to the microphone at a public forum to urge better coordination of rebuilding efforts.
On Monday, Jennifer Hensley, an assistant vice president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, called for the appointment of an executive director for the newly created Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, which she said was "at risk of becoming obsolete before it is even operational."
The appearances were striking because businesses typically try to settle problems with public agencies behind closed doors. And both Verizon and the Downtown Alliance have voices at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Paul A. Crotty, Verizon's group president for New York and Connecticut, sits on the corporation board, as does Carl Weisbrod, president of the Downtown Alliance.
Responding to the statements, Lynn Rasic, a spokeswoman for Gov. George E. Pataki, said in an e-mail message "The governor has always considered it a priority to coordinate the public and private sector on all projects. We expect to name a Construction Command Center executive director in the very near future who will lead our coordination efforts and limit disruption for the Lower Manhattan community. In the meantime, coordination amongst the agencies is already taking place."
As to West Street-Route 9A, Ms. Rasic said "The governor directed D.O.T. to explore alternatives that will protect the sanctity of the memorial and satisfy the safety needs of the surrounding community. D.O.T. is currently evaluating these alternatives and completing the environmental review."
John Bonomo, a spokesman for Verizon, said in an e-mail message that the company "in no way wishes to disrupt or impede" the trade center redevelopment.
Verizon's public criticism was occasioned by a hearing on the state's plan to acquire, by condemnation, most of a small city block south of the trade center site, bounded by Liberty, West, Cedar and Washington Streets. The property is owned by the Milstein family; no one from the family testified at the hearing on Wednesday.
The block would be used for the ramps leading from street level to the underground roadway system beneath the new trade center. Above the ramps would be a landscaped berm or hillock serving as the western half of a new park extending to Greenwich Street. A new foundation wall would be constructed south of Liberty Street.
Verizon said that this plan would require it to move its Liberty Street network of cables and conduits. This would take two years and could not begin until a new underground route is approved, Verizon said. In turn, the trade center redevelopment south of Liberty Street could not be completed until Verizon's cables and conduits are moved.
Complicating matters is that moving the Liberty Street network depends in part on the West Street-Route 9A project. Verizon estimated it would have to spend about $50 million, and even more if it must also move the network under Route 9A.
The company asked that permanent - and inalterable - new routes be approved for its underground infrastructure and that it be reimbursed for the work.
Verizon is simultaneously discussing with city officials a plan to move its headquarters from 1095 Avenue of the Americas, at 42nd Street, to 140 West Street, a landmark building across Vesey Street from the trade center site.
D. Joy Faber, a spokeswoman for Consolidated Edison, which has also been rebuilding its underground network in Lower Manhattan, said, "To date, we do not have the same concerns" as those expressed by Verizon.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http//www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/275450p-235887c.html
Despite the toxic plume that blanketed Brooklyn after the Sept. 11 attacks, the borough is not included in a federal plan to clean up contaminated debris.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency's plan will first test downtown Manhattan homes and offices for asbestos, silica, lead and other toxins, an EPA official said.
"The EPA fully recognizes some people would like us to go to Brooklyn now, but it's really just a practical matter of, 'We had to start somewhere,'" the official said, adding Brooklyn may be included in a later cleanup.
Critics said Brooklyn should be in the first round of voluntary cleanups, expected to start in Manhattan as early as June.
"It's essential to investigate the possibility of remaining contamination in Brooklyn," said David Newman, an environmental scientist on a World Trade Center community advisory panel.
"It's just as probable that contaminants found their way to Brooklyn as it has to parts of lower Manhattan."
Satellite photos taken after the attacks showed a murky cloud crossing the East River to downtown Brooklyn, he said.
In November, the EPA released a draft of its extended cleanup plan, which would include Manhattan up to Houston St. In 2002, the EPA cleaned 4000 apartments in Battery Park City and Tribeca.
Under pressure from the panel, the EPA has now agreed to the expanded Manhattan cleanup - but so far not in Brooklyn.
"Everyone in Brooklyn knows since Sept. 11 that the cloud of debris and toxins went directly over Brooklyn, and the health impact in Brooklyn is just as great as in Manhattan," said Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights).
Rep. Major Owens blasted the EPA for ignoring the possible 9/11 contamination of Brooklyn residents "because they have the wrong zip code."
If toxins are found in Manhattan, then the cleanup will be expanded to Brooklyn, the EPA official insisted.
But officials from the panel were concerned that the EPA would never reach the second phase.
"It's taken so long to get to where we are today, who knows if phase two will ever happen," asked Catherine Hughes, a member of the WTC community panel.
The community advisory report also advised that the EPA widen the contaminant list to include mercury and dioxin and give guarantees that the federal government will pay for the costly cleanup.
All contents © 2005 Daily News, L.P.
Choking Downtown, by Steve Cuozzo, New York Post, January 28, 2004
http//www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/38917.htm
GOV. Pataki has again lost his footing on Downtown Rather than pushing for the progress needed at Ground Zero, he seems intent on digging up West Street to build a worse-than-pointless auto tunnel.Pataki's best moment on rebuilding came in April 2003, when he set out a firm timetable for Ground Zero and took steps to improve Downtown's abominable street and sidewalk conditions at once.
However belated, Pataki's decisiveness rescued the area at least for a time from the anti-commercial, post-9/11 clamor for a dubious paradise of "24/7" uses, "moderate-income" housing and a 16-acre shrine to America's sins. But now, nearly two years later, all the progress shows signs of unraveling.
The speeches, slide-shows and endless televised press conferences should fool no one. Despite last summer's cornerstone-laying, significant issues of infrastructure, financing and engineering must be resolved before the Freedom Tower can rise. The New York Times reported yesterday that the tower's broadcast-antenna spire an integral part of the design unveiled a year ago might not work as positioned at the building's corner.
In fact, sources tell The Post, it will likely need to be centered if it is not to tear the tower's roof off. (The currently-planned-but-untenable off-center antenna is a vestige of Daniel Libeskind's original design a holdover included by Freedom Tower architect David Childs at Pataki's insistence.)
Until the problem is solved, Larry Silverstein can't build, no matter how much insurance money he has. Nor is there a hint of when work might start on the memorial. But until both projects are under way, no one will believe Ground Zero is going anywhere.
Consider, too, Pataki's failure to break the logjam over Fiterman Hall. With no agreement on a cleanup plan, the college building will remain a blackened hulk near Ground Zero on the fourth anniversary of 9/11.
Fixing or rebuilding Fiterman Hall will cost under $200 million peanuts for Downtown. Yet, while Pataki dawdles on it, he is putting his clout behind a billion-dollar scheme that has nothing to do with 9/11 the West Street tunnel, a dream come true for the forces still hoping to sabotage Downtown's recovery.
Supposedly meant to ensure the "sanctity" of the Ground Zero memorial, the project might well do what terrorists couldn't Chase business out of Downtown for good.
It guarantees years of traffic and transit paralysis plus a carnival of cost overruns. (For a taste of what's in store, ask any Bostonian about the "Big Dig," a highway project that ruptured their city, ran five years late and cost $10 billion more than its $2.6 billion estimate.)
Nor will the tunnel even deliver the promised insulation from vehicular traffic Cars will still buzz by the memorial on three sides on Liberty Street and on newly extended Greenwich and Fulton Streets.
Pataki's push for the project is doubly galling because, if the memorial is too close to West Street, he has only himself to blame. He chose the Libeskind master site plan, which shunted the memorial to Ground Zero's southwest quadrant.
In any event, if Pataki still insists on a buffer, one already exists the wide, unused, two-lane service road just outside Ground Zero's western boundary. It provides plenty of elbow room to insulate the memorial from traffic.
(Also up in the air where to place the tunnel's northern portal and the ensuing traffic havoc. At Vesey Street, plunking impassable incisions on the doorstep of Goldman Sachs' new headquarters? A few blocks north, placing them in front of planned new apartment towers? )
The MTA's new Fulton Street Transit Center the "Grand Central of Downtown" promises subway riders years of inconvenience far worse than any posed by the existing station's shortcomings. Yet that disruption may seem pleasant compared with the job (perhaps a decade long) of depressing six-lane West Street under a landscaped median.
It's hard to imagine how a tunnel could be built without closing West Street during construction or, at best, reducing traffic to a trickle. That means rerouting cars and trucks east onto Church Street and Broadway. Both, of course, are already likely to be snarled for years Church Street by construction of the new PATH terminal and Broadway by work on the Transit Center.
And has everyone forgotten that tunneling must also be done beneath Broadway and Church Street to link the PATH and transit centers underground, with unpredictable effects at street level?
We're told the tunnel will link Battery Park City with Ground Zero and the rest of Downtown. Where's the demand for that? Battery Park City's apartments are full, and the World Financial Center's commercial space, half-vacated after 9/11, is fast being re-absorbed.
So why is the tunnel scheme on the table? One interpretation is that certain powerful interests see windfall profits a boondoggle that will batten on labor payoffs, concrete-cost overruns and pork-barrel procurement.
Beware public-private influence-peddling of the sort epitomized by Alfonse D'Amato's infamous $500,000 phone call to expedite an MTA contract.
We may yet be spared. The state is also considering an option simply to retain and spruce up the West Street surface road for a mere $175 million. It isn't too late for Pataki to do the right thing and save us from a tunnel with no light at either end.
E-mail scuozzo@nypost.com
Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
A Towering Reminder, Oped, by Kevin M. Rampe, LMDC President, amNew York, January 28, 2005
http//www.nynewsday.com The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is currently undertaking a process to deconstruct the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street and remove this painful reminder of the 9/11 attacks.The removal of the shrouded Deutsche Bank building will replace the blight on downtown’s skyline with new open spaces for visitors, workers, and residents to enjoy.
LMDC’s foremost priority in this project is the health and safety of the community and the workforce.
A recent amNewYork article inaccurately stated some of the relevant facts surrounding the deconstruction. The LMDC cannot and will not move forward with the deconstruction until we have a final plan that has been approved by all the applicable regulators.
LMDC will comply with all applicable OSHA, NYS DOL asbestos regulations, EPA, NYC Department of Environmental Protection, and NYC Buildings Department, and otherwise applicable regulations. We will be consistently monitoring the surrounding air quality and we will do so in a transparent fashion.
As with all projects embarked on by the LMDC, we are conducting this process openly. All information about the project has been and will continue to be shared with the public and the regulatory agencies as it becomes available. This public engagement will continue until the deconstruction is completed.
Just over a year ago, lower Manhattan faced a future where this scarred building would become a permanent part of the downtown landscape. Seeking to remove this eyesore and environmental hazard, Gov. Pataki named Senator George Mitchell to mediate the dispute. Mitchell’s efforts resulted in the LMDC taking possession of the building on Aug. 31, 2004. We took immediate steps to undertake comprehensive environmental testing of the building. We formulated an advisory committee of residents, businesses, and elected officials, met with the community board and held public information sessions to share our testing results and solicit public comments on how to take this building down. We also set up an emergency hotline and a process for the public to reach out to us directly with individual questions.
We have developed a comprehensive website www.renewnyc.com/130liberty to post all of the information regarding the project, including background information, consultant and contractor bios, answers to frequently asked questions, all publicly released documents, and an online comment form with the opportunity for members of the public to sign up for regular e-mail updates regarding the project.
As the public agency charged with overseeing the revitalization of lower Manhattan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, we have no greater obligation than providing a safe environment for lower Manhattan residents, workers, and visitors and we will continue to take all means necessary to ensure we meet that obligation.
9/11 Cleanup Continues, by Julie Scelfo, MSNBC.com/Newsweek, January 27, 2005
http//www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6876370/site/newsweek/ As officials prepare to demolish some of the last buildings damaged on September 11, 2001, an environmental expert expresses concern about the impact on residents and workersWEB EXCLUSIVE
Jan. 27 - For New Yorkers living in lower Manhattan, the abandoned, black-shrouded 40-story building across from Ground Zero has for years been a reminder of how the collapsing twin towers emitted a vast blanket of environmental contamination that may still affect nearby residents and workers. On the morning of September 11, 2001, a falling section of 2 World Trade Center ripped open a 15-story hole in the Deutsche Bank Building, which allowed toxic dust and ashes to pour in. According to a damage report prepared for Deutsche Bank in 2003, asbestos, lead, mercury, dioxins and carcinogenic PCBs penetrated the building, snaking their way into interior stairwells, elevator shafts, wall cavities and ventilation systems. In the months that followed, mold also proliferated, contributing to what the report described as "a combination of contaminants … unparalleled in any other building designed for office use."
After a lengthy battle involving insurers and downtown-rebuilding officials, Deutsche Bank last year sold the building to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), which plans to begin demolishing the structure as soon as possible. Although business officials are eager to remove what many view as a tombstonelike reminder of 9/11, residents and visitors alike are concerned that the demolition will only add to the woes of the neighborhood, where hundreds of thousands of people work and live, including a legion of Wall Street employees who are vital to the nation's economy. To understand the environmental impact, NEWSWEEK’s Julie Scelfo spoke with Dave Newman, an industrial hygienist who coordinates the World Trade Center Health and Safety Project for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH). Excerpts
NEWSWEEK It’s been more than three years since the attack. Why is it taking so long to deal with the Deutsche Bank Building?
Dave Newman Actually, they’re about to take down three buildings the Deutsche Bank Building, which is now owned by the [LMDC], a building at 4 Albany Street that is still owned by Deutsche Bank and a building called Fiterman Hall, which is part of the Borough of Manhattan Community College. One reason it took so long to deal with them is that there are, and there have been, disputes as to the efficacy of cleaning them up versus taking them down. In all three of these cases, the buildings are heavily contaminated.
Would you be concerned about the demolition if you lived in lower Manhattan?
There are actually three populations I have concerns about one is residents in the area; two would be workers in the area, who are residents during the time of their workday, and third would be workers involved in the demolition process itself.
Why the demolition workers?
There are an array of contaminants including asbestos; lead; mercury and other heavy metals; PAH’s, which are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (combustion byproducts); silica; dioxinI guess those are the heavy hitters. The workers have the highest potential for exposure, and if they are exposed, they will be exposed in higher concentration than anyone else in the community. In some ways, [those] workers are the canaries for the community.
The demolition of any high-rise building in and of itself is a cause for concern because of the potential for unintended releaseswhich means anything that’s contained in the building can ultimately make its way outside if it’s not properly controlled. When you add to the mix the World Trade Center contamination … if I lived or worked downtown, I’d want to know this demolition is proceeding with the most stringent controls possible to prevent any emissions to the outside of potentially harmful substances.
Are you saying the demolitions are a bad idea?
No, the demolitions are manageable if they’re done right. My concern is not that they can’t be done, but that they be done right.
Who is overseeing them?
There are a variety of agencies involved at the state, local and federal level, including [New York City’s] Department of Buildings, New York City’s Department of Health and Department of Environmental Protection, the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], and OSHA [the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration]. As of yet, unfortunately, there’s no coordinated effort on the part of government agencies to oversee these demolitions on a proactive basis.
It seems like there's been a lack of leadership for dealing with most post-September 11 environmental concerns. Overall, we still don’t have a lot of clear answers about the extent of contamination or which agencies are in charge of cleaning it up.
I think the response after 9/11, while it was sincere and heroic and extensive, it was not coordinated between government agencies and not necessarily well thought out, although well intentioned. This kind of event was not really anticipated and as a result we had agencies either fighting over jurisdiction or fighting to avoid responsibility. The result was a vacuum of information.
Where do you think the leadership should have come from?
I don’t think there’s a lot that an individual resident or worker can do. I think the burden should be appropriately on government agencies like EPA, like OSHA, like the Department of Health, to be prepared to conduct an aggressive and transparent outreach effort so that people will be informed appropriately and honestly of what the health risks could be. They need to inform people about the appropriate way to deal with dust or debris in their apartments. That information was not conveyed at all, or when it was conveyed, it was conveyed incorrectly. The EPA should have taken responsibility as the lead agency for the entire post-September 11 cleanup. And again with these demolitions, they have an opportunity to assert clear leadership.
In 2002, the EPA began addressing indoor residential spaces. Now, the contaminated buildings are an issue. Are there still more environmental hazards that haven’t yet been dealt with?
We don’t know. There’s been no effort on the part of the EPA or the part of other government agencies to coordinate, centralize and evaluate their sampling results. That means we don’t have a good characterization of what was in the outdoor air. And because most of the indoor sampling and cleanup was done privately, we don’t have complete records of that either. So the best information or the most information that was available was in private hands, and there’s been no attempt to collect that.
What lessons have we learnedor should we have learnedin terms of being prepared for future disasters?
In a catastrophe, the first people on the scene and providing assistance may well be teachers, janitors, security guards, workers from an adjacent construction site. I think we have to expand the population of first responders and give people like this adequate training. [Another] lesson is that the response network and the regulatory framework that were in place [prior to 9/11] were inadequate to deal with catastrophes of this sort, and they still are. More attention needs to be paid to figuring out the chain of command, the coordination and the responsibility of government agencies [for dealing with disasters], even in the absence of specific regulations.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
New Research Report Urges Stop to Further 911 Fatalities, Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, January 27, 2005 http//biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050127/lath058_1.html SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Jan. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (MARF) today released an alarming research report on the effects of 911. The report concludes that over one hundred thousand individuals present in Manhattan during and immediately after the collapse of the Twin Towers are at risk to become future victims of the terrorist attack.
Using published private and government sources, MARF's report demonstrates that the air was heavily contaminated with asbestos after the collapse. It shows further that many local residents, rescue workers, and tower survivors were exposed to dangerously high doses of asbestos and are thus at risk for developing mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is an aggressive, usually-lethal cancer against which current standard treatments have little or no effect.
Evidence of the dangerously high asbestos levels was confirmed yesterday by the New York Times. The Times reported on the findings of environmental consultants involved with the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building on 130 Liberty Street, across the street from Ground Zero. In a comprehensive, detailed study requested by Deutsche Bank to document the extent of contamination in the building, the R.J. Lee Company in 2003 found extremely high levels of asbestos. This study, together with documents from the EPA and New York health authorities, clearly supports MARF's conclusion that thousands of 911 heroic rescue workers and other innocents are now at risk for developing mesothelioma in the next ten to 50 years.
MARF is therefore recommending that Congress take action now to prevent further suffering and death from the terrorists' despicable act. To spur development of effective mesothelioma treatments, MARF is calling on Congress to establish a National Mesothelioma Research and Treatment Program with funding of $28 million per year. MARF's Science Advisory Board and other experts believe that recent developments in experimental treatments and protocols demonstrate that with adequate funding, a cure for this cruel disease is within reach.
MARF's 911 research report is available for free at www.marf.org/911report.pdf
MARF is the national nonprofit organization whose mission is to eradicate mesothelioma as a life-ending disease. For more information, see www.marf.org or contact MARF Executive Director Chris Hahn, 805-560-8942, c-hahn@marf.org, or the report's author, MARF Communications Director Klaus Brauch, 714-969-1481, k-brauch@marf.org.
Finding may delay ground zero rebuilding,
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 26, 2005http//seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Attacks%20Redevelopment
NEW YORK -- High levels of asbestos, lead and other contaminants have been found in a vacant skyscraper badly damaged during the 2001 terror attacks, potentially complicating the rebuilding of ground zero.
A consultant to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. revealed the findings at a public hearing where neighbors, environmental advocates and union representatives talked about their concerns over plans to dismantle the 40-story Deutsche Bank building.
The consultant said concentrations of asbestos, lead and silica on the building's exterior and in elevator shafts, conduits and ductwork exceeded benchmarks set by the Environmental Protection Agency, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Critics of the plan fear the demolition will kick contaminants into the air and that workers inside the building would not be adequately protected.
"Workers are essentially, and unfortunately, the canaries for the community," said David M. Newman of the nonprofit New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.
Government permits are needed before the plan can proceed.
EPA officials say they are not opposed to the dismantling, but support steps to reduce the environmental impact.
The building is across the street from the trade center site. Falling debris from the attack tore a gash in its facade, allowing in water that contributed to a severe infestation of mold inside. Officials eventually decided it was easier to tear it down piece by piece and rebuild than to repair it.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Critics hit LMDC for lax Plan to deal with Deadly Dust, by Adam Hutton, AMNewYork, January 26, 2005
http//www.nynewsday.com/other/special/amny/ Rep. Jerrold Nadler yesterday called the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation "irresponsible" for the way it is handling the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building that filled with toxic World Trade Center dust on 9/11. New tests have found dangerous levels of contaminants in the building at 130 Liberty Street, including asbestos concentration 100 times greater than the threshold for health risks. Cleanup crews hired by the LMDC have found toxins in parts of the building that were not tested before. The demolition plan submitted by the corporation last month to the Environmental Protection Agency did not address dangerous chemicals such as asbestos, lead and dioxins that are still trapped in enclosed spaces, such as ventilation ducts and wiring shafts. The corporation released the results of the new tests at a public meeting Monday night attended by more than 100 local residents and environmental safety and health advocates. LMDC vice president Amy Peterson told the group that the plan would have to be adjusted to take the new information into account. But Peterson told amNewYork yesterday that the LMDC would not resubmit the modified plan to environmental and public safety agencies for approval. "That’s terribly irresponsible," Nadler, a Democrat, told amNewYork. "The LMDC should not be cutting corners by modifying the plan without resubmitting it. And the EPA should insist that they resubmit the plan based on all the information the LMDC has, otherwise the public can’t rely on the plan to keep them safe." Peterson said taking time to make the necessary changes to the plan should not be considered a delay, but rather the due course of developing a good plan. She said that although the corporation had hoped to begin tearing down the building this month, contractors won’t start the work until the EPA and other regulatory agencies make recommendations about how to improve the plan. That’s the way it should be, said Dr. Marc Wilkenfeld, of the Columbia University Medical Center’s Environmental Health and Safety Department "Nothing should happen until we have an iron-clad plan in place that will protect people’s health." Wilkenfeld, a sub-contractor to the LMDC on the project and a member of the EPA’s WTC Expert Technical Review Panel, told amNewYork "What we should shoot for is tearing down this building in a way that no worker or community resident is exposed to any contamination that even approaches dangerous levels." Peterson said that the LMDC has been applying "aggressive timelines" to the project to remove the 9/11 relic sooner rather than later. "This has been hanging over lower Manhattan for three years now," Peterson told amNewYork. "It’s time." But Dave Newman, a member of the EPA’s review panel, told amNewYork, "The LMDC has been too hasty in its push for demolition before it has an adequate and complete plan." Newman, an expert with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, said "the environmental sampling results shared with the public for the first time Monday indicate a need to amend the plan to take into account contamination in ventilation systems and other enclosed spaces, like those between interior and exterior walls." Residents afraid for their health criticized the corporation for not taking their concerns seriously enough. Others said the LMDC needed to improve its emergency action plan to ensure that all residents and workers in the area are notified if contaminants are released into the air. "The LMDC is in over its head," said Kimberly Flynn of 9/11 Environmental Action. "The public must be treated as a capable, reliable ally in the design phase of this project."http//www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/nyregion/26rebuild.html?pagewanted=all
At the Deutsche Bank building opposite ground zero, a new look at hard-to-reach spaces -shafts, ducts, conduits and upper elevations of the exterior - has confirmed the presence of high levels of asbestos, lead and other contaminants, a consultant to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation said Monday night.
The findings were disclosed at a public information session where neighbors, union representatives and environmental advocates expressed concerns about a plan to dismantle the 40-story bank building, which is at 130 Liberty Street and was badly damaged on Sept. 11, 2001.
Federal, state and city regulators have not yet responded to the plan, issued a month ago by the development corporation, which will need government permits before it can demolish the building. It is not clear when exactly that work will begin.
Critics said they worried that workers inside the building would not be sufficiently protected. "Workers are essentially, and unfortunately, the canaries for the community," said David M. Newman of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit coalition including labor unions.
Paul Stein of the New York State Public Employees Federation was one of several speakers who questioned the efficiency of the emergency warning system. "If you're not at your computer or phone, you may not get the information," he said, suggesting the need for sirens, Klaxons or loudspeakers around the demolition site.
Speakers also complained about the lack of coordination for demolition projects, including another Deutsche Bank building at 4 Albany Street. Jennifer Hensley of the Alliance for Downtown New York called on the governor and the mayor to name a leader for the new Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center.
"Without the timely appointment of an executive director," she said, "the command center is at risk of becoming obsolete before it is even operational."
The federal Environmental Protection Agency is concerned about the lack of information on air monitoring and contaminant levels in the building's interstices, said Mary Mears, chief of public outreach in the agency's regional office.
That is not to say the agency opposes the dismantling. "There are steps that can be taken to reduce the environmental impacts from taking this building down," Ms. Mears said.
She said the E.P.A. hoped to submit its comments with those of other agencies by the end of the month.
Development corporation officials said that the "deconstruction" - a term they use to emphasize the project's painstaking nature - would be done in a safe and environmentally responsible manner, and that the final version of the plan would reflect the concerns and comments of regulators and the public.
"People griping is better than people having no voice at all," said Kevin M. Rampe, president of the corporation. The Monday session drew about 60 people to St. John's University on Murray Street.
At the session, Edward Gerdts, a vice president at TRC, an environmental consultant to the corporation, discussed a detailed new study of the building, which the corporation acquired from Deutsche Bank in August for the purpose of razing it.
He compared contaminant levels with benchmarks set by the E.P.A., based either on the estimated levels of contaminants before the 9/11 attack or on health-based cleanup targets for residences. Though the benchmarks are not directly applicable to a commercial demolition project, Mr. Gerdts said, they do provide some context.
Average concentrations of asbestos, lead and silica on the exterior were found to exceed the benchmarks. Asbestos and lead exceeded the benchmarks in the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning ductwork; in elevator and pipe shafts; and in conduits through the floors.
Lead and silica exceeded the benchmarks in cavities behind the curtain wall. Silica exceeded the benchmarks in cavities between interior walls. Asbestos and silica exceeded the benchmarks in the fireproofing.
Generally, Mr. Gerdts said, contaminant levels were either consistent with or lower than those found in an earlier study of surface areas around the building.
A summary of the new study is available on the corporation's Web site, www.renewnyc.com.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Plan Unveiled To Demolish Deutsche Bank Building, NY1 News, January, 2005
http//www.ny1.com/ny/NY1ToGo/Story/index.html?topic=8&subctopic=203&contentintid=47529
The Deutsche Bank building adjacent to the World Trade Center site is still set to come down, but residents got another chance Monday to learn about the demolition and voice their concerns.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation presented its draft plan at St. Johns University.
The first phase will include cleaning and removing material from the inside the building, which was contaminated by the September 11 attacks. Some people are concerned about air quality when the building comes down and about who is accountable if something goes wrong.
"There’s nowhere in the entire emergency action plan or in the documentation that says we are the agency accountable to the community to make sure nothing happens, and if it does we will notify them, protect them and clean things up," said Lower Manhattan resident Kelly Colangelo.
Officials are awaiting review from regulatory agencies, including the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Deconstruction was originally set to start this month.
For more information, or to make a comment on the plan, go to the LMDC's website at www.renewnyc.com.
Copyright © 2005 NY1 News. All rights reserved.
Draft Pentagon Cleanup Policy May Boost Legislation For Environmental Exemptions, Inside EPA Environmental NewsStand, January 25, 2005
http//environmentalnewsstand.com/
Exclusive
The Defense Department has drafted its first policy for preventing munitions waste from polluting groundwater supplies outside training sites, in an apparent attempt to demonstrate a willingness to voluntarily meet federal and state cleanup standards to bolster a legislative plan for granting the military certain environmental exemptions.
The draft range assessment policy details a process the military services should follow to "prevent or respond to a release or substantial threat of a release" of munitions constituents that migrate off range, according to a copy of the draft policy obtained by Inside EPA's Defense Environment Alert.
If adopted, the policy would likely be signed by either DOD’s acquisition under secretary or the deputy defense secretary. Such instructions are generally considered to be the highest level of DOD policymaking.
The draft policy follows through on a plan touted by the military over the past year to show it can voluntarily respond to existing EPA and state requirements regarding contamination that migrates from operational ranges where training and readiness activities take place.
Military officials have touted the plan as a way to bolster a controversial legislative plan that would excuse military DOD arguments for eliminating state and EPA cleanup authority under RPPI. Under the legislation, which has failed to gain congressional approval over the past several but is expected to be reintroduced this year, military munitions that land on operational ranges would no longer be regulated as a "solid waste" under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act or as a "release" under Superfund law. DOD has said these exemptions would not apply to munitions that migrate off range.
But state officials have opposed the idea, arguing that such legislation would prevent regulators from requiring the military to construct source controls for on-range pollution that migrates off range. EPA last year unsuccessfully sought to convince DOD to include a provision in the legislative plan, known as the Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative (RRPI), that would have allowed EPA to conduct pollutant monitoring and sampling activities on operational ranges.
DOD’s deputy environment official is now seeking state input on the plan, providing the draft to a group of state environment commissioners late last month. "Our goal is for a collaborative effort on a variety of issues facing the military," DOD Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Environment, Safety and Occupational Health Alex Beehler says in a Dec. 22 letter to states about the draft policy.
Officials from DOD and the Environmental Council of States (ECOS) are expected to discuss the draft policy at a meeting Feb. 2-3.
The new draft policy calls on the services to develop plans to conduct operational range assessments to determine if releases of munitions constituents on operational ranges are causing unacceptable off-range impacts. It appears to task the services and other DOD components with determining whether such a release "poses an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment."
The draft policy gives the military services several options -- using Superfund law and existing DOD, Army Corps of Engineers, and EPA policy -- to determine how to respond to releases of munitions constituents that migrate off range. It augments an existing DOD policy directive that provided the services with some guidance on the issue (Defense Environment Alert, June 1, 2004, p3).
"Rather than develop our assessment tools from scratch, the Department chose to adopt the specific regulations and procedures already widely used and accepted by the regulatory community and industry," Beehler says in the letter to states.
The instruction’s purpose, according to the draft, is to aid DOD components in determining whether a release from an operational range to an off-range area has occurred, evaluating whether that release "poses an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment," and enhancing a component’s "ability to prevent or respond" to such releases.
If a release does pose an unacceptable risk, the draft policy directs the components to respond under existing law and policies, including Superfund law and the National Contingency Plan, DOD environmental restoration law, EPA guidance on the data quality objectives (DQO) process, DOD policy on explosives safety, Army Corps policy on ordnance and explosives and hazardous waste projects, and industry standards.
Further, it outlines general procedures, mainly based on the Army Corps’ Conceptual Site Model, to follow when developing a range assessment strategy. This process calls for identifying "munitions constituents of concern," such as RDX, HMX, TNT, perchlorate and other constituents, that may migrate in sufficient quantities off range. It calls for identifying and evaluating sources of these constituents and pathways and receptors. If a potential source-receptor interaction poses an unacceptable risk, "sampling, as dictated by the DQO Process, shall be conducted," it says. Sampling should follow methods approved by EPA, states, DOD or industry.
And it calls for re-evaluations of potential releases from ranges at least every five years.
Beehler’s decision to release the document prior to DOD finalization was unique, one informed source says, given DOD’s traditional practice of refusing input from outsiders until a policy is finalized. The move was controversial within the Pentagon and the services -- with traditionalists arguing for continuation of the "decide, act, defend" approach and more forward-leaning staff wanting to work with states, the source says.
One state source calls DOD’s effort to solicit state advice "a great first step in reaching out to environmental commissioners," but says it is still "up for discussion" how much early involvement states will really get in the policy.
© Inside Washington Publishers
1252005_cleanup
WASHINGTON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The chief sponsor of a bill to compensate asbestos victims said on Tuesday its introduction had been delayed for a week while senators discuss how to handle claims of injury by another mineral, silica.
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters the panel would hold a hearing Feb. 2 to try to establish medical criteria for silica claims.
Specter also said he hoped the committee could vote on another bill to change the rules on class action lawsuits the following day, Feb. 3. That bill would move most multi-state class action lawsuits into federal courts. Supporters say this would make it more difficult for plaintiffs to shop for a friendly state court forum.
Separately, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he hoped to bring the class action bill to the chamber's floor by the week of Feb. 7.
Specter had planned to introduce this week his proposal to take asbestos claims out of the courts and compensate them from a $140 billion privately-funded trust instead.
But he said the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Vermont's Sen. Patrick Leahy, asked him to delay while they worked on some of the language.
"We've got a problem on mixed dust," Specter said. "The issue is, if you have a trust fund to pay all people from asbestos, and then some of the cases are allegedly being repackaged as silica cases, it's not solving the problem."
They should work out medical criteria for injury caused by each mineral so as not to "compensate people twice," he said.
(c) Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
EPA-Backed Scientists Call For Overhaul Of Dust Sampling Plan For Ground Zero, Inside EPA Environmental NewsStand, January 24, 2005
http//environmentalnewsstand.com/
EPA's proposed testing plan for gauging indoor contamination from the Sept. 11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks has come under severe criticism by an expert advisory panel that the agency itself vetted, raising the prospect of a far more expensive cleanup or a protracted fight between EPA and New York community groups."The whole document was sloppily prepared [and] not really thought through, by people who didn't look like they knew what they were doing," one panel member tells Risk Policy Report. "EPA doesn't want to clean up every house, but we've got a special situation here, and there needs to be urgency."
In a Jan. 18 report, the panel -- which was convened by a network of community groups to help with its review of the test plan -- calls for wholesale changes, including an immediate cleanup that would encompass more territory and target more contaminants than EPA has proposed.
Submitted to EPA in response to the test plan, the report shows that "the EPA's proposed sampling program as it exists now is simply not scientifically strong enough to produce complete and valid information," says a representative of the network, the WTC Community-Labor Coalition. "These are not minor improvements," and the coalition is "prepared to do battle over the critical improvements recommended by our advisory team."
The members of the panel -- who include specialists in environmental health, toxicology, epidemiology, industrial hygiene, statistical analysis, chemistry, atmospheric transport and modeling -- were selected by WTC Community-Labor but approved by EPA's Office of Research and Development, and their review of the plan, which EPA released for comment in October, was funded through the agency's Community-Based Participatory Research process. "We got people with the academic credentials and who were well-published" in the relevant areas, one WTC Community-Labor member says.
Topping the list of the recommendations is for EPA to start sampling for contaminants and cleaning up immediately instead of postponing this work until it has developed a "signature," or a chemical formula that would identify dust contaminated by the 9/11 fires and building collapses. The test plan describes the signature as one of its "cornerstones," but the panel report suggests it may not be possible to devise a reliable one, since the fires and collapses are likely to exhibit different signatures at different distances, if they exhibit signatures at all.
"If there were a signature, that'd be wonderful," one panel member says. "But, frankly, we don't think there is one." The panel report stops short of explicitly recommending EPA give up altogether on searching for a signature, but it urges it to do so "indirectly," the member adds.
One WTC Community-Labor representative says there may in fact be some as-yet-unseen research value to looking for a signature but adds that the effort is needlessly delaying the cleanup. "This EPA proposal is a recipe for endless delay, while research drags on to identify WTC chemical signature that may not even exist."
Another panel recommendation is for EPA to expand the area it has proposed for the first phase of sampling and cleanup to include several neighborhoods in Brooklyn, as well as other neighborhoods where residents have exhibited respiratory ailments that could be traced to the attacks. The proposed sampling methods should also be changed in order to detect any dioxin traces, asbestos fibers of less than 5 microns in length and mercury particulate matter.
The panel goes on to urge EPA to reconsider and make more transparent its basis for choosing buildings to be tested and deciding when to test for certain contaminants, noting that it has not fully explained its criteria nor designed its methods to factor in the possible health risks from chemical mixtures. Unlike other agency testing programs, the plan lacks even a quality-control component, the panel also points out. "To not talk about quality control is just inappropriate and not in keeping with the way EPA has operated in the past," one panel member says.
The report, along with other comments on the test plan, will be reviewed by EPA and the World Trade Center Expert Technical Review Panel, a committee set up by EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality to monitor the cleanup process. Officials from the agency and the technical review panel are expected to meet late next month to consider the feedback.
http//newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1402
Part One of a Three-Part SeriesAfter EPA failed to warn the estimated 40,000 rescue and recovery workers who responded to the WTC tragedy on or after 9/11, thousands have fallen ill and hundreds encounter resistance to health care and compensation claims.
New York City , Jan 24 - More than three years have passed since the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001 -- but the dust has not yet settled. Thousands who worked or lived in the disaster area have reported health problems related to the attack, the potential long-term effects of the environmental contaminants from Ground Zero are unknown, and there is also evidence that contamination may still be lingering in the city's environment.
Downtown Manhattan has been slowly rebuilding itself since the disaster, but many still wonder how they can recover amid questions about the consequences of the contamination and whether the government has failed to confront the full impact of the event.
Since September 11, scientific investigations, media reports and advocacy campaigns have steadily yielded evidence that government-sponsored misinformation about environmental hazards fueled the chaos surrounding the collapse of the Twin Towers. Advocates argue that the government is still refusing to take responsibility for the public health dangers at Ground Zero. Now, countless disaster response workers suffer debilitating health problems and face legal and political barriers in seeking benefits through the public health system.
From the day of the collapse on, emergency responders, recovery workers and volunteers swarmed the smoldering disaster site. A total of 40,000 responders worked for months, digging through rubble and moving equipment to stabilize the 16-acre expanse of wreckage.
For Jimmy Willis, a former subway conductor and Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 representative, the collapse commenced a personal and physical struggle that has dogged him for over three years. On September 12, he rushed to the site to volunteer alongside thousands of fellow union members, who had been sent to the site by the city government. For about ten days, Willis and other transit workers helped clear out a towering six-story mass of rubble known as "the Pile," carving a path "five feet at a time" through a morass of concrete and bodies, with little or no respiratory protection.
Transit workers provided much of the manual labor at Ground Zero -- up to 60 percent of the entire workforce at one point, according to a study by the Congressionally-created Mineta Transportation Institute.
Accounts of Ground Zero workers and volunteers as well as environmentalistsn suggest that concerns about public health and safety at the site were eclipsed by the disaster's enormity. Watchdog groups like the Sierra Club, a national environmentalist organization, contend that in the initial emergency response, the Environmental Protection Agency and local authorities showed little concern for respiratory safety and that no government agency stepped forward to implement a coordinated safety program.
Health studies indicate that many if not most of the thousands laboring at Ground Zero received neither proper respiratory masks nor warnings about airborne hazards. A survey of exposed iron workers by New York's Mount Sinai Medical Center revealed that in the first week, 74 percent had only disposable dust masks or no protection at all. A survey by New York City Fire Department of 319 firefighters showed that on the day of the disaster, nearly 80 percent had similarly inadequate protection.
While more firefighters obtained proper respiratory gear over the next two weeks, about half said they wore it only rarely. According to environmental scientist Paul Lioy's report on the government's emergency response, Ground Zero workers -- lacking proper training and accurate official safety information -- had little incentive to wear the "uncomfortable and unmanageable" respiratory gear.
In national emergencies such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, federal law delegates the responsibility to implement worker health and safety regulations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA's first major response came on November 20, when it announced the WTC Emergency Project Partnership Agreement a coalition of city agencies, construction trade organizations, and private contractors, along with a 250-word plan for "a cooperative effort" to promote worker safety.
The initiative, say critics, failed to establish clear safety guidelines and was implemented only after workers had toiled virtually unprotected for weeks at what OSHA Administrator John Henshaw, in the partnership's press statement, called "potentially the most dangerous workplace in the United States."
Airborne Poison
Workers and volunteers quickly caught wind of a growing environmental disaster as Ground Zero responders and others in the area began to exhibit a set of concurrent, debilitating symptoms -- severe coughing, gastrointestinal reflux and sinus irritation -- that came to be known as "World Trade Center Cough."
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Fire Department of New York reported that within 48 hours of the collapse, 90 percent of firefighters experienced serious coughing. In early October, 73 percent of surveyed firefighters reported new or worsened respiratory problems, and within six months, the new ailment had forced 332 firefighters to take sick leave.
The main source of these symptoms, according to scientific analyses of Ground Zero dust, was a catastrophic plume of smoke that draped lower Manhattan and neighboring Brooklyn with hazardous pollution. The force of the collapse decimated an estimated 1.2 million tons of concrete, office equipment and other materials, including hundreds of tons of asbestos. Many contaminants that could cause both short-term and chronic damage or even cancer -- including glass particles, lead and toxic chemicals -- were scattered in the air. Burning debris at Ground Zero also continued to contaminate the air through December.
Activists argue that while the public health impact of the contamination has been observed and documented for over three years, government agencies have done little to investigate the long-term effects, and even less to provide public treatment resources.
Ongoing health studies show that for thousands, the effects of Ground Zero have lasted beyond the initial exposure. The World Trade Center Worker & Volunteer Medical Screening Program, administered by New York City's Mount Sinai Medical Center, has examined about 12,000 rescue workers and volunteers who served at Ground Zero. A September 2004 preliminary analysis of 1,183 subjects, with a median length of exposure of 966 hours, revealed that 74 percent reported upper respiratory problems, and two thirds of these reported "persistent" symptoms lasting to the month before the screening. Over half of the sample also reported psychological disturbance, including signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
A health monitoring and treatment program administered by the Fire Department reported that within eleven months of the collapse, the number of firefighters on leave for respiratory illnesses reached 1,876 -- five times the number in the preceding eleven months, while the number of "stress-related incidents" increased by over 1,200 in the same timeframe. Since 2002, reports the department, a total of 378 firefighters have retired explicitly due to respiratory problems, more than twice the total for 1999 to 2001. Overall retirements after the attacks more than doubled to 1,272.
Less is known about the informal clean-up workers exposed to Ground Zero, many of them immigrants haphazardly hired by landlords to clean apartment and office buildings in the area. Researchers with the City University of New York's World Trade Center Day Laborer Medical Monitoring Project reported that a large portion of over 400 private clean-up workers screened "did not speak English, did not have health insurance, and did not have training in working with hazardous materials." The vast majority, who worked for up to twelve weeks without proper protection, reported symptoms like breathing problems, dizziness and fatigue, which often persisted after exposure ended.
Stories of individual workers color in the ashen outlines of an obscured epidemic.
David Rapp, a construction worker who worked at Ground Zero for five months, told members of Congress in a 2003 hearing on the September 11-related health effects "I rely on oxygen to sleep at night … I've had a sore throat for fifteen months, when I cough I can feel the outlines of my lungs."
In an interview with The NewStandard, Michael Golding, a Brooklyn-based firefighter, said that in his firehouse, about ten percent of the staff has had to leave the job due to post-9/11 respiratory troubles. He said his house has earned the nickname, "The Cancer House" -- not only because of the ailing inhabitants, but because their fire truck harbored Ground Zero contaminants for months after returning from the disaster site. A city-contracted company had supposedly decontaminated the trucks, but residual dust caking the interior made Golding suspicious. Independent tests done on the vehicle, he said, revealed DNA, shards of glass and asbestos.
Aided by the nonprofit New York Environmental Law & Justice Project, Golding eventually successfully petitioned the Fire Department for a recleaning, and in September 2002, the department contracted a new company to clean 800 emergency response vehicles across the city in accordance with professional protocols. Although the firehouses that contained the contaminated vehicles were not systematically cleaned, leaving open another potential contamination source, the department has stated that future clean-up requests will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
While his truck finally has a clean bill of health one year after rushing to Ground Zero, Golding has not quite gotten back his peace of mind. His primary concern remains what he and his coworkers might already have breathed into their lungs. "I don't know what's going to happen to me five years from now," he said.
Perhaps more alarming than the apparent health effects of working at Ground Zero is the dearth of information on just how many workers were affected. TWU Director of Occupational Health Frank Goldsmith observed that "overall, workers tend not to complain… about physical, and especially the mental health conditions from any event like [the September 11 attacks]," possibly because they fear it might jeopardize their jobs.
Joel Kupferman, executive director of the New York Environmental Law & Justice Project, said that the city should actually have much more data than is currently available to the public, because physicians are required to report to the State Commissioner of Health every case of occupational lung disease they diagnose. Kupferman believes that, if the city's public health system complied with these regulations, health officials and researchers would immediately have been able to launch a citywide health monitoring program. "If they followed the law," he argued, "they'd know every sick worker that was there."
The Battle for Compensation
Labor unions began bracing themselves for a potential worker health crisis soon after the collapse. Jimmy Willis took on the role of assistant to TWU's president to coordinate health initiatives for exposed transit workers -- but the union was unprepared for the obstacles that lay ahead.
Willis's task has been doubly complicated because he is experiencing first-hand the same problems other union members face. After working at Ground Zero himself, Willis began suffering from persistent breathing and gastric problems that "just kept getting worse," eventually forcing him to step down from his leadership duties in the union. He recently relocated to Nevada in hopes that the milder climate would improve his condition.
Willis controls his symptoms with asthma medications covered by the city's insurance plan for transit workers, and having spent most of 2004 out of work on long-term sick leave, he may soon be unemployed. "Right now," he said, "I'm out of sick time, I'm out of vacation time, and I'm … in the position where I'm not getting paid anymore."
He now hopes to retire on a disability pension. But negotiating the city's benefits system, even for those commended as heroes for their work at Ground Zero, is an exhausting, often fruitless battle. According to labor representatives, many workers have chosen to tolerate sickness rather than deal with the bureaucracy.
For the union members Willis represents, workers' compensation applications have been a painful extension of the September 11 nightmare. The MTA administers its own Worker's Compensation fund and therefore, according to union advocates, has a vested interest in contesting each claim.
Frank Goldsmith said that in cases of less "obvious" occupational illnesses, such as respiratory or gastric problems that Ground Zero workers commonly experience, the MTA will "challenge and fight against anything which is occupational health- or mental health-related."
Dominick Tuminaro, an attorney whose firm has represented many TWU members in claims proceedings, said that large, self-insured agencies like the Metropolitan Transit Authority "have lots of protocols in place that essentially do not readily provide these benefits." Of ten WTC-related workers' compensation cases his firm helped litigate, he said, the MTA formally contested five and initially refused to pay in the other five cases, citing bureaucratic reasons. Benefits were eventually granted in all ten cases, however, which, to Tuminaro, proves that the employer was largely to blame for holding up payments the workers deserved.
These post-9/11 cases, noted Tuminaro, are not an aberration but, unfortunately, "business as usual." The agency has a tradition of systematically challenging as many claims as possible, he asserted, and "the fact that there is a consequence in the real lives of the workers is not something that's terribly important to them."
Communications Workers of America, representing communications workers who participated in the emergency response, have accused Verizon of similarly mishandling workers' compensation claims. Drawing on data provided by attorneys, Micki Siegel de Hernandez, the union's director of occupational health, told TNS, "It's our belief that many if not most of the workers' compensation claims filed for respiratory and/or stress related disorders after 9/11 have been controverted," or disputed by the employer.
Verizon has withheld all information regarding post-9/11 workers' compensation claims as well as the results of an internal voluntary medical screening program for 981 employees. In a statement emailed to TNS, the company claimed that "employees could discuss with their personal physicians" the screening results, but that data was kept confidential to protect workers' privacy. The union, which has demanded special compensation procedures for post-9/11 health problems, counters that this practice makes it extremely difficult to advocate on behalf of members.
The New York State Workers' Compensation Board reports that individuals have filed a total of 8,148 injury and exposure claims related to September 11, -- 2,398 of which have been controverted. According to spokesperson Jon Sullivan, the statistics for these cases do not diverge substantially from overall patterns, except in the "sheer magnitude" of the number of claims. Ultimately, about 90 percent of Ground Zero-related claims have been "resolved," but no data is available on how many actually resulted in payments to workers.
Unless a negotiated labor contract states otherwise, under state law, a city worker can be fired after one year on sick leave. If a claim is held up long enough, a worker could be terminated without receiving compensation for lost wages or treatment.
Union representatives complain that instead of filing for workers' compensation, members are choosing to fall back on negotiated insurance benefits, which could drive up the cost of premiums and cut into wages. Public health expert J. Paul Leigh of the University of California -- Davis wrote in a recent analysis that a nationwide trend of workers accessing regular benefits instead of workers' compensation has resulted in up to $23 billion in additional medical expenses borne by "individual workers, their families, private medical insurance, and taxpayers."
Sullivan noted that legally, occupational illness is the exclusive domain of workers' compensation. "It wouldn't be unusual," he noted, "for an insurance company outside of the scope of workers' compensation to say, 'No, this is a workers' compensation claim'" and deny the worker any private benefits.
Disability pensions, administered through the New York City Employee's Retirement System (NYCERS), have also been a quagmire for public employees suffering Ground Zero-related illnesses. City employees like transportation workers and emergency medical technicians are not covered under the more comprehensive pension plans of firefighters and police. Labor advocates say even people certified disabled by the federal government are frequently turned down for NYCERS pensions, trapped in a limbo of being both unable to work and unable to stop working.
Getting approved for a disability pension, Willis observed, is "virtually impossible … in a situation like this, simply because I think they're afraid of a flood of applicants."
Israel Miranda, health and safety coordinator for the Uniformed EMTs and Paramedics of Local 2507, agreed, saying that the city is "worried about Pandora's Box -- that if they had to pay out everybody who has some sort of injury … then they're going to be paying forever."
According to official NYCERS records, from September 11, 2001 to June 2004, 42 disability pension applications "related to September 11th" had been filed. About 69 percent of these were approved, reports the agency, compared to 61 percent of ordinary applications.
But EMT union advocates question the NYCERS statistics, especially the reported 90 percent approval rate for EMTs with Ground Zero disabilities. Miranda has observed that the pension board has routinely and adamantly challenged claims of Ground Zero-related injuries, even when medical evidence directly links the condition to the disaster site. The union's own records of 170 pension applications filed between 1999 and 2003 indicate the Board approved only 47 percent; an additional eight percent of applicants ultimately received pensions after undergoing a formal appeal process.
To explain why many workers opt not to pursue government entitlements, Willis laid out what he believes is an all-too-common scenario "Now you're sick, you have no money coming in, and if it's a long-term illness, you're facing termination. So, what do you do? Do you decide to risk all that … or do you suck it up and go to work sick?"
In 2003, the state legislature passed a bill for a post-9/11 disability pension providing three-quarters salary for any injured Ground Zero worker. Governor George Pataki, backed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, vetoed the bill, alleging that the law's vague language created too many loopholes. A new version was reintroduced in 2004, but the Mayor's office has reiterated its opposition to the plan. "It's much too broad," said spokesperson Jordan Barowitz, "and would cost the city a fortune."
But unions are nevertheless demanding federal and local policies to ensure that Ground Zero workers do not continue to suffer for their contributions. As Miranda put it, "Anybody who serves the citizens of New York and gives their all … should be taken care of."
Michelle Chen writes, works and plays in New York City. Involved with independent media for the past nine years, she has written for the South China Morning Post, Clamor, INTHEFRAY.COM and her own zine, cain.
© 2004 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.http//www.tampatrib.com/FloridaMetro/MGBHG8ZMA4E.html
TAMPA - Florida's indoor air quality problems are widespread,authorities say in response to questions about ``sick building syndrome'' since a Tampa woman died recently with symptoms of Legionnaires' disease.
Calls for help are mounting at state and federal agencies, data show.
From 2001 to 2004, the Hillsborough County Health Department saw annual complaints about indoor air quality rise from 226 to 357. Most were residential. The top culprit? Mold.
``We're in a subtropical environment, and that's conducive to mold growth,'' said Gregg Rottler, environmental supervisor with the department.
Most people have little or no reaction when exposed to most of the
contaminants that can infect buildings. Yet for decades, authorities say, public concern has increased significantly, prompted by greater awareness of how indoor air can make people sick.
At the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, investigations of indoor air quality have increased to 52 percent of all requests for help since the late 1970s.
A trend toward construction of sealed buildings is seen as a key factor in the rise of complaints. Windows that don't open, high humidity and mold growth are among the ingredients for sore throats and headaches, fevers and chills, tight chests, dizziness and wheezing that often afflict sufferers.
Mold, pollen, dust mites, bird droppings and fungal spores festering in walls or ceilings can ruin indoor air. It also can be damaged by chemicals from adhesives, carpets, upholstery, copy machines, pesticides or cleaning agents.
Building exhausts and plumbing vents also can play a part.
``Any time you have a building with uncontrolled moisture getting in, whether from a leaky roof or faulty plumbing, that can lead to types of conditions that are conducive to mold growth and other problems,'' said Mary Ann Latko of the American Industrial Hygiene Association.
``Keeping the building in good condition is the critical thing people look at when they're trying to improve indoor air quality,'' she said.
Current Concerns
In Tampa, questions have swirled around a former grocery store leased by the federal government at 11613 N. Nebraska Ave. The building reopened Tuesday after employees were told to stay home as a precautionary measure Jan. 14.
Government investigators, including a crew from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, are examining the building that houses administrative and other offices for the nearby James A. Haley VA Medical Center.
An employee who died Jan. 10 tested positive for Legionella antigen, indicating a past or present infection of the serious respiratory illness known as Legionnaires' disease.
Although the bacterium has not been traced to the building, Haley officials have expressed concern about ``sick building syndrome,'' according to medical records from the case.
Three other workers have been hospitalized or treated for respiratory problems, and 18 of almost 170 employees have filed workers' compensation claims against Haley. They say the building has a history of leaks, other flaws and inadequate repairs.
The Tampa company that owns the property denies the building is "sick.'' Logan Associates issued a statement last week acknowledging roof leaks but saying those have been ``difficult to find when the occasions for occurrence [rain driven by high winds] rarely occur for long enough periods to investigate during this time of year.''
Public Problems
Suspicion of ``sick'' government buildings is nothing new. Six federal courthouses in Florida, including two in Tampa, were diagnosed with the problem as recently as 2001.
A government report said contaminated courthouses in Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Orlando and Ocala harbored mold, fungi and exhaust fumes. Tampa's 1902 courthouse was declared unfit for habitation because of high levels of contaminants.
Now vacant, that courthouse was turned over to the city a year ago and is targeted for private redevelopment.
Concerns were voiced that Tampa's 17-story replacement courthouse was contaminated by mold when files and furniture from the old building were transferred in 1998. The newer building operates normally today,however, and the U.S. General Services Administration reports no more complaints.
In the 1990s, a Polk County courthouse had to be closed and rebuilt for $40 million after a massive cleanup.
Private Concerns
While skeptics may scoff that only government structures seem to become ``sick buildings,'' officials say the situation is common among private residences.
Nationally, more than 21 million people in 1.4 million buildings are affected by indoor respiratory problems each year, according to federal environmental data.
Florida's high humidity, frequent rains and omnipresent air conditioning all can contribute to the situation, especially when air-conditioning systems are dirty or poorly drained.
In the Tampa area, Rottler said, calls may be increasing because people are more conscious of the problem, not necessarily because air quality is deteriorating.
``We all breathe in mold spores,'' he said. ``Some are sensitive, and those who are will typically experience allergy-type symptoms like sneezing and sinus congestion.''
Reporter Brad Smith can be reached at (813) 259-7365, bsmith@tampatrib.com
Leading Donors to Pataki PAC in 2004 Included Developers of Ground Zero, by Patrick D. Healy, New York Times, January 22, 2005
http//www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/nyregion/22pataki.html
A political action committee set up to burnish Gov. George E. Pataki's national reputation gathered more than $1 million in 2004, and among the biggest donors were four business leaders or officials heavily involved in rebuilding ground zero.
While leading real estate investors often contribute to political officials, these developers made unusually large donations of $25,000 each to the committee, which was created in Virginia to avoid New York State campaign finance limits. Given that the money to the committee came from people with major interests in the redevelopment of ground zero - viewed as sacred space by families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attack - this intersection between money and politics could prove especially delicate.
"I think it's despicable that people involved in rebuilding the World Trade Center would go outside the state and make these kind of huge donations to the governor, who's supposed to be guarding the interests of ground zero," said Monica Gabrielle, whose husband, Richard, was killed when the south tower collapsed, and who has been critical of Mr. Pataki's stewardship of the site. "Ground zero is not the place to be lining pockets."
Kevin Quinn, a spokesman for Mr. Pataki, said yesterday that the 21st Century Freedom PAC was created six years ago to pay for travel, events, donations and other activities by the governor to support Republican candidates. Mr. Quinn said that donors did not enjoy any special favor or access with the executive branch.
"Any decisions that we make are based solely on the merits, on sound public policy, and on what is in the best interests of New Yorkers," he said.
Mr. Pataki has taken an intensive role in the redevelopment of ground zero, going so far as to involve himself in the selection of final designs for the site.
The donors are Daniel R. Tishman and John L. Tishman, who each gave $25,000 last month and are executives with Tishman Realty and Construction, which is building 7 World Trade Center; John C. Whitehead, whom Mr. Pataki tapped to be chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation; and Lloyd Goldman, a partner in developing 7 World Trade Center.
The Tishmans were not available for comment yesterday, but a spokesman, Richard Kielar, said their donations had "no connection to downtown projects." Some of the PAC filings were first reported yesterday by The New York Post.
"The Tishmans gave to the George Pataki PAC because he is one of the leading environmentalist governors in the United States," Mr. Kielar said. "Tishman is a 107-year-old private company that does mostly private-sector work, but whether it's private or public, we compete fairly and squarely for it."
Mr. Whitehead and Mr. Goldman did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.
It was unclear yesterday if aides to Mr. Pataki directly requested the donations, or if the donors gave on their own initiative. The largest donation to his fund last year was $75,000 from the New York-based Altria Corporate Services, part of the tobacco giant Altria Group.
The governor's committee asked for a contribution from Altria to help finance Mr. Pataki's activities at the Republican National Convention last summer, according to Dawn Schneider, an Altria spokeswoman.
Ms. Schneider said yesterday that she could not confirm if the Pataki fund had requested the specific amount of $75,000 from Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris USA and Kraft Foods. The money was used to pay for a hospitality suite for Mr. Pataki and his guests near Madison Square Garden during convention week.
The Altria gift drew criticism yesterday from some government watchdogs.
The New York Public Interest Research Group said that Mr. Pataki's newly proposed state budget for 2005-6 called for a cap of $100 million on the amount of a bond tobacco companies would put up if they lost a lawsuit in the state. "Not to overuse the metaphor, but it turns out that where there's smoke, there's fire," said Blair Horner, a lobbyist for the research group. "We were surprised that Altria would make a $75,000 donation to the governor of the state that has the toughest anti-smoking law, one of the highest cigarette taxes, and the only state that requires cigarettes to meet fire safety standards. This bill looks like a gift to the tobacco industry."
Ms. Schneider said that Altria "would certainly support" the $100 million cap, but added that the company's donation practices were unrelated to its public policy goals.
Mr. Quinn said the goal of the proposal was to protect taxpayers' interests in case of a bankruptcy by the tobacco industry, which is now paying billions of dollars to the state as a result of the national tobacco settlement. He said other states had proposed or enacted similar caps.
Advocates of campaign finance reform expressed concern yesterday at the backgrounds and generosity of many of Mr. Pataki's donors, especially those involved in ground zero, contending that the money created at least the appearance of donors currying favor with the governor for their projects. "We see these sort of out-of-state PAC's as slush funds that are all about George Pataki's national image but raise questions about 'pay-to-play' for big-money donors who obviously want to be on the governor's good side," said Rachel Leon, executive director of Common Cause New York, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
Aides to the governor said there was nothing unusual or inappropriate about Mr. Pataki's committee, which raised $1.1 million in 2004.
"It's structured in the same fashion as dozens of other similar PAC's created by other elected officials for the same purpose," Mr. Quinn said.
The fund also received $25,000 donations from Stanley F. Druckenmiller, founder of Duquesne Capital Management; the real estate developer Michael J. Chasanoff; Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm; and Francesco Galesi, a longtime Pataki ally and chairman of the Galesi Group, a real estate developer. A former WorldCom director, Mr. Galesi is currently a defendant in a class-action lawsuit by investors.
The fund raised $622,688 in the last six months of 2004, yet spent so heavily on consultant fees that it had an ending balance of $179,256, according to campaign finance documents. The firm Mercury Public Affairs, which includes the Pataki consultant Kieran Mahoney, netted $63,000 in fees. Mr. Pataki's fund-raising adviser, Cathy Blaney, collected $52,000 in fees, while the firm of political operative Arthur Finkelstein received $46,450 in the first half of 2004.
Will He Block That Stadium? Speaker Silver Bides His Time, by Charles V.Bagli, New York Times, January 22, 2005
http//www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/nyregion/22silver.html?oref=login
"What does Shelly want?"It's the question that Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff and the Bloomberg administration keep asking at City Hall, in Lower Manhattan and in Albany.
"Shelly" is Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the State Assembly, who stands astride the road as the administration tries to complete its relentless drive to build a $1.4 billion stadium for the Jets, and possibly the 2012 Olympics, on the West Side of Manhattan. Voters may not have a say in whether the stadium gets built - using $600 million in tax money - but Mr. Silver will, and his ambivalence is driving other politicians slightly batty.
The speaker, however, has a reputation as a horse-trader, and so Mr. Doctoroff and other city officials have been trying to learn what Mr. Silver wants for his downtown Manhattan district in return for his approval when the stadium comes before the little-known Public Authorities Control Board, where the speaker holds veto power. Is it money for affordable housing, something for Chinatown, new funds for the Hudson River Park in TriBeCa?
Mr. Silver is not saying, and so far, his relationship with stadium proponents has been chilly. A community leader and two executives involved in rebuilding Lower Manhattan say that the administration is suddenly holding hostage various downtown projects, such as a school for the area's growing population, that had already been agreed on. Gov. George E. Pataki's preliminary budget has not improved the negotiating climate, as it slashes funds for the Second Avenue subway, a project championed by Mr. Silver.
And so, although Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Wednesday that he hoped the stadium project would be approved at the public authorities board's meeting on Feb. 16, few in the Assembly, the Senate or the governor's office say it will even be on the agenda.
"What's the hurry?" Mr. Silver asked in an interview this week. "The driving force in this is the Olympics. I don't understand the rush to build a stadium for the 2012 Olympics in 2005."
Mr. Silver said he had not made up his mind about the stadium, and had questions about its impact on traffic congestion and the community. He said it was also part of a broader project to redevelop the West Side with office towers, which may compete with efforts he prefers to rebuild the business district in Lower Manhattan at a time when there is a high vacancy rate and no tenants in sight for two buildings at the trade center site.
Mr. Silver, who has worked to keep downtown's commercial sector vital, has also been philosophically at odds with the Bloomberg administration, which has promoted residential development in the area.
He said it would be "unfortunate" if the mayor were holding up projects he supported in an effort to prod him into voting for the stadium.
"If it's true," he said, "it would appear the mayor is more interested in trading, rather than governing; in a physical legacy, instead of governing."
He said it appeared that plans for an elementary school in a proposed residential project on Beekman Street were now "stalled." And for three years, he said, he has urged the city to reopen a section of Park Row in front of City Hall. Many people in nearby Chinatown think the street closing has contributed to a severe drop in tourism since 9/11. But, Mr. Silver said, City Hall has not responded.
Jennifer Falk, a spokeswoman for Mr. Doctoroff, said the administration would not comment on the specifics of the negotiations.
Few people on either side of the stadium issue are willing to be quoted by name, because the talks are going on behind closed doors.
Mr. Silver "really loathes what Bloomberg is trying to do here," said an executive who knows Mr. Silver and is active in Lower Manhattan.
"He's a guy who believes in long-term relationships," the executive said. "They're trying to hold up everything."
But stadium advocates say that this is all part of the push and pull of negotiations. "So long as Shelly gets what he wants downtown," said one person involved in promoting the stadium, "we'll get a stadium."
That remains to be seen.
"Shelly's genuinely trying to do this on the merits," said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat. "The mayor seriously underestimates him if he thinks he can bully him or hold projects hostage."
The Bloomberg administration is on something of a roll. Last month, the State Legislature approved the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on the Far West Side. On Wednesday, the City Council approved a comprehensive $3 billion rezoning of the 42-block neighborhood. James Whelan, executive director of the Hudson Yards Coalition, left the council meeting saying, "Two down, one to go."
The one to go is the stadium, which the mayor said is critical to the city's future and its bid for the 2012 Olympics.
The Jets are in tense negotiations with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority over the cost of development rights for building over the West Side rail yards. The authority, which faces fare increases, service cuts and multibillion-dollar shortfalls in its operating budget, wants "full value" for the rights, a number that may be far higher than the Jets are willing to pay.
The team and the Bloomberg administration must also contend with two lawsuits challenging the stadium project. Opponents hope the lawsuits will delay the project from starting until at least July 6, when they contend the International Olympic Committee is likely to pick Paris, not New York, for the 2012 Olympics. The stadium, they say, would then fall by the wayside.
In the meantime, the Empire State Development Corporation, the state's economic development arm, is expected to approve the stadium at its meeting on Thursday, reflecting the governor's support for the project. But before the Jets can begin construction, the project must also be approved by the Public Authorities Control Board, whose three members are appointed by Mr. Pataki, Mr. Silver and Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader. The board's decisions must be unanimous, and each member has the right to delay consideration for 30 days.
Trying to figure out what Mr. Silver will do has become a guessing game for both stadium opponents and supporters.
Woody Johnson, the owner of the Jets, and Jay Cross, the Jets' president, met with Mr. Silver two weeks ago to press their case. They have lined up support from 60 elected officials in New York City, including about 30 Assembly members, in an effort to surround the speaker.
"We appreciate that the speaker has kept an open mind about this project," said Matt Higgins, a Jets vice president, "while we work hard to build support in the Legislature."
Mayor Bloomberg, who also discussed the stadium with Mr. Silver in Albany recently, wants the public authorities board to approve the stadium on Feb. 16, just before a group from the Olympic Committee arrives in New York to evaluate the city's bid. But Mr. Silver has steadfastly refused to commit.
Mr. Bruno is also straddling the fence. State officials and the Jets think he will go along if the governor provides $300 million for upstate projects to match the state's support for the stadium in New York City. But that may take until this summer, when, and if, the State Legislature manages to approve a budget.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http//www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18405
AUSTIN -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helpfully explained it all for us. The problem is that we are living in an alternative reality. What we think we know is not true. We have always had enough troops in Iraq. There are 120,000 trained Iraqi soldiers ready to take over. The president has condemned torture, so what else is there to say? Why torture happened, whose fault it is and why it is still happening at Guantanamo is not a problem because the president has condemned it. Secretary Rice also condemns it, so why raise questions about the fact that she wrote a letter to get an anti-torture clause in the intelligence appropriation bill taken out?
What, do you want to insult her integrity?
Secretary Rice did say that mistakes were made, but she does not know who made them or who should be held accountable. And, of course, as we all learned during the last election, no matter what happens, it is never, ever President Bush's fault.
Oh, goody, another Texan with a big job in Washington. We're so proud. Jonathan L. Snare has been named to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Just the guy we would have chosen ourselves, because his background is so relevant. No, he's not an expert in health or safety, but he used to be the lobbyist for Metabolife, the ephedra diet pill that attracted so much unpleasant attention. Ephedrine
was finally barred in 2003 after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided it had caused 155 deaths. I guess we're lucky Bush didn't put Snare at the FDA. According to the Washington Post, Metabolife spent more than $4 million lobbying the Texas Legislature between 1998 and 2000. Snare was also general counsel to the Republican Party of Texas from 1999 to '01 and has extensive experience in election law.
Exactly how this qualifies him to head OSHA is unclear -- maybe he's a quick learner. He did join the solicitor's office of the Department of Labor in June 2003, where the Labor Department's announcement says, "Snare focused on issues at OSHA, as well as the Wage and Hour Division and the Mine Safety and Health Administration." Wage and Hour, you mayrecall, has made what business considers a great leap forward by making
overtime pay optional, whereas the Mine Safety people have just had their budget cut.
Snare was formerly with the Texas law firm Loeffler, Jonas & Tuggey. That would be W's close friend and big-time money-raiser Tom Loeffler, who ran for governor of Texas on the grounds that he was "tough as 'bob war.'" To prove it, he proudly claimed to have played football with two broken wrists. (Loeffler also wore shower caps on his feet while
showering during a visit to San Francisco back in the '80s lest he get AIDS through his feet. (I tell this story not to make Snare ridiculous by association but just because it's a good story.)
Snare is actually the second fox assigned by Bush to guard this particular henhouse. The assistant secretary is John Henshaw, a former health and safety chief for the chemical company Monsanto. In 40 months on the job, Henshaw axed three dozen proposed regulations from the agency's agenda, according to NPR -- toxic chemical exposure regs, metalworking fluids regs, flammable and combustible liquids reactive
chemicals that kill people and so forth. Snare was generally well-liked and well thought of here in Texas, but that still doesn't make him an expert on health and safety issues. OSHA is now so toothless, with so few inspectors that they can only look at a tiny percentage of plants in this country.
Henshaw also encouraged partnership with industry. According to NPR reporter Peter Overby, "What OSHA has done is turn away from regulating; less stick more carrot. Now its goal is to work with industry instead of mandating health and safety standards." He also reports the new alliances business encouraged by Henshaw do not include worker
representatives. "That's not the only way in which previous policies at OSHA have been stood on their head. OSHA used to recruit its top appointees from state agencies and job safety organizations. In the Bush administration, it draws appointees from business and anti-regulatory groups."
Well, Snare will certainly fit right in, then. This administration disdains the whole idea of ergonomic injuries, also called repetitive stress syndrome, despite the fact that millions of people have them. It's one thing to ignore ergonomic injuries since people seldom die of them, but chemical exposure and many other problems are life-threatening.
Workplace deaths were up last year, but the agency claims illness and injuries were down. I hate to sound like a cynic, but I'd like to know how they changed the reporting requirements on the last two. Read more in the Molly Ivins archive.
Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books including Who Let the Dogs In?
(c) 2004 Creators Syndicate
http//www.downtownexpress.com/de_88/lmdcswitches.html
The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. board voted on Thursday to change the company monitoring air quality during the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty St. The L.M.D.C.’s Amy Peterson said there was no problem with the current firm, Ambient Group, but the agency wanted to have an open bidding process for the contract.
Peterson said 34 firms bid on the contract and she recommended the board hire one or more of the following five firms for a two-year, $500,000 contract AKRF Inc., BEM Systems, GZA GeoEnvironmental Inc., LiRo Engineers and TRC Engineers.
Although the contract grew out of a bidding process, Peterson said the development corporation would be paying roughly the same rates it has been paying Ambient.
The money comes out of previously authorized money in the L.M.D.C.’s Partial Action Plan 7, approved by the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development last year. The $176 million plan included $164 million to cover the costs of buying and dismantling the damaged Deutsche building across from the World Trade Center site.
All rights reserved. Downtown Express and downtownexpress.com
Scientists Urge Closer Look at Residual Trade Center Toxins, by David M. Levitt, Bloomberg News, January 19, 2005
Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- A panel of toxicologists and industrial hygienists urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to expand testing of lower Manhattan to include mercury, dioxin and other contaminants that may remain from the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001.
The panelists, which includes scientists from the City University of New York, Duke University and a former assistant U.S. surgeon general, said the agency should dig behind cabinets and into building ventilation systems for dangerous particles that could become airborne. They also urged the agency to de- emphasize its search for a chemical ``signature'' that would affirm that found pollutants were in fact from the trade center.
"You can't sample for everything, but dioxin and mercury are very dangerous chemicals, and probably pose along with lead some of the most serious long-term health consequences,'' David Carpenter, a University of Albany, New York, toxicologist who headed up the panel, said in an interview. These substances "are not being proposed for sampling,'' he said.
His comments come a day after the EPA's deadline for public comment on its plan to sample interior spaces in lower Manhattan for remaining trade center contaminants. Residents have reported elevated levels of asthma and other ailments since the Sept. 11 attacks that they say can be directly attributed to exposure to such substances.
Carpenter said he was ``very skeptical'' that a distinct signature of trade center pollution could be found ``or if it were, that there would be only one. The collapse of the buildings and the fires that followed each released very different kinds of contaminants.'' He said he feared that the search for such a signature would delay a cleanup.
EPA Testing Plan
Carpenter and the other scientists examined the EPA plan on behalf of the WTC Community-Labor Coalition, a group of trade center-area residents, environmental and labor activists who have been monitoring the agency's response to the lingering health effects of the disaster.
Michael Brown, an EPA spokesman, said the coalition's report is one of about 20 comments received. He said the agency, which put together its own panel of experts to oversee the sampling plan, would review the comments, and hold a meeting toward the end of February to let the community know what changes, if any, it intends to make in its program.
"We only today began considering these comments,'' he said. "We will consider and analyze them.''
The agency's 30-page plan says that testing of apartments done in 2002 found very little dioxin, at levels "not significantly different from'' typical urban environments.
In addition to seeking testing for dioxin, mercury and small particles of asbestos, the community panel also wants testing to be expanded across the East River to northern Brooklyn, where plumes of smoke and dust from the collapses blew.
They also urged the agency to select buildings to be tested at
random, rather than depending on landlords and tenants to volunteer their spaces. This
``will likely considerably underestimate the extent of contamination,'' Carpenter said.
http//www.ny1.com/ny/WTC_Coverage/index.html?topicintid=8&subtopicintid=203&contentintid=47328
A group of scientists says there are flaws in the way the government wants to test for contamination at the World Trade Center site.The independent Expert Advisory Committee, made up of six scientists, submitted its report to the Environmental Protection Agency this week. The committee wants tests done for mercury, small fiber asbestos and other toxins from Ground Zero.
The report also urges the EPA to test buildings in parts of Brooklyn for contamination and to look at the health of residents as they determine a zone for testing.
The EPA and the WTC Expert Technical Review Panel are expected to meet in late February to discuss the findings.
http//www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=bondsNews&storyID=7371512
WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said on Wednesday he was proposing a $140 billion trust fund to compensate asbestos victims while ending their right to sue for damages.Specter told members of the Judiciary Committee he would introduce his proposed bill next week. "That figure will be set at $140 billion," he said of the overall amount for the fund, which would be financed by industry and insurers.
In previous drafts of the bill, Specter had left out the size of the fund.
Specter said he thought this amount was "within the parameters of what is realistic to ask the manufacturers and the insurers to pay" to support the fund and end their liability.
Similar proposals stalled in the Senate last year, and Specter has been trying to address concerns of affected groups. The Pennsylvania Republican said he thought he had managed this task "reasonably," adding that people sickened by exposure to asbestos could return to court if the fund runs dry.
"We have preserved a safety valve for the claimants, that in the event that the funds are insufficient, the claimants can go back to their constitutional right to a jury trial," he said, speaking at a business meeting of his committee.
The trust would have $40 billion in "start-up" money, Specter said, referring to funding needed in the first few years, when the crush of claims is expected to be greatest. Hundreds of thousands of claims are in courts now, and dozens of firms have gone bankrupt after being swamped by claims.
(c) Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
Head of State Environmental Agency Plans to Step Down, by Anthony DePalma, New York Times, January 15, 2005
http//www.nytimes.com/2005/01/15/nyregion/15enviro.html
The first woman to head New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation, Erin M. Crotty, will leave the agency next month, the latest in a number of officials in the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki to resign recently.
Ms. Crotty, 38, has been commissioner of the department, one of the largest and most complex in state government, since March 2001. She said in an interview that she was leaving now because the department had already accomplished many of the environmental and health initiatives that were her priorities.
"Equally important," she said, "I got married last year and want to start a family."
Since taking control of the department nearly four years ago, Ms. Crotty has overseen several significant environmental efforts. They include the creation of a state plan to pay for the cleanup of contaminated but reusable building sites called brownfields.
She also oversaw the refinancing of the state Superfund law; the creation of a plan for decontaminating heavily polluted Onondaga Lake, near Syracuse; the acquisition of hundreds of thousands of acres of Adirondack woodlands; and the imposition of tough new acid rain rules.
But environmental groups sometimes accused her of lacking sufficient independence from the governor's office and ineffectively warding off interference from industry sources opposed to tough environmental regulations. They also said she had not protected the department from budget cuts that had left it understaffed.
"This is an agency that over all is stretched too thin," said Peter M. Iwanowicz, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association of New York State.
Jeff Jones, a spokesman for Environmental Advocates of New York, said the department had lost 700 positions in the last decade. That has decreased the department's effectiveness, he said, and increased mistakes, such as the missed deadline that led a state judge to strike down tough new acid rain regulations last June after power plant operators challenged them.
Despite cuts, the department has more than 3,000 employees, who Ms. Crotty said were fulfilling all their responsibilities.
After the acid rain regulations were thrown out, the department successfully reintroduced them on an emergency basis. They are now in place, despite another appeal by power plant operators. "And that translates into very meaningful improvements to the environment and public health," Ms. Crotty said.
Governor Pataki named Lynette M. Stark, the current deputy commissioner for natural resources and water quality, as acting commissioner of the department. She will serve until a new commissioner is named.
The governor's budget director, Carole E. Stone, left her post in October. His communications director, Lisa Dewald Stoll, left last month. And just this week, a close ally of Mr. Pataki, Robert L. King, requested a six-month sabbatical from his job as chancellor of the State University of New York, only to announce in a surprise move Thursday that he wanted to stay in the post.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http//www.downtownexpress.com/de_88/afterdemolitionbegins.html
The small, neo-classical building at 4 Albany St., damaged and contaminated in the World Trade Center disaster, will face a similar fate of demolition with its neighboring Deutsche Bank building, although without the same level of public scrutiny.
Representatives for Deutsche Bank, which owns the 4 Albany St. property, presented plans for a two-phase demolition process at a Community Board 1 World Trade Center committee meeting on Jan. 10. PAL Environmental Safety Corporation, the contractor hired by Deutsche Bank to demolish the 10-story structure, began work on Dec. 27, although this was the first time Deutsche Bank informed the public about its plans for the site in detail.
The company agreed to demolish the 130,000 sq. ft. structure when it entered into a $30 million sale agreement with developer Joseph Moinian last November. A spokesperson for the Moinian Group said the company was not prepared to discuss its plans for the site, although the New York Post speculates he has plans to build a condo-hotel Downtown.
Contaminated primarily with asbestos and lead, two environmental consultants, RJ Lee Group and Ambient Group, monitor the shrouded and enclosed building. RJ Lee runs the air monitoring systems for the building and sends weekly contaminant level reports to the Environmental Protection Agency. If contaminant levels exceed the Deutsche Bank established early warning levels or Environmental Protection Agency-established trigger levels, RJ Lee has a system in place to contact the agency. "We will be notifying the E.P.A. almost immediately. They will be getting downloads of all the readings," said Frank Lawatsch, legal counsel for the bank. "They will have more than enough information."
Unlike the former Deutsche Bank Building at 130 Liberty St., which was sold last August to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, a state and city agency, 4 Albany St. is a private building owned by a private company that is not using public funds for the demolition. Beholden to no city agency, Deutsche Bank is not required to open its doors for public scrutiny.
C.B. 1 members were chagrined to learn that Deutsche Bank has no plans for relaying possible contamination problems to the community. "You need to establish a way to communicate quickly to the community and to the public at large," Madelyn Wils, C.B. 1 chairperson, told the Deutsche Bank representatives.
Concerned that the E.P.A., an agency that came under heavy fire after it misled the community about post-9/11 air quality, Wils insisted that Deutsche Bank establish a direct line of communication between the community and the bank. "We’ve worked with the E.P.A. during 9/11 and we know their shortcomings," she said. "You have a responsibility to your community. You should figure out a way to communicate with us."
David Newman, an industrial hygienist for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health Administration and a panelist on the E.P.A.’s WTC Expert Technical Review Panel, was surprised to learn that Deutsche Bank had been sending contamination readings to the E.P.A. for two years, without any public notification. "I’m a little concerned to hear that this project [the demolition] has been going on for several weeks and that data has been available for several years and we have not been able to access the data," he said.
Lawatsch saw the lack of public awareness of the data as a positive sign. "We’ve been submitting that information to the city; we just did it as a voluntary measure," he said. "The data was unremarkable, maybe that’s why it has not gotten a lot of publicity."
Tishman has already removed 1,000 cubic yards of material from the property since it began the abatement phase of the demolition on Dec. 27 "without incident," according to Mark Hopper, a project manager for Tishman Interiors, the company overseeing the demolition.
The abatement phase, involves removing the entire interior of the building, leaving behind only a mortar and limestone shell. It is expected to take 12 weeks. Working six days a week, Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 1030 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., four to six container trucks will be loaded daily on Albany St. and hauled to landfills in New York and New Jersey.
Deutsche Bank expects to complete the second phase, the demolition phase, by Memorial Day. The exterior of the building will be peeled inside the empty shell and removed. Working five days a week, Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 330 p.m., eight to 10 trucks a day, loaded on Washington St., will remove 5,000 cubic yards of debris from the site, leaving only the building’s foundation intact.
Public dismay for the neo-classical building’s fate was not limited to contamination concerns. Some local residents expressed shock and disappointment that the historic and unassuming building in their midst, built in 1922 by architect Arthur C. Jackson, will be dismantled and hauled in pieces to landfills. "It’s a crime that you are tearing this beautiful building down," said Esther Regelson, a 109 Washington St. resident. "I’m afraid of what is going to be put in its place."
Demolition Plan Stirs Concern, by Miriam Hill, Philadelphia Inquirer, January 14, 2005
http//www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/10640415.htm
NEW YORK - Shrouded in black, the 40-story Deutsche Bank building stands as a dark and dangerous legacy of the 9/11 attacks. Now, redevelopment officials are planning to knock it down, fueling fears that the demolition could expose residents and workers to the toxic chemical cocktail inside.
The twin towers' collapse filled the Deutsche Bank building, just across Liberty Street, with dust and debris that includes asbestos, lead, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls and other hazards.
Mold, fed by rain and food left by fleeing workers, also found a home there.
"A combination of contaminants known to be hazardous to human health, in quantities and concentrations unparalleled in any other building designed for office uses, permeates the entire structure at levels which exceed by up to thousands of times the levels considered appropriate," said a report prepared for Deutsche Bank during a legal battle over the building.
Black netting was placed over the building to hide a gash caused by the collapse of the South Tower, as if covering a wound no one wanted to see.
Deutsche Bank has since sold the building to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which is overseeing the rebuilding at ground zero.
The LMDC must take apart one of the world's most contaminated buildings in one of the world's most densely populated neighborhoods. And the demolition, which includes two nearby buildings, will take place over a busy subway station with grates that open to the street.
Frank Goldsmith, director of occupational health for Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, complained that there was no plan yet to ensure subway workers' safety.
David Newman, an industrial hygienist for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, called the demolition plan "deficient." For example, he said, it relies on methods to contain asbestos, which may not work for other contaminants.
Amy Peterson, senior vice president of the LMDC, said she was confident that the demolition plan, which will be modified as environmental agencies and others review it, would work.
She said the LMDC would seal off the building with two layers of plastic and use vacuums to contain contaminants. Workers will then dismantle the building piece by piece. Because of the contaminants and crowded location, implosion is ruled out.
The LMDC says the deconstruction will start this year, last a year and cost $45 million, with the money coming from a federal grant and other sources.
Several 9/11 environmental controversies have fueled skepticism that officials would demolish the building safely. A few days after the attacks, the Environmental Protection Agency declared the air in downtown Manhattan safe, a finding criticized as rash by the EPA's own inspector general.
Some Lower Manhattan residents also called the EPA's cleaning of apartments near ground zero inadequate, leading to a new testing of their residences this year. Several government agencies are reviewing the LMDC plan with the EPA.
Joel Kupferman, a lawyer who questioned the EPA's 9/11
air-quality statements early on, said, "With the track record since 9/11, we don't
trust them."
Contact staff writer Miriam Hill at 212-757-2295 or
hillmb@phillynews.com.
Toxic Cleanup Deutsche Bank Demolition Poses Public Health Risk, by Adam Hutton, amNewYork Staff Writer, January 12, 2005
http//www.nynewsday.com/other/special/amny/
An environmental expert warned yesterday that toxic chemicals may be dispersed into the air later this month when work crews start cleaning up and tearing down the Deutsche Bank building.Dave Newman, of the EPA World Trade Center Expert Technical Review Panel, told amNewYork that the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. does not yet have proper safeguards to minimize health risks to New Yorkers who live and work downtown.
"There are gaping holes in the plan as presented by the LMDC," Newman said.
In addition to asbestos, lead, mercury and other contaminants released when any building is torn down, the 40-story tower at 130 Liberty St. is also coated inside and out with dust from the World Trade Center.
When the twin towers collapsed, debris tore a 15-story hole in the Deutsche Bank building. A smoky plume rose from the ashes and a toxic cocktail of pulverized building materials poured in through the gash, filling it with dangerous dust. After a long legal battle between Deutsche Bank, the owner of the building, and its insurance companies, the LMDC took ownership last August.
Last month, the corporation submitted its plans for cleanup and demolition to the Environmental Protection Agency and the city's departments of environmental protection and buildings. The corporation has assembled a team of decontamination and demolition experts for the project, which will take at least a year to complete and cost at least $45 million.
But with the cleanup scheduled to begin in weeks, Newman said "I look at the plan and I see omissions."
For example, the proposed decontamination work is aimed only at asbestos, even though there are many other contaminants in the building.
Responding to Newman's claims, the LMDC Vice President Amy Peterson told amNewYork that her agency and its team are taking every precaution to protect the workers and the public from all health hazards, not just asbestos.
Peterson said all work areas will be sealed off with a double-layer of plastic and a vacuum will be created inside, so that even if the plastic is torn, no contaminants will escape.
But just to be sure, the LMDC will monitor the air in and outside the building as the cleanup progresses.
Even with all those safety nets, local residents say they would feel better knowing that the government was looking out for the public.
"We don't think that the LMDC, despite the experts that it has hired, has the expertise needed to handle this safely," Mark Scherzer, who lives at 125 Cedar St., told amNewYork. "If the environmental problems are as severe as we've been led to believe, I'm worried that there is not an expert agency taking full charge of the process."
The government agencies involved are so busy arguing about who should do what that they've left the public defenseless, a lawyer with the NewYork Environmental Law and Justice Project told amNewYork.
"They really don't want to be held accountable," said the Project's Joel Kupferman, commenting on federal, state and city agencies involved in the cleanup. "But the LMDC can't be trusted to police itself."
Bonnie Bellow, an EPA spokeswoman, dismissed claims that her agency had backed off its commitment to monitor the demolition. Bellow said the EPA presented a plan to the other agencies outlining the responsibilities of all the parties involved, but the plan was rejected.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler told amNewYork that the EPA's story about other agencies refusing to get on board with their plan is "just the latest example of the same kind of finger-pointing that left lower Manhattan in environmental peril in the first place."
"By shrinking away from its legal mandate to be the lead agency in cleaning up contaminated buildings after a terrorist attack, the EPA is once again putting the lives of New Yorkers at risk," Nadler said. "The buck must stop with them, or they are violating the law."
The city agencies told amNewYork they did not sign off on the EPA plan because it misrepresented their expertise and responsibilities.
"Until 9/11, there were many agencies who wanted to exert their environmental authority. Now that we've seen how difficult it can be to handle environmental threats that came out of 9/11, the pendulum has swung the other way and none of them are meeting their mandated responsibilities," Kupferman said.
LMDC President Kevin Rampe told amNewYork "Not only are we going to do this in an environmentally responsible manner, but we're also going to follow all of the directions given to us by the government regulators involved in the process."
US Senator Pressing Ahead with Asbestos Fund Bill, by Susan Cornwell, Reuters, January 11, 2005
http//www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11286571.htm
WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress will likely have to decide the size of a trust fund to compensate asbestos victims because the groups involved cannot reach a consensus, the lawmaker drafting the measure said on Tuesday.
Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the size of the plan that would also curb asbestos lawsuits, would be decided by late January and likely be similar to past proposals.
Lawmakers last year agreed to $140 billion in private funding, but that effort stalled. Labor groups, whose workers are among those affected by diseases caused by asbestos, say the funding should be at least $149 billion.
"It's really now or never," Specter told representatives of manufacturers, insurance companies, labor groups and asbestos victims at a hearing. They should hurry before the Senate gets occupied with other business, he said.
The fund would be managed by the Department of Labor, but privately financed by asbestos defendants, their insurers and some existing settlements.
Specter hoped to have the bill ready for consideration by the full Senate by early February.
He asked affected parties not to let uncertainties such as different projections on how many people will become ill from asbestos derail efforts to set up a fund.
Specter noted the bill had a "safety valve" which would let claimants go back to court if the fund ran dry.
The ranking Democrat on the committee, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, pledged to keep working with Specter on the fund bill.
"I believe it can be done," Leahy said.
Asbestos, a fire-retardant fibrous mineral, was once widely used for insulation and construction purposes. Scientists say inhaled fibers are linked to cancer and other diseases, but many of these diseases take a long time to develop.
Over 100,000 asbestos claims were filed in 2003 and dozens of firms have gone bankrupt after being swamped by claims.
UNSETTLED MATTERS
Beyond the cost, there are wide differences over other issues, such as under what circumstances claims can revert to court, and how much compensation smokers should get.
Insurers said the fund should be the exclusive remedy for claims. "There should be no leakage back into the tort system," said the American Insurance Association's Craig Berrington.
But Peg Seminario, occupational health official at the AFL-CIO, urged lawmakers to give pending claimants the option of going to court if the fund start-up stalls.
"People will be dead by the time this is up and running," she said.
Seminario also expressed concern that there was not enough funding for the early years, and said some award values were too low. Under the measure, ex-smokers with lung cancer, who were exposed to asbestos but do not show any asbestos-related symptoms, would be awarded $200,000.
Labor groups have called for these people to get up to $600,000, but insurers and manufacturers strongly disagree.
"The bill must not be a smokers' compensation bill," said National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler.
President George W. Bush last week urged Congress to reign in asbestos lawsuits. Some critics see Republican enthusiasm for the bill as a way to hurt trial lawyers, a big source of funding for Democrats.
Specter's bill would limit lawyers' fees to 10 percent of awards, and in appeals, 20 percent. Michael Forscey of The Association of Trial Lawyers of America said it still had concerns about the bill, but the fee limits were better than earlier proposals that held attorneys to two percent.
Specter Tackles Asbestos Injury Claims Impasse, by Greg Gordon, Minneapolis Star Tribune Washington Bureau Correspondent ,January 12, 2005
http//www.startribune.com/stories/587/5181515.html
[For an archive of articles and documents concerning asbestos-related occupational and environmental safety and health, visit http//www.nycosh.org/workplace_hazards/asbestos.html]
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Declaring "it's now or never," the Senate's new Judiciary Committee chairman said Tuesday he aims to push for floor action early next month on legislation to settle the nation's asbestos injury claims.
With a public prod last week from President Bush, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., made the asbestos crisis the subject of his first hearing as chairman. He presented a 273-page draft bill that would end nearly all asbestos injury litigation and create an industry-financed trust fund, apparently in the range of $140 billion or so, to compensate as many as 2 million sick workers over 28 years.
Specter expressed confidence that numerous impasses can be overcome, a feat not achieved after years of negotiations among businesses, insurers, labor unions and trial lawyers.
The Rand Corporation's Institute for Civil Justice says 730,000 people filed asbestos injury claims through 2002, costing more than $70 billion and driving 70 companies into bankruptcy. Claimants who did not yet have disease symptoms got most of the money, the Institute says.
Senior federal appeals court Judge Edward Becker, who has mediated 33 of the negotiating sessions over 17 months, called it "the greatest litigation crisis in the history of the American court system" and told the panel that Congress may have to resolve disputes over six or seven issues.
The parties have not agreed on the size of the fund and Specter's bill did not specify a figure. Becker based his presentation on the $140 billion that Senate leaders from both parties agreed on last fall. Businesses would put up $90 billion and insurers $46.025 billion, with $4 billion coming from asbestos trust funds set up by bankrupt companies.
If the trust fund ran out of money, the bill would send claimants back to the court system after 7½ years.
Among unresolved issues
* Whether the proposed industry contribution of $40 billion over the first five years would be enough to handle an expected crush of 600,000 initial claims; Becker said the fund has authority to borrow another $20 billion.
* How much to pay smokers who were exposed to asbestos and contracted lung cancer but don't have "markers" of asbestos disease on their chest X-rays.
* When to cut off pending suits during the transition to a trust fund.
Greg Gordon is at ggordon@mcclatchydc.com. Senate Tries to Narrow Differences over Asbestos Legislation, by Patti Waldmeir in Washington, Financial Times, January 11 2005
http//news.ft.com/cms/s/1b1a2772-6375-11d9-bec2-00000e2511c8.html
[For an archive of articles and documents concerning asbestos-related occupational and environmental safety and health, visit http//www.nycosh.org/workplace_hazards/asbestos.html]
A US Senate committee will hold hearings later today to try to narrow differences over proposed legislation to tackle the asbestos litigation crisis.
Negotiations began yesterday over the newest draft bill to set up a privately-financed, no-fault fund to compensate asbestos victims. Business lobbyists said there were problems with the draft, including the fact that the total cost of the plan was left out, despite agreement in earlier talks to limit the fund to $140bn (€107bn, £75bn).
The incoming chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Senator Arlen Specter - who has said he wants to rush legislation to the Senate floor early this year - brought together representatives from the business community, labour unions, insurance companies and asbestos victims yesterday to discuss the new draft. Mr Specter's proposal would set up a fund financed by the business community and their insurers that would compensate victims but also take away their right to sue in most circumstances.
But early reaction to the new draft highlighted important areas of disagreement that may make it hard to reach an early deal on legislation, those close to the negotiations said. Despite a stronger Republican majority in Congress - and the firm commitment of President George W. Bush, who on Friday called on Congress to enact asbestos litigation reform - reaching a deal might be easier than before the last election, "but still not easy", said one lobbyist.
Mr Bush campaigned all last week for lawsuit reform, capping off the week with a visit to a suburb near Detroit where he said that asbestos claims had become a "national problem" clogging the court system and hindering economic growth.
The business community says the key to a deal is "finality" it wants to make sure that setting up such a fund will remove the risk of almost unlimited exposure to asbestos lawsuits that currently plagues many companies.
Business lobbyists say their main concerns with the new draft are the lack of a price tag, raising the prospect that unions will ask for a figure higher than the original $140bn.
They were also worried by provisions to allow victims to return to court under certain circumstances, if the fund ran out of money, for example, or if it was not set up within 180 days of the legislation's passage, according to one proposal.
"How much money will be put in by whom, over what period of time", is also a likely cause for disagreement, according to those close to the business community.
http//www.nycosh.org/UPDATE/view_article.php?articleid=481
Legislation that would deny hundreds of thousands of people any compensation for asbestos-related disease was unveiled on Sunday, January 9, just two days in advance of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill.The legislation would outlaw lawsuits over asbestos injuries and set up a so-called "no-fault" compensation system for people who have been sickened or killed by exposure to asbestos. The leadership of the Senate has put the legislation on an exceptionally fast track, promising to bring it to the Senate floor in less than three weeks.
"This bill is being moved at a speed that is normally reserved for legislation to deal with unexpected national catastrophes, like the attack on the World Trade Center," said NYCOSH Executive Director Joel Shufro. "But over the last 27 years Congress has considered, and rejected, ten similar bills, so to call this an emergency is laughable.
The only reason for the Republicans' unseemly haste is their desire to ram it through both houses before people realize how awful it is and get organized to stop it."
Critics of the bill include organizations of asbestos victims, labor unions, and practitioners in the fields of occupational medicine, public health, and the law. Their criticisms include these
* The trust fund would pay compensation to people who have been injured by asbestos according to a schedule of payments that are substantially lower than those that injured workers and others now win in court.
* The bill includes a "completely unscientific, definition of asbestos disease," according to Arthur Frank, the Chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health in Drexel University's School of Public Health. "For example," says Frank, "a person with lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos would not be
eligible for compensation unless he or she could prove several years' regular exposure to asbestos. But we know from experience with asbestos workers that just one month of exposure to asbestos doubles the risk of developing lung cancer."
* Many, if not most, asbestos injuries do not fit the bill's definitions. The bill even acknowledges that its definitions are not consistent with "prevailing medical practices" in its characterization of "unacceptable medical evidence." According to the bill, medical
evidence is unacceptable when it "is not consistent with prevailing medical practices or the applicable requirements of this Act." That is to say, evidence that is consistent with prevailing medical practice but not with the bill's provisions will be rejected.
* Anyone with a condition that does not fit the bill's medical criteria will have no recourse, because the bill takes away such a person's right to sue or to be compensated by the trust fund.
* The bill sharply cuts the share of asbestos compensation that a lawyer may receive for representing an injured person, which will force many of the injured to pursue their claims without a lawyer. But the bill requires claimants to prove they were exposed to at least a specific quantity of asbestos for at least a specific period of time.
The information needed to prove such exposure is almost impossible for an individual to obtain without the help of a lawyer or someone else who has detailed knowledge of the history of asbestos exposure.
* No one knows if the trust fund will have enough money, because no one can say with any degree of certainty how many people will have valid claims or when the claims will be filed. If money does not come into the fund fast enough in its early stages, claimants could be forced to wait years before receiving any compensation. When the fund is winding down and receiving no new payments, it could run out of money before all the claims are paid.
* Juries and judges award substantial sums to people with asbestos injuries because it has been proven hundreds of times, in open court, that the companies who caused people to be exposed to asbestos did so without telling anyone that they were being exposed, even though the owners and managers of the companies knew that exposure to asbestos could cause serious injury or death. Why should the government set up a trust fund that is designed to rescue the companies but not pay the
companies' victims everything that is due them?
* Unlike last year's bill, the new version puts the trust fund under the Labor Department and not under the federal court system. The head of the program would be appointed by the President, and other of the fund's decision-makers would be appointed by the Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. As long as Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress, Republicans will appoint 16 members of the fund's powerful 24-member advisory committee.
The latest version of the bill includes some provisions that improve upon the bill that was debated last year, including a complete ban on asbestos containing products, a provision that might protect the rights of victims whose claim are not paid before the fund runs out of money, and a limited right to appeal decisions of the fund in federal court.
Unlike last year's bill, this version establishes a very limited right to compensation for asbestos victims who had no occupational exposure to asbestos, such as people who were exposed to asbestos on the clothes of someone they lived with, or people who lived in the vicinity of an "operation that regularly released asbestos fibers into the air."
Proving that one had such an exposure would be even more difficult than proving occupational exposure without expert assistance.
On January 7 President Bush spent an hour discussing his desire to reform the asbestos compensation system in a town-meeting like affair in Clinton Township, Michigan. Saying "Congress needs to act," Bush did not mention any specific legislative proposal.
After Bush spoke, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney noted that "President Bush missed an opportunity today to show genuine compassion for the victims of asbestos disease and support for responsible relief for businesses struggling with asbestos claims by failing to endorse the creation of a national asbestos victims trust fund."
Despite the fast track that the bill is on, its chances of passage are uncertain. In recent weeks some major companies with large asbestos-injury liabilities have said that the bill requires them to pay too much money into the trust fund and it fails to put an absolute and permanent stop to any future litigation over asbestos injuries. Some
large insurance companies have raised similar objections.
In prepared testimony for the January 11 Judiciary Committee hearing, AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Peg Seminario said that the federation is "deeply disturbed and dismayed by letters and statements from some insurance and business groups opposing current efforts to reach a compromise on asbestos trust fund legislation. Apparently,
these groups read the results of the November election as license to back track on previous agreements, and to renege on their commitments made to fairly compensate asbestos victims. If, indeed, business groups are not prepared to stand behind their agreements, it will be impossible to resolve, or even to narrow, remaining differences, destroying any possibility of passing asbestos compensation legislation."Bush Supports Asbestos Plan Opposed By Industry, by Arthur D. Postal, National Underwriter, January 10, 2005
http//www.nationalunderwriter.com/pandc/hotnews/viewPC.asp?article=1_10_05_11_15789.xml&src=5
NU Online News Service, Jan. 10, 1148 a.m. EST-President George W. Bush added asbestos litigation reform to his list of top legislative priorities after embracing several principals contained in a Senate bill that insurers and defendants alike said they could not support.
"We're here to talk asbestos reform," the president said in an appearance at Macomb Community College in Michigan on Friday. "We've got a problem. The Supreme Court recognized it as a problem," he emphasized.
Proposing a solution, the president indicated support for legislation drafted in the Senate that would create an asbestos trust fund to pay off claims and eliminate lawsuits that property-casualty insurance trade groups, as well as some large defendants, said they would not support.
On Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., is convening a hearing on draft legislation embodying the principals the president indicated he would support. The legislation was circulated among parties with a stake in the legislation.
Insurers and industry defendants, including Exxon Mobil, Du Pont and Federal Mogul, are expected to criticize draft Senate legislation when they testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
An industry letter to Sen. Specter and other members of the Senate leadership, dated Dec. 21 but not yet released publicly, said, "Based on our recent meetings with you and the other stakeholders, it appears that the discussion draft, as currently contemplated, is unlikely to meet [the industry's basic goals]." As such, the letter adds, "should legislative language based on this draft be introduced in the Senate, we could not support it. Such an outcome would be unfortunate, given our mutual desire to move asbestos legislation to the president's desk next year."
"We believe that the current draft would not equitably resolve the asbestos litigation crisis," the letter noted.
The principles behind Sen. Specter's bill, as contained in discussion drafts circulated in late November and early December, and presumably supported by the president, include creation of a trust fund in the range of $140 billion and an alternative claims handling system based on specific medical criteria.
In earlier versions of the legislation, the insurance industry would have been expected to pay $46 billion over 27.5 years. It is expected insurers would contribute the same in the current version.
Appearing with the president was Lester Brickman, a professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York and an expert on asbestos litigation.
Mr. Brickman said that "asbestos exposure has been a national tragedy, and more than 100,000 workers have died as a consequence of asbestos exposure. But lawyers have taken this tragedy and turned it into an enormous moneymaking machine in which, as you say, baseless claims predominate."
In July, Mr. Brickman spoke on behalf of the American Insurance Association before a House subcommittee studying the issue. In his testimony, he said that pre-packaged bankruptcies designed to settle asbestos litigation in most cases result in discriminatory treatment that benefits "select group claimants" whose lawyers are most familiar with the process.
http//www.forbes.com/business/feeds/ap/2005/01/10/ap1750209.html
Several major corporations, including one forced into bankruptcy because of asbestos litigation, are opposing a plan by congressional Republicans that would ban asbestos liability lawsuits in exchange for a multibillion-dollar compensation fund.
Disharmony between business and Congress would provide a rocky start for legislation to be pushed Tuesday in a committee hearing by Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter. The Pennsylvania Republican says asbestos liability is driving companies out of business and leaving victims with little or no money for medical bills.
Asbestos is a fibrous mineral that was commonly used until the mid-1970s in insulation and fireproofing material. Its tiny fibers can cause cancer and other ailments when inhaled, but the diseases often take decades to develop.
Specter has said he favors ending asbestos liability and paying victims through a trust fund instead of having thousands of lawsuits with no end in sight. "This trust-fund approach aims to replace an unpredictable system with one that has certainty for companies and victims," Specter said in a Jan. 4 Senate speech.
But several corporations oppose the idea, including Federal-Mogul Corp. The Southfield, Mich.-based auto supplier filed for bankruptcy in 2001 because it was facing more than 365,000 lawsuits claiming hundreds of millions in damages because of asbestos. The company was drawn into the issue in 1998 when it bought several companies facing asbestos claims.
The company said in a Jan. 3 statement that the legislation won't help the economy, sick people or the companies that are being sued into bankruptcy.
"Not only will the proposed trust result in devastating economic harm to U.S. business, leaving most companies far worse off than under the existing tort system, but it will almost certainly fail to compensate most claimants before becoming insolvent," the company said in a fact sheet it sent to Congress.
Federal-Mogul said it would be forced to pay more money into the trust fund than any other - $82 million a year under a previously introduced version of the legislation. But it isn't the only business concerned about Specter's bill.
In a separate Jan. 3 letter, Exxon Mobil Corp., E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., and other corporations joined Federal-Mogul in opposing Specter's proposed legislation.
"We remain concerned that the current discussion would result in a program that would set up back rather than move us forward," the companies said. "We encourage you to consider alternate approaches."
Other business groups have supported the trust fund, including the National Association of Manufacturers.
"The best solution to the asbestos problem lies in establishment of a national, no-fault trust fund, privately financed by asbestos defendant companies and insurers," said Mike Baroody, the group's executive vice president and chair of the Asbestos Alliance steering committee.
President Bush called for Congress to find a solution last week but has not offered a specific proposal. The Senate has been trying to figure out a solution to the litigation problem for years.
Republicans say Democrats wouldn't let previous bills pass because trial lawyers don't want to lose the money they make from asbestos lawsuits. Democrats argue that the GOP bills didn't have enough money for victims and that Republicans are only trying to help their friends in the business and insurance communities by immunizing them from lawsuits.
9/11 Relic's Legacy of Health Fears, by Ray Sanchez, Newsday, January 10, 2005
http//www.nynewsday.com/news/local/newyork/columnists/ny-nysub104110374jan10,0,2205395.column?coll=ny-ny-columnists
A No. 1 train rumbled beneath the environmental disaster known as the Deutsche Bank building in lower Manhattan yesterday.
A young couple sat in the rear of the second car, the man with his right arm around the woman, she with her hand on a blue-and-white stroller carrying a sleeping child. Nearby, amid the steel-on-steel rattle, a teenage girl fiddled with her Palm Pilot. A middle-age man across from her sat reading a copy of "Charlie Wilson's War The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History."
On the street above, immediately south of Ground Zero, sits the monolithic 40-story tower at 130 Liberty St., shrouded in black netting - a grim monument to the worst terrorist attack on American soil.
A fence stands around the 1.4-million-square-foot building, unused since Sept. 11, 2001. Security guards watch for intruders. The round-the-clock buzz of electronic sensors sampling the air quality can be heard above the subway grates on Greenwich Street.
Around the corner, beneath what may be one of the most polluted places in the city, is the subway's Albany Street Fan Plant #7237. The two 200-horsepower ventilation fans, located below the sidewalk outside the Deutsche Bank building, would be used to pump fresh air into the subway during a fire.
"A combination of contaminants known to be hazardous to human health, unparalleled in any other building designed for office use, permeates the entire structure," said a damage report prepared for the building's original owner, Deutsche Bank. These include asbestos, lead, mercury, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons and World Trade Center dust.
And you thought the subway air was bad.
With the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. set to begin cleaning and contaminant removal in the coming weeks in advance of the tower's demolition, it remains unclear what, if any, steps are being taken to protect subway riders from exposure.
"You have to remember, the state's the landlord here," environmental lawyer Joel Kupferman said the other day.
Immediately after 9/11, Kupferman was one of the few people to challenge the federal Environmental Protection Agency's assurances there was no health threat to the public from pollutants dislodged by the World Trade Center collapse. He was right.
The EPA failed to warn people involved in clean-up efforts of the dangers. Kupferman believes the policy reflected the political desire to downplay the effect of the attacks and move ahead with rebuilding.
Last month, the EPA rejected state and federal requests to monitor the building's demolition and rejected an agreement to coordinate the razing of the building with various government agencies.
But Amy Peterson, the LMDC official overseeing the demolition, said Friday that the building will be cocooned and taken down painstakingly. Wrecking crews will enclose the structure, with the potentially toxic materials bagged and removed to prevent release into the air. Pumps will create negative air pressure to isolate the contaminants within the enclosed areas.
"We're going to work with the closely and the surrounding community," Peterson said. Talks with the MTA, she said, commenced about a month ago.
"There's just absolutely no way that anything could end up in the subway system," LMDC spokeswoman Joanna Rose said.
LMDC demolition plans, posted on its Web site, make no mention of protecting the Albany Street fan plant or the subway gratings along Greenwich Street. A New York City Transit spokesman said the agency was discussing demolition plans with LMDC officials. An MTA spokesman did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Dr. David Carpenter, of the Institute for Health and the Environment at SUNY Albany, said it will be virtually impossible to bring down the building without releasing dust into the air.
"When you've got something that draws air into the subway system you know damn well it's going to draw everything that comes out of that contaminated building," he said.
On Sept. 11, 2001, the Deutsche Bank building was hit by an entire section of Two World Trade Center, opening a 15-story gash and almost instantly destroying 158,000 square feet of floor space. Two bank employees were killed.
Buffeted by debris and tornado-force winds, the building lost 1,700 windows, sending clouds of dust into every nook and cranny of 130 Liberty St. A 20,000-gallon diesel-fuel tank in the basement ruptured and burned. Water used to combat the fires helped mold to spread throughout the building. Water systems were contaminated with high
counts of Legionella pneumophila bacteria.
"As far as we know, no one is doing testing of possible
penetration of contaminants or water into the subway system," Kupferman said.
http//www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/national/09rail.html?hp&ex=1105246800&
[NYCOSH reports that after this article was published, a ninth person has been found dead]
Ten months ago, government safety officials warned that more than half of the nation's 60,000 pressurized rail tank cars did not meet industry standards, and they raised questions about the safety of the rest of the fleet as well.
Their worry, that the steel tanks could rupture too easily in an accident, proved prophetic.
On Thursday, a derailment in South Carolina caused a catastrophic release of chlorine 8 people died, 58 were hospitalized and hundreds more sought treatment. Thousands of people within a mile of the accident were driven from their homes.
And last summer, a derailment in Texas caused a steel tank car to break open, spewing clouds of chlorine gas that killed three people.
The exact causes of the accidents are still under investigation. But the devastation they have wrought shows why tank cars have become an increasing concern not just to safety investigators but also to domestic security officials worried that terrorists could turn tank cars into lethal weapons.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in 2002 that Al Qaeda might be planning to attack trains in the United States, possibly causing derailments or blowing up tank cars laden with hazardous materials. And after bombings on commuter trains killed 191 people in Spain last March, security officials secretly persuaded one railroad to reroute toxic shipments that had routinely passed within four blocks of the Capitol in Washington, government officials said.
Federal authorities have been working with railroads and the chemical industry to improve security for trains. But there is still much to be done, particularly given the structural weaknesses of many tank cars, current and former federal officials say. George Gavalla, a former associate administrator for safety at the Federal Railroad Administration, said railroads had promised to beef up security when there was a credible terrorist threat.
So when such a threat arose a year ago in Las Vegas, Mr. Gavalla said, he sent an inspector there on New Year's Eve to assess the security measures in place. Those measures, he said, were virtually nonexistent.
When the inspector visited a rail yard 13 miles from the airport, he found no one watching over six tank cars with markings indicating that they might contain chlorine gas, according to a memorandum that he wrote about his visit. Two hours later, he visited another rail yard with four tank cars possibly carrying poisonous gas and they, too, were unguarded, the memorandum stated.
Finally, Mr. Gavalla said, the inspector visited a rail yard near several hotels. "None of the train crew members challenged me or even talked to me," the inspector wrote. A spokesman for the railroad administration declined to comment.
Railroad officials have said they have taken many steps to improve security. Nancy L. Wilson, a senior vice president of the Association of American Railroads, said in a statement about the same time as the inspection that the railroads had "tightened security and intensified inspections across their systems." Police forces employed by the major railroads, Ms. Wilson said, had "put into place more than 50 countermeasures to ensure the security of the industry."
Just how ruptured tank cars can endanger a community was underscored three years ago when a Canadian Pacific Railway freight train derailed just outside Minot, N.D. Five tank cars carrying a liquefied type of ammonia gas broke open, releasing toxic fumes that killed one resident and injured more than 300.
The National Transportation Safety Board, in a report on the accident released last year, said the steel shells on the five ruptured tank cars had become brittle, causing a "catastrophic fracture" that released clouds of toxic vapors. Those cars, the safety board found, were built before 1989 using steel that did not - as it does now - undergo a special heat treatment to make it stronger and less brittle. Tank cars built after 1989 use this specially treated steel.
The safety board warned that of the 60,000 pressurized tank cars in operation, more than half were older cars that were not built according to current industry standards, leaving them susceptible to rupture. And because these cars may remain in service for up to 50 years, some older ones could still be hauling hazardous materials until 2039.
Among the hazardous materials carried by the tank cars are liquefied ammonia, chlorine, propane and vinyl chloride. In most cases, chemical or leasing companies own the cars, not the railroads.
"We are required to carry this stuff," said Kathryn Blackwell, a spokeswoman for Union Pacific, the nation's biggest railroad. "We'd rather not in many cases, but this is one of the things we would like chemical companies to be responsible for."
Although the rail industry now requires that tank shells be made with the special, heat-treated steel, the safety board said that treatment alone "does not guarantee" enough protection against impact. Other manufacturing techniques should also be explored, the board said, but it cautioned that the industry and the railroad administration "have not established adequate testing standards to measure the impact resistance for steels and other materials used in the construction of pressure tank cars."
Steven W. Kulm, a spokesman for the railroad administration, said, "We have a long history of activities and actions that have improved the integrity of tank car construction." Mr. Kulm said that since 1994 accidents "have been few in number," though even one death, he added, was too many. "Tank cars are more crashworthy and puncture resistant in train derailments today than ever before," he said.
In the Texas crash last summer, the tank car that ruptured and released poisonous gas was made before 1989, though federal investigators have not yet concluded whether brittle steel played a role in that accident. The South Carolina crash involved the rupture of a newer tank car manufactured in 1993, said Richard Koch, vice president for public affairs at the Olin Corporation, a diversified manufacturing company that owned the car.
Mr. Koch said that tanker had been recertified to carry hazardous materials last June.
Railroad and chemical executives formed a task force to study the safety board recommendations, and it has been conducting crash tests on about a dozen tank cars.
Michael E. Lyden, the vice president for storage and transport at the Chlorine Institute, a trade group in Arlington, Va., said the leading companies were "working in a cooperative manner to improve the pressure vessels."
Industry officials said the group could recommend the retirement of cars made by certain manufacturers or suggest that some types of cars carry less hazardous materials.
Security experts said the recent accidents also illustrated the harm that terrorists could cause if they attacked trains carrying highly toxic substances. Some cars are also used to store chemicals at water-treatment, sewage and industrial plants.
"Whether it's an accident or Al Qaeda, these hazardous materials are very vulnerable and pose a great risk to densely populated areas," said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has pushed for greater rail security.
The danger of such an attack has been a major concern since the Sept. 11 strikes. When the United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, freight railroads placed a 72-hour moratorium on carrying some hazardous chemicals as a precaution against retaliatory strikes.
In warning in 2002 about possible attacks, the F.B.I. said "Recently captured Al Qaeda photographs of U.S. railroad engines, cars and crossings heightens the intelligence community's concern of this threat."
The fears have been most evident among local officials in Washington, some of whom have pushed for a year to ban toxic rail shipments though the capital. An expert from the Naval Research Laboratory testified last January that more than 100,000 people could be at risk of death or injury if one of the tank cars exploded there.
Federal and railroad officials have opposed a ban, saying that rerouting the shipments could lengthen transits and upset other communities.
But late last year, officials from the Department of Homeland Security told congressmen that after the Madrid bombings they had quietly asked the CSX Corporation, a leading railroad, to shift some of the shipments away from Washington, Mr. Markey said.
The officials also said they were working on a $6 million security plan that would increase surveillance of 42 miles of railroad track in the Washington area.
The District of Columbia Council rejected the proposal for a ban last November. But Kathy Patterson, a District of Columbia councilwoman, said in an interview that last week's accident in South Carolina should increase the chances that the Council would approve the ban when it reconsidered the matter early next month.
"Frankly, the horrific news out of South Carolina underscores that these really are nasty chemicals," Ms. Patterson said, "and that could make a difference with my colleagues, especially given the extent that we are vulnerable here."
Since last August, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation have been looking at whether to require greater security for toxic rail shipments nationwide. The agencies have said they are considering several possible measures, including better identification and tracking of the most toxic substances and "strengthened tank car integrity."
But Rick Hind, a toxics specialist at Greenpeace, the
environmental group, said that the best answer would be for industrial plants to
substitute less toxic substances for chlorine and other hazardous materials.
Safer technologies have emerged in some areas, Mr.
Hind said, and switching to them would reduce the sense that the plants and trains are
"a target-rich environment."
Chemical Security Review By Homeland Department May Undercut EPA Assessment, by Manu Raju, Inside EPA, January 6, 2005
http//EnvironmentalNewsStand.com
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will use a new method for assessing the risks from a potential attack on the nation's chemical plants, which Bush administration and industry officials say will undercut EPA projections that 123 chemical plants could each threaten one million people or more.
"The idea is to give a much more realistic scenario, instead of exaggerations that groups use to try to scare the public," one industry official says.
The plan comes as one of the leading congressional opponents of strict chemical plant controls, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX), this week retained his panel's jurisdiction over chemical security in the 109th Congress, preventing the issue from moving to the new permanent Homeland Security Committee, several House aides say.
The DHS method would expand upon internal estimates made last year by the department, which said just two chemical plants could affect one million people and 3,700 plants would threaten more than 1,000 people. But EPA has said 7,728 plants could pose a threat to more than 1,000 individuals and 123 facilities could endanger over one million lives.
The proponents of the DHS plan say it would establish a precise method to be used throughout the industry to determine which plants pose the greatest risks. It eventually would be used regularly to update the department on where the riskiest plants reside.
"Some work you can do intuitively and can make some reasonable estimations," says one DHS official, referring to the department's previous projections. "But do we have a consistent vulnerability assessment on chemical plants that can be used across the country? No. Eventually, we need to be there."
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) entered the long-running feud last month, releasing a report that argues new federal efforts are needed to secure chemical plants, including better data on alternatives to toxic chemicals. The report also says EPA and DHS estimates on the riskiest plants are likely to be markedly different.
"On net, the number of people at risk is generally lower in those DHS scenarios than in an EPA worst-case release, but the threat to them is likely to be greater," says the CBO report, which was conducted at the behest of Rep. Jim Turner (TX), former ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee. "Such an assessment can be of value in determining how to prioritize security efforts -- in contrast with EPA's program
purpose, which is to understand and prevent accidents."
DHS and industry officials have long criticized EPA's estimates of the nation's riskiest chemical plants, saying the Clean Air Act data used to make that projection are taken out of context and do not accurately translate into security risks.
Environmentalists and some EPA officials say the projections are accurate and based on chemical companies' own data that lay out the worst-case scenario in the event of a release, taking into account various scenarios, such as if the plume from a release blows in different directions or if emergency response personnel are unavailable, which DHS' estimations fail to do.
The department has hired the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) to develop the methodology, known as Risk Analysis and Management for Critical Asset Protection (RAMCAP), which will be finished sometime this year, the DHS official says. "The chemical sector is one of our highest priorities," the source says. ASME declined to comment on the issue.
Sources familiar with RAMCAP say the tool will take into account Clean Air Act data but also other criteria, including the consequences of disrupting the plant's "critical assets," evaluating whether there are safeguards in place and conducting an analysis to determine where security gaps exist.
The risk assessment tool, which industry will not be required to use, has already prompted criticism from environmentalists. "Their criteria is in a black box," one environmentalist says. "With EPA's [risk management program], you have a . . . methodology that industry and EPA agreed upon."
Meanwhile, the House this week passed a resolution, by a 220-195 vote, to make the Homeland Security Committee a permanent panel and expanded its jurisdiction on various issues, but left chemical security under Barton's Energy and Commerce Committee. The security panel was granted jurisdiction over infrastructure security generally, but not when it applies to a specific sector, one House Republican aide says. As a long-time ally of the chemical and refining industries, Barton's oversight over chemical security will make it harder for any such legislation to move forward in the new Congress, industry sources say.
It is unclear how chemical security legislation will fare in the Senate, since committee jurisdiction over the issue has changed for the 109th Congress. The new Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and is an expansion of the government affairs panel, is expected to take over the issue this session. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
Chairman James Inhofe (R-OK), an opponent of strict regulatory controls but author of an industry-supported chemical security bill, has said he will wait until a congressional study is completed before deciding whether to re-introduce his bill.
(c) Inside Washington Publishers
Despite Progress, Chemical Spills Persist, by Carolyn W. Merritt (Op-ed), Christian Science Monitor, January 6, 2005
http//www.csmonitor.com/2005/0106/p09s02-coop.html
WASHINGTON - Silently after nightfall, an uncontrolled chemical reaction began in a vessel holding thousands of pounds of toxic substances. Gas pressure began to build, opening a safety device designed to protect the vessel from bursting. However, the chemical plant lacked equipment to contain the release, and a cloud of unidentified gases began wafting through nearby neighborhoods.
By the time sleepy residents realized what was happening, many had been exposed. Emergency responders, lacking the proper equipment and experience, alerted residents by going door to door and struggled to help the contaminated and the sick reach the nearest hospital.
These were the actual events of April 12, 2004, in the northwest Georgia community of Dalton. But to those of us who study chemical-process safety, there are eerie similarities to the events of Dec. 3, 1984, in Bhopal, India, where an uncontrolled release of 90,000 pounds of methyl isocyanate gas from a US-owned chemical plant immediately killed several thousand residents - and ultimately thousands more - and shocked the world.
Fortunately, the gas release in Dalton was smaller and less toxic, the area around the plant was less densely settled than Bhopal, and a fortuitous rainstorm helped suppress the hazardous fumes. While 154 Dalton residents were sent to the hospital for evaluation, none died.
Nevertheless, the incident illustrates that 20 years after the Bhopal tragedy, inattention to chemical safety can still threaten the public with a devastating impact.
Are we doing enough to prevent such accidents? I have been thinking about this question a great deal since returning recently from a conference in Kanpur, India, to examine the causes and consequences of Bhopal on the 20th anniversary of the accident. The agency I head, the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), is one of Bhopal's many legacies, established by Congress to independently
investigate significant chemical accidents, determine root causes, and make recommendations to prevent future accidents.
Our investigations of major accidents provide persuasive evidence that serious safety problems still exist among some US operations that store, use, or produce chemicals. The problems often occur at smaller businesses that may lack substantial safety expertise or receive less frequent oversight from regulators. A striking example was the chemical explosion at a small signmaking company in Manhattan two years ago, which injured 36. Elsewhere, we have seen employers using untrained workers to handle highly hazardous materials, workplaces where critical safety equipment is absent or in disrepair, and emergency-response plans that leave nearby residents confused about what to do.
There have been significant regulatory changes and other improvements in the past 20 years, and both industry and government continue to look at chemical safety issues in light of the Sept. 11 attacks. Among new federal rules are chemical process safety regulations adopted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1992 and the Environmental Protection Agency in 1996. Industry has developed its own voluntary standards as well, such as the American Chemistry Council's Responsible Care program, which commits members to environmental and safety principles and community outreach. These efforts have had positive effects.
But substantial challenges remain. Not all companies join voluntary programs, and not all voluntary programs result in verifiable improvements. In addition, federal process-safety regulations still do not address the cause of many chemical accidents. Prompted by tragedies in Lodi and Paterson, N.J., in the 1990s, the CSB conducted a study of
167 serious accidents in the US involving uncontrolled reactions since 1980. The study found that more than half of these accidents involved chemicals not covered by process-safety regulations, and we therefore recommended broadening those rules.
Around the country, accidents continue to kill or injure workers, impact communities, and in some cases have the potential for wider destruction. Last April, at a plastics production plant in central Illinois, five workers were killed and others were seriously injured when flammable vinyl chloride leaked, ignited, and exploded near a production unit. An emergency system designed to suppress the vinyl chloride vapor cloud malfunctioned.
At a chlorine repackaging plant near St. Louis two years ago, a transfer hose burst and none of the plant's four automated emergency shutoff valves closed. The result was a 48,000-pound chlorine gas release, which imperiled a mobile home community. As in Dalton, Ga., neither the community nor the plant had emergency sirens or automated telephone alert systems, and firefighters had to go door to door to alert residents to evacuate.
Indeed, a common finding is that plants and local emergency response organizations often lack any effective means to notify nearby communities about major chemical accidents. Furthermore, despite increased funding for homeland security, some jurisdictions remain unable to provide firefighters and police with the training and equipment needed to respond to a toxic chemical emergency.
Sometimes it has been good fortune rather than sound planning that has prevented chemical accidents from jeopardizing lives. At a south Mississippi petrochemical complex two years ago, a massive explosion blew apart a 145-foot distillation tower, hurling heavy debris into the air and igniting fires. When CSB investigators reached the site, they found that metal debris had missed an anhydrous ammonia storage vessel by just a few feet.
Most US chemical plants are run in a safe and conscientious manner. But until all companies live up to the same high standards, we will continue to experience major chemical accidents. It is up to all firms that use and produce chemicals to eliminate known hazards, to develop and maintain a positive safety culture, and to educate customers about accident risks.
As a result of the Bhopal accident, thousands died and tens of thousands more were injured. That nightmare could have been avoided the same way accidents today can be avoided through meticulous commitment to safety at every step of the process. Twenty years after Bhopal, we owe those victims - and our own workers and communities - no less.
* Carolyn W. Merritt is chairman and CEO of the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, an independent federal agency in Washington.
Morgan Bank Is Returning to Space Downtown, by Charles V. Bagli, New York Times, January 4, 2005
http//www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/nyregion/04morgan.html?oref=login
Morgan Stanley, the investment bank that was one of the largest employers in Lower Manhattan until the attack on the World Trade Center, is returning downtown for the first time since 2001.
The bank, whose headquarters is in Times Square, is signing a deal to lease space on six floors at 1 New York Plaza, the 2.54-million-square-foot skyscraper at the foot of Water Street, according to state officials and real estate executives. In a boost for Lower Manhattan, Morgan Stanley plans to move about 1,450 employees from various locations in Midtown to the 50-story tower, beginning in June.
The move is good news for Lower Manhattan, which suffered an exodus of financial institutions after the 9/11 attack. And although a number of law firms have taken advantage of lower rents downtown, the vacancy rate has continued to inch upward.
"We're encouraged that Morgan Stanley wants to be downtown," said Charles A. Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation. "Lower Manhattan has a bright future. And it will remain the financial capital of the world."
Andrew Walton, a spokesman for the company, confirmed that Morgan Stanley was leasing 447,000 square feet of space in the building, making it the bank's second-largest office in New York City. Morgan Stanley is actually subleasing the space from Wachovia, the bank that is moving out of 1 New York Plaza this month.
About 3,700 people were employed at Morgan Stanley's World Trade Center branch in September 2001. Like many investment banks and insurance companies, Morgan Stanley quickly moved to Midtown and the suburbs. It bought the former Texaco headquarters in Harrison, N.Y., and moved hundreds of employees there.
Lehman Brothers, a downtown stalwart, abandoned the area, buying a new headquarters in Midtown from Morgan Stanley for about $700 million. Marsh & McLennan, the insurance giant, moved workers to Midtown and New Jersey. Although American Express returned to Lower Manhattan after a brief stay in the suburbs, city officials and real estate executives worried that the neighborhood would never recover as an office district.
Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley hired Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate broker, to look for expansion space. The bank eventually went downtown, unlike Lehman Brothers, which was also looking for expansion space last summer and ultimately signed a deal for 306,725 square feet at 1301 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown.
Some banks are still reluctant to consider Lower Manhattan, despite rents that are 40 percent cheaper than in Midtown. The average rent in Midtown, where the vacancy rate has fallen to 10.7 percent, is $50.29 per square foot, according to CB Richard Ellis, a real estate broker. But despite downtown rents that have slipped to $30.15, the vacancy rate is 15.8 percent and slowly rising.
Those conditions have cast a shadow over the proposed Freedom Tower at the trade center site and over 7 World Trade Center, the 50-story tower under construction on Vesey Street, where the developer Larry S. Silverstein is asking prospective tenants for $50 a square foot in annual rent.
Morgan Stanley's deal was even more enticing than the usual downtown lease, according to real estate brokers. Wachovia, whose lease at 1 New York Plaza runs until 2014, was so eager to find a tenant that it lowered the asking rent to $19 a square foot, although one person involved in the deal said the rent was in the mid-$20's.
Morgan Stanley did not even get any of the so-called Liberty Zone incentives. which are intended to encourage tenants to move to Lower Manhattan.
"It was such a good deal they couldn't ask for benefits with a straight face," one downtown landlord said.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Asbestos Claims Solution Sought Bill Would Set Up Trust Fund, Not Rule Out Courts, by Albert B. Crenshaw, Washington Post Staff Writer, January 4, 2005
http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45654-2005Jan3.html
As Congress reconvenes today, the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee will set out to accomplish what no one on Capitol Hill has been able to do resolve the question of who pays how much to whom for injuries tied to exposure to asbestos.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has circulated among interest groups a draft of a bill he hopes will become the basis of a solution for this long-running and highly contentious issue. The proposal features a trust fund, into which companies associated with asbestos would contribute billions of dollars to pay the claims of the injured, though no price tag has yet been attached. And in a new twist, it would allow victims to return to the courts if their claims were not paid or were not paid promptly.
The trust-fund approach has been tried without success.
Opponents such as trial lawyers and labor unions have objected that the funding figures under consideration -- $140 billion to $150 billion -- are too small. Defendant companies and their insurers have complained that they are too large. With neither side yielding, a trust-fund bill reported out of the Judiciary Committee under then-Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) in 2003 failed to reach a floor vote last spring.
Some insurers and companies argue that a bill would not bring "closure" to the issue, while some trial lawyers contend that protections are inadequate for the very sick and those who have been awarded compensation but have not yet been paid.
Meanwhile, 100,000 more asbestos-related lawsuits were filed in 2003, and about 600,000 claims are pending, according to the Rand Institute for Civil Justice and Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, a consulting firm. Asbestos, tiny silicate fibers once widely used in fireproofing homes, buildings and ships, can be easily inhaled. Once in the lungs, it causes a number of ailments, including mesothelioma, a rare but almost always
deadly cancer.
A Rand study last year found that corporations have paid out $70 billion for asbestos claims over the past 30 years. About 70 corporations have filed for bankruptcy protection in the face of the continuing flood of lawsuits.
The atmosphere Specter will be operating in is somewhat different than in recent years. The Republicans' majority in the Senate is stronger than it was, and President Bush has made changing the tort system one of the priorities of his second term. But that is no guarantee of success, longtime lobbyists on the issue say.
Interest groups already are lining up to fight for more money.
For instance, an organization called the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization was flying in a group of people with asbestos-related ailments to circulate on Capitol Hill today, meeting with members of Congress and pressing their case.
Co-founder Doug Larkin, who said his organization does not take money from trial lawyers or corporate groups, is doubtful about the trust-fund idea.
"There seems to be more of a history of failed funds than successful funds," since several set up by bankrupt companies have run out of money, he said, though "our organization is not ruling it out." But he said the group wants to see the right to sue preserved.
Officials on both sides of the issue said they remain far apart.
"We have no inherent objection to a trust fund as long as it is adequately funded and fair to all current and future litigants poisoned by asbestos," said Carlton Carl of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. But he said the numbers talked about before, $140 billion, are "clearly not adequate according to anybody who's looked at the issue."
Insurers, likewise, said they have reservations, especially about funding and the pace at which money would have to be placed into a trust.
Corporate interests, frustrated at the stalemate in Congress, have started trying to limit their liability in state legislatures. In Ohio, for example, a measure passed last month establishes medical criteria that may make it harder for some asbestos plaintiffs to collect.
At the same time, there are indications of growing judicial resistance to asbestos claims, particularly those brought by plaintiffs who can be accused of shopping for a sympathetic forum.
In the past month, judges in Florida and Mississippi have said they would dismiss cases when plaintiffs could not show a connection to the jurisdiction in which their suits were filed, suggesting that huge judgments may be harder to win.
And the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit last month rejected a bankruptcy plan worked out by Combustion Engineering Inc. and plaintiffs' lawyers that would have set up a trust fund for the injured and cut off further lawsuits. The court found that this kind of "pre-packaged" bankruptcy, which companies like because it ends their liability, is unfair to certain claimants.
One company that has successfully used a "pre-pack," as such devices are known, is Halliburton Co., whose DII Industries, Kellogg Brown & Root and other affected subsidiaries emerged from bankruptcy protection yesterday.
(c) 2005 The Washington Post Company
New Yorkers in Congress Expect a Budget Fight, by Raymond Hernandez, New York Times, January 3, 2005
http//www.nytimes.com/2005/01/03/politics/03york.html?hp&ex=1104814800&en=cbacf9b72fef60a0&ei=5094&partner=homepage
WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 - With Republicans here emboldened by the November election results, members of New York's heavily Democratic delegation on Capitol Hill are worried that they will be shoved to the margins when Congress returns this month to confront a host of issues that will have a direct impact on the city and state.
Conservative lawmakers, vowing to make bigger spending cuts this year than they ever did in President Bush's first term, are already eyeing some top priorities of local and state politicians, including federal money for hospitals, nursing homes, mass transportation projects and homeland security initiatives. As a result, members of the delegation say, the battles will be intense.
"In 2005, the issues will be coming at New York from every direction, and we have a less friendly Congress to deal with," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, who will nonetheless have some leverage from his new seat on the powerful Finance Committee.
Republicans increased their majority in the Senate by four seats and in the House by five seats. The political climate in Washington is such that even New York Republicans are beginning to openly acknowledge the political perils faced by New York, a largely Democratic state whose interests rarely play a role in the political calculations of national Republicans in Washington.
In fact, Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island, suggested that the nine Republicans in New York's Congressional delegation play hardball if necessary.
In an interview, he argued that New York Republicans could try to force concessions in Congress by withholding support for major programs favored by the Republican leadership in the House, where the party's majority is narrow. Those he mentioned are President Bush's proposals to overhaul both the federal tax code and the Social Security retirement program.
"Our position is tougher," Mr. King said, referring to the predicament that New York officials face in Washington. "But if we Republicans in the delegation stand together as a bloc, we can have an impact."
Republicans close to the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is up for re-election in 2005, say the new year also presents an opportunity for him to show how helpful having a Republican in City Hall can be for the city at a time when Republicans control Washington. His spokesman, Edward Skyler, seemed to refer to that recently, saying "The mayor is in a unique position to make sure our voice is heard in Washington, and he will continue to fight for New York City every chance he gets."
As far as New York lawmakers are concerned, one of the biggest issues that President Bush and Congress must grapple with is renewing a federal program that provides billions of dollars for highway and mass transit projects nationwide over several years.
President Bush and Congress failed to reauthorize the federal highway and mass transit program last fall, and it is now operating under a short-term extension that expires in several months.
The program was a casualty of a dispute between Congress and President Bush over its cost, with Congress insisting on spending billions more dollars than the president was willing to spend.
Now, there is concern among New Yorkers that the new Congress, with its decidedly conservative tilt, will be more likely to embrace the president's spending reductions, especially with lawmakers no longer facing election-year pressures to spend more money.
But city and state officials are not only worried about the ultimate size of the program. They are also concerned about a push in Congress to set aside more of that money for highway projects in the largely Republican states of the South and the West, at the expense of formulas that have long favored the aging mass transportation systems in New York, Chicago and Boston.
Mr. King, the Republican congressman from Long Island, said New York faced powerful forces in that battle, chief among them Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader.
"We'll have to fight like hell," he said.
Another major fight is likely to occur over Medicaid, the nation's largest health insurance program, covering the poor and the disabled at a cost of more than $300 billion a year to both the states and federal government.
The Bush administration is considering a wide range of initiatives to curb the growth of Medicaid spending, at the same time that Mr. Bush has pledged to cut the federal budget deficit by half in five years.
Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say the president's deficit goal is almost impossible to achieve without addressing Medicaid. But any changes to the program will have a huge impact in New York, where Medicaid provides health care to more than three million people at a cost of about $42 billion a year.
The Bush administration has not said how it intends to deal with the issue. But officials in many states, including New York, say they believe the administration will try the same approach it did in 2003, when it proposed giving each state a fixed amount of money, known as block grants, each year for 10 years, instead of basing federal payments on actual health costs and enrollment.
Both Republicans and Democrats in New York are concerned that the block grants will translate into huge cuts that, in turn, will affect poor and wealthy communities across the state. New York hospitals, nursing homes and other health care institutions have long used Medicaid dollars to help cover their overall costs.
Many New York politicians agree that the person best suited to argue the state's Medicaid case in Washington is Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican with ties to the White House who has not publicly stated where he stands on the issue.
Republicans close to the Pataki administration say, however, that the governor may be willing to embrace an overhaul of the federal program, like the block-granting approach, if it gives him the leverage to force the State Legislature in Albany to curb the rapid growth of the state's own Medicaid program.
Beyond that, New York lawmakers in both parties are planning to renew their fight to get New York City a larger share of the federal funds designated for local antiterrorism programs around the nation.
New Yorkers have long complained that the city is shortchanged because Washington has largely allocated homeland security grants in pork-barrel fashion - to localities around the country, regardless of any known threat. While the Department of Homeland Security recently shifted a larger share of its antiterrorism grants to the nation's largest cities in the latest round of financing, critics say the problem is far from solved. One main financing formula still guarantees every state a minimum amount of money, regardless of any threat. Members of New York's delegation say Congress missed an opportunity to change the federal financing system in early December when lawmakers approved a sweeping intelligence-overhaul bill sought by President Bush and the independent Sept. 11 Commission.
Representative Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from Brooklyn, said Republican leaders, at the last moment, stripped from the final intelligence bill two provisions that had bipartisan support among lawmakers from New York and other localities considered likely targets for terrorist attacks.
The first would have allowed localities like New York City to use homeland security dollars to cover the overtime costs of police officers used on antiterrorism initiatives. The second would have created a formula that seeks to assure that federal security dollars are directed to localities where the threat of a terrorist attack is perceived to be greatest.
Mr. Weiner said he and others were planning to propose these measures once again. But he acknowledged that they faced hurdles. "There are going to be a dozen different skirmishes on things that fell out of the intelligence bill at the last minute," he said. "And the outcome will mean a lot of money for New York City, one way or the other."
Finally, New York officials intend to push Congressional leaders to allow the city and state to use $2 billion in Sept. 11 aid to help build a $6 billion rail link connecting the World Trade Center site to the Long Island Rail Road and Kennedy International Airport, a project advocated by Governor Pataki.
Both the White House and the Senate have already signed off on a plan that would pay for the rail project with unused parts of a multibillion-dollar tax-incentive package that Washington allocated in 2001 to help spur redevelopment of Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attack.
But the plan has stalled in the House, where Republican budget hawks, increasingly concerned about the growing federal deficit, are reluctant to redirect the unused money to the rail link project.
Mr. Schumer said the support of the White House and the Senate may, in the end, quiet the protests coming from the House. "While the House is against it," he said, "I don't think they will make it their last stand."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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