City
Struggles to Contend with Widespread WTC Cough, By Laurie Garrett, NY
Newsday, 9/30/2
First of two stories
Physicians in the city have made it clear: The malady now officially called World Trade
Center cough is like nothing they've ever seen, and hundreds - perhaps thousands - of
people are experiencing it.
The extent of this lung disease is not known, and for a combination of bureaucratic
reasons, the extent of the human health impact may be understated. Moreover, cleanup
efforts may be inappropriately focused on a single element of the debris: asbestos.
The ailment, as described recently by Dr. Kerry Kelly, the New York Fire Department's
chief medical officer, is characterized by a reduced lung capacity and a hyper-reactivity
of the airways to inhaled particles, bacteria and viruses. The cough is dry and
nonproductive and can leave the sufferer gasping for air.
As physicians sought to pin down the ailment's causes, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency was monitoring Ground Zero and lower Manhattan for chemicals and substances that
violate the Clean Air Act. It has become clear, though, that the cough's causes have
little if anything to do with those substances. Rather, the culprit appears to be
microscopic bits of glass.
Satellite images shot by NASA throughout Sept. 11, 2001, depict the plume of dust, toxins
and debris drifting directly from Ground Zero southeastward, blanketing a portion of
Brooklyn. Hospitals there have reported increases in respiratory complaints.
In Brooklyn Heights, Dr. Tucker Woods was running the emergency room of Long Island
College Hospital on Sept. 11 when, he recalls, the staff handled a "huge influx"
of respiratory cases. "And I personally this year have seen a real increase in asthma
complaints and chronic bronchitis," Woods said. "It's World Trade Center cough;
absolutely new cases. And it's also a worsening of old, chronic respiratory cases."
Even mild forms of the cough can severely aggravate existing conditions. Anne, 33, a
Broadway actress who asked that her last name not be used for fear of endangering her
roles in musical theater, was home in Park Slope on Sept. 11. Three years ago, she was
diagnosed with a mild case of asthma, which, she said, had been controlled with the
aerosol medication albuterol.
On the morning after the terrorist attack, she awoke "feeling my chest was tight,
sort of heavy. So I stood up to cross the room and get my albuterol, and I passed
out." She hobbled to her neighborhood emergency room for treatment to clear her air
passages.
In November, she found herself gasping for air when she contracted the flu. At New York
Methodist Hospital, the otherwise healthy actress required several hours' treatment to
restore normal breathing.
In its more extreme form, WTC cough has debilitated otherwise healthy men and women,
according to physicians who have treated them.
Like sea anemones that ball up when touched, the airways of these patients recoil from
microscopic foreign objects and constrict. It is possible, Kelly and other physicians
said, that these people are permanently injured and will suffer more respiratory problems.
At the Sept. 9 New York Academy of Medicine conference, where authorities confirmed the
cough's existence, Mount Sinai School of Medicine occupational health specialist Dr.
Steven Levin said he has treated more than 1,000 people who worked in the Ground Zero area
last fall. "It is our impression that many have developed inflammatory responses, and
that not so many are really fully well," Levin said. "I have very few patients
who in fact have returned to pre-9/11 levels of lung function."
Levin's clinic has identified sinusitis, laryngitis and new-onset asthma in the workers,
in addition to the extreme World Trade Center cough.
"What you have downwind [in southeastern Manhattan and Brooklyn] are people with
variable susceptibility. And we can't predict who the susceptibles will be," Levin
said in an interview. It is predictable, he argued, that vulnerable people - workers,
residents and commuters - who inhaled Ground Zero air last fall will suffer health
problems.
The New York City Department of Health has found little in its air and home sampling to
explain the syndrome, Assistant Commissioner of Health Dr. Jessica Leighton said. Only 1
percent of sample sites in lower Manhattan were "above EPA standards" for
asbestos or other legally controlled air pollutants.
Indeed, EPA spokeswoman Bonnie Bellow said even in the hours after the Twin Towers
collapsed, New York City air "did not exceed national air-quality standards." On
only one late September day did the city's air appear unhealthy, according to the EPA's
legal criteria.
"That's not at all to suggest there wasn't a huge amount of dust," added Mary
Mears, another EPA spokeswoman.
That may be the point, according to scientists: The chemicals or asbestos for which air is
tested may not be to blame.
Environmental health expert Lung Chi Chen of the New York University School of Medicine
is a member of a team analyzing dust, debris and air samples collected last fall. Chen
agrees with the EPA that there was very little asbestos in the debris; indeed, the city
Department of Health stopped asbestos installation in the very earliest stages of trade
center construction. However, the clouds contained microscopic shards of glass, much of it
coated with contaminants such as soot, bacteria, mold and human cells. Additionally,
pulverized concrete was highly alkaline or rife with metallic elements.
Normally, the human lung tends to be an acidic environment, with a pH of around 5 to 7.
The debris on Sept. 11 had a pH ranging from 9.2 to 11.5. Even a hyperventilating
individual suffering from severe anxiety, the normal cause of alkalosis of the lung,
rarely runs a pH of higher than 7.7.
The human lung has a mechanism called the "mucous escalator," in which
irritating particles trigger a response called complement, which releases large amounts of
mucous. The mucous surrounds the troubling particles, which are then coughed up. In
response to extreme pH, coupled with glass and other irritants, airways constrict and the
mucous that usually encases toxins and allows them to be expelled isn't effective. A dry,
nonproductive cough is the result.
Dr. Sonia Buist of Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Ore., has studied the
impact of the 1981 eruption of Mount St. Helens on the lungs of Oregon loggers who worked
seasonally in the area in the next five years. The ash they inhaled, like the World Trade
Center debris, was high in ground glass. They experienced lung irritation, and symptoms
varied according to the content of the ash breathed, Buist said. Most were restored to
full health because the particles were cleared from their lungs.
The Mount St. Helens analogy has its limitations, however. Volcanos produce very acidic,
not alkaline, material. Further, Buist found that glass fibers coated with contaminants,
as in World Trade Center debris, were harder to clear from the lungs.
Dr. Marc Wilkenfeld of the Columbia University Health Sciences Division said he believes
the WTC debris was "frankly corrosive" and may have damaged human lung cells in
a more direct fashion. He noted that a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
study of city firefighters found that most WTC cough victims also suffered
gastrointestinal tract irritation, the result of swallowing airborne debris. That finding,
he argued, is a sign of corrosive damage to the gastrointestinal tract.
All of this puts health officials in a tough position. Within days of Sept. 11, EPA
Director Christie Whitman said the city's air was safe - a position a spokesman later
clarified to mean that the air did not contain dangerous levels of asbestos or other
normally tested toxins. The EPA has maintained that position, and all testing and cleanup
operations have focused on a small part of Manhattan, below Canal Street, and a short list
of substances, chiefly asbestos.
If testing this fall in lower Manhattan shows "there is anything to indicate we
should go outside that area," Bellow said, then residents from other parts of the
city who place their names on an EPA list before Oct. 3 may be notified. Residents outside
that zone can call 877-796-5471.
So far, no residents above Canal Street or in Brooklyn have been ruled eligible for such
federal services as apartment cleaning as a result of residential or occupational
exposure, Columbia's Wilkenfeld said.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan), who has criticized the EPA's response to air-quality
concerns, said the agency's focus on lower Manhattan is "entirely, completely
arbitrary. There's no scientific basis to it."
Nadler said starting last fall, he asked the EPA to expand its testing so the area of
focus could be based on scientific criteria.
"In January, I said, 'Get a satellite photo. See where the plume went.' And the EPA
said, 'There are no satellite photos,'" Nadler said in an interview. "And when I
saw the NASA photos in Newsday [Aug. 23], I was livid, because I was lied to."
"That is not true," the EPA's Bellow said. "He was not told that. We would
have no reason to tell the congressman that they didn't exist when they did."
TOMORROW, in Health & Discovery:
The Scope of WTC Respiratory Ailments
FEMA Extends Air Filter Program, by Grahan Rayman, NY Newsday, 9/30/2
The FEMA program that reimburses for air
filters, purifiers, vacuums and air conditioners purchased by those affected by the World
Trade Center attack was scheduled to end today but has been extended to the end of
January.
While the city's 3.2 million households are eligible to seek reimbursements for $1,600 in
such expenses, just 1,744 air conditioners, 2,821 air purifiers, 1,680 vacuum cleaners and
2,128 air filters have been purchased through the program, the largest portion in
Manhattan, officials said.
Facing a backlog of more than 35,000 pending applications, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency program was extended at the recommendation of the state, which covers
one-quarter of the cost, officials said.
It began as a response to concerns about dust contamination in homes and businesses as a
result of the collapse of the Twin Towers.
Reimbursement for the household items is only one piece of the broad assistance available.
The larger program covers expenses for transportation, housing, personal belongings,
medical or dental costs and funerals.
As of Sept. 18, the state Department of Labor said 65,741 people had applied for aid
available under the program, with 8,233 receiving $10.1 million in all.
The average grant was $1,227, but figures show the reimbursement for household items was
not widely tapped. But that could change, given the extension.
"We have to go through a vetting process, but we're trying to reduce the caseload as
quickly as possible," said Robert Lillpopp, a Labor Department spokesman. "We
feel that in the end, the percentage of people who are approved will be greater than at
the beginning of the process."
Some observers blame the program for the low participation rate.
"The whole idea that people had to go out and buy a vacuum cleaner first and bring in
a receipt was a bureaucratic labyrinth," said Joel Kupferman of the New York
Environmental Law and Justice Project. "The problem was a maldistribution of
benefits, and they overlooked the most important needs."
LaVerna Bradley, 71, of Alfred E. Smith Houses on the Lower East Side, could not readily
leave her apartment to buy the equipment, as she has nagging pain in her arms and legs,
and her husband, Arthur, has Parkinson's disease.
"I got the filters and it took two months, but I didn't get the vacuum and I didn't
get a new air conditioner," she said. "Someone delivered the filters. I'm just
not able to get out to get those other things. I still have dust in the apartment. I think
that's what's bothering my throat."
Lillpopp said the program has been well advertised, and up-front grants are available to
hardship cases. He noted that the Labor Department distributed 500,000 palm cards and put
up 10,000 posters in English, Chinese and Spanish, informing residents of how to apply. It
also ran full-page ads, he said.
Top Stories
Best Analysis Of WTC
Collapse May Never Be Made Public, NY1, 9/30/2
The most sophisticated and detailed
analysis of how and why the World Trade Center towers collapsed may never made public,
according to a published report.
The New York Times reports engineering experts have created three-dimensional computer
models and assembled rare photographs and videos as part of an insurance lawsuit. The
Times says the evidence for the trial far exceeds the efforts of government agencies to
explain why the twin towers succumbed.
Larry Silverstein, the lease-holder of the trade center, commissioned the study as part of
his federal suit against his insurers that seeks double payouts worth $7 billion by
arguing the impact of the two hijacked airliners counts as two separate terrorist attacks.
The information is covered by a confidentiality agreement, as is typical during the
discovery phase of litigation. And if the case is settled before trial, the analysis may
be sealed indefinitely or even destroyed.
Vast Detail on Towers' Collapse May Be Sealed, by James Glanz and Eric Lipton, NY Times, 9/30/2
hat is almost certainly the most sophisticated and
complete understanding of exactly how and why the twin towers of the World Trade Center
fell has been compiled as part of a largely secret proceeding in federal court in Lower
Manhattan.
Amassed during the initial stages of a complicated insurance lawsuit involving the trade center, the confidential material contains data and expert analysis developed by some of the nation's most respected engineering minds. It includes computer calculations that have produced a series of three-dimensional images of the crumpled insides of the towers after the planes hit, helping to identify the sequence of failures that led to the collapses.
An immense body of documentary evidence, like maps of the debris piles, rare photos and videos, has also been accumulated in a collection that far outstrips what government analysts have been able to put together as they struggle to answer the scientifically complex and emotionally charged questions surrounding the deadly failures of the buildings.
But everyone from structural engineers to relatives of victims fear that the closely held information, which includes the analysis and the possible answers that families and engineers around the world have craved, may remain buried in sealed files, or even destroyed.
Bound by confidentiality agreements with their clients, the experts cannot disclose their findings publicly as they wait for the case to play out. Such restrictions are typical during the discovery phase of litigation. And as it now stands, the judge in the case — who has agreed that certain material can remain secret for the time being — has approved standard legal arrangements that, should the lawsuit be settled before trial, could cause crucial material generated by the competing sides to be withheld.
"We're obviously in favor of releasing the information, but we can't until we're told what to do," said Matthys Levy, an engineer and founding partner at Weidlinger Associates, who is a consultant in the case and the author of "Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail" (Norton, 2nd edition, 2002).
"Let's just say we understand the mechanics of the whole process" of the collapse, Mr. Levy said.
Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband, Richard, when the south tower fell and who is a member of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, said the information should be disclosed. "If they have answers and are not going to share them, I would be devastated," Mrs. Gabrielle said. "They have a moral obligation."
The lawsuit that has generated the information involves Larry A. Silverstein, whose companies own a lease on the trade center property, and a consortium of insurance companies. Mr. Silverstein maintains that each jetliner that hit the towers constituted a separate terrorist attack, entitling him to some $7 billion, rather than half that amount, as the insurance companies say.
As both sides have prepared their arguments, they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars acquiring expert opinion about exactly what happened to the towers.
Dean Davison, a spokesman for Industrial Risk Insurers of Hartford, one of the insurance companies in the suit, said of the findings, "There are some confidentiality agreements that are keeping those out of the public domain today." He conceded that differing opinions among the more than 20 insurers on his side of the case could complicate any release of the material.
As for his own company, whose consultants alone have produced more than 1,700 pages of analysis and thousands of diagrams and photographs, Mr. Davison said every attempt would be made to give the material eventually to "public authorities and investigative teams."
Still, some of that analysis relies on information like blueprints and building records from other sources, like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which built and owned the trade center and supports Mr. Silverstein in the suit. Mr. Davison said he was uncertain how the differing origins of the material would influence his company's ability to release information.
In a statement, the Port Authority said access to documents would be "decided on a case-by-case basis consistent with applicable law and policy," adding that it would cooperate with "federal investigations."
The fate of the research is particularly critical to resolve unanswered questions about why the towers fell, given the dissatisfaction with the first major inquiry into the buildings' collapse. That investigation, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was plagued by few resources, a lack of access to crucial information like building plans, and infighting among experts and officials. A new federal investigation intended to remedy those failings has just begun at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, an agency that has studied many building disasters.
Officials with NIST have said it could take years to make final determinations and recommendations for other buildings, a process they now acknowledge might be speeded up with access to the analysis done by the consultants on the lawsuit.
Gerald McKelvey, a spokesman for Mr. Silverstein, said of the real estate executive's own heavily financed investigative work, "We decline to comment other than to say that Silverstein is cooperating fully with the NIST investigation." A spokesman for the agency confirmed it was in discussions with Mr. Silverstein on the material, but said no transfer had taken place.
With no shortage of money or expertise, investigations by both sides in the legal case have produced a startling body of science and theory, some of it relevant not only to the trade center disaster but to other skyscrapers as well.
"The work should be available to other investigators," said Ramon Gilsanz, a structural engineer and managing partner at Gilsanz Murray Steficek, who was a member of the earlier inquiry. "It could be used to build better buildings in the future."
Legal experts say confidentiality arrangements like the one governing the material can
lead to a variety of outcomes, from full or partial disclosure to destruction of such
information. In some cases, litigants who paid for the reports may make them public
themselves. Or they may ask to have them sealed forever.
"It is not unusual for one party or another to try to keep some of those documents
secret for one reason or another, some legitimate, some not," said Lee Levine, a
First Amendment lawyer at Levine Sullivan & Koch in Washington.
Mr. Levine said that because of the presumed value of the information, the court might look favorably on requests to make it public. But the uncertainty over the fate of the material is unnerving to many people, especially experts who believe that only a complete review of the evidence — not piecemeal disclosures by litigants eager to protect their own interests — could lead to an advance in the federal investigation of the trade center.
"It's important for this to get presented and published and subjected to some scrutiny," said Dr. John Osteraas, director of civil engineering practice at Exponent Failure Analysis in Menlo Park, Calif., and a consultant on the case, "because then the general engineering community can sort it out."
The scope of the investigation behind the scenes is vast by any measure. Mr. Levy and his colleagues at Weidlinger Associates, hired by Silverstein Properties, have called upon powerful computer programs, originally developed with the Pentagon for classified research, to create a model of the Sept. 11 attack from beginning to end.
The result is a compilation of three-dimensional images of the severed exterior columns, smashed floor and damaged core of the towers, beginning with the impacts and proceeding up to the moments of collapse. Those images — which Mr. Levy is not allowed to release — have helped pinpoint the structural failures.
The FEMA investigators did not have access to such computer modeling. Nor did the FEMA team have unfettered access to the trade center site, with all its evidence, in the weeks immediately after the attacks. But no such constraints hampered engineers at LZA/Thornton-Tomasetti, brought to the site for emergency work beginning on the afternoon of Sept. 11. Daniel A. Cuoco, the company president and a consultant to Silverstein Properties on the case, said he had assembled detailed maps of the blazing debris at ground zero in models that perhaps contain further clues about how the towers fell.
Though the FEMA team could not determine "where things actually fell," Mr. Cuoco said, "we've indicated the specific locations."
Mr. Cuoco said he could not reveal any additional details of the findings. Nor would Mr. Osteraas discuss the details of computer calculations his company has done on the spread of fires in large buildings like the twin towers. Mr. Osteraas has also compiled an extensive archive of photographs and videos of the towers that day, some of which he believes have not been available to other investigators.
And the investigation has not limited itself to computers and documentary evidence. For months, experiments in wind tunnels in the United States and Canada have been examining the aerodynamics that fed the flames that day and stressed the weakening structures.
Jack Cermak, president of Cermak Peterka Peterson in Fort Collins, Colo., was retained by the insurance companies but had previously performed wind-tunnel studies for the original design of the twin towers nearly 40 years ago. For the legal case, Dr. Cermak said, "we've done probably more detailed measurements than in the original design."
"The data that have been acquired are very valuable in themselves for understanding how wind and buildings interact," Dr. Cermak said. "Some of the information may be valuable for the litigation," he said, adding, "I think I've told you all I can."
After
Demolition of Diner, Owner Vows He'll Return,
fter the World Trade Center buildings collapsed just
four blocks from George Koulmentas's diner, he was back slinging hash browns as soon as
the authorities allowed. When business in Lower Manhattan slowed after the attack, he had
to stop keeping the place open 24 hours a day — but still, he kept it open.
But after he noticed a crack in an exterior wall on Saturday morning and called the Fire Department, the building, at 89 Greenwich Street, was torn down within 24 hours, and the diner Mr. Koulmentas had owned for 22 years was no more.
In any other part of town, Mr. Koulmentas's plight might warrant only a passing mention, but the sight of his building in wreckage, all twisted steel and rubble, took on an eerie quality so near ground zero.
"I am not quitting here," Mr. Koulmentas said as he watched insurance agents, contractors and subway engineers scurry around the diner in the hours before the wrecking crews arrived. "We are here to stay."
Mr. Koulmentas said that while he had owned the diner for years, he bought the building only a couple of weeks ago. Amid soaring office towers, his little two-story brick building sat inconspicuously on the corner of Rector and Greenwich Streets.
While the cause of the structural damage is unknown, Ilyse Fink, a spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings, said the site was inspected after Sept. 11, just like all the other buildings in the neighborhood. No problems were found. But when the department was alerted Saturday to the condition of Mr. Koulmentas's building, they inspected it and deemed it structurally unsound. As a precaution, she said, they checked nearby buildings but found no problems.
Subway service on the 1 and 9 lines, from the Chambers Street to the South Ferry station, which resumed only two weeks ago, was suspended for part of the weekend as a precaution against further damaging the building. There was no way to know if the vibrations from the subway, which runs nearby, caused the damage, transit agency and city officials said. There is also a lot of construction on the surrounding streets that could have played a role.
"I noticed the crack for the first time this morning," Maria Koulmentas, 25, said on Saturday as she stood outside her father's condemned diner. She said that when they noticed the problem, they cleared the restaurant of customers and waited for the Fire Department. "Seconds after they got here, they told us to get out," she said.
Ms. Koulmentas said that while she was sad to see the diner torn down, it was a blessing that no one was hurt. "It is better they take care of it and are safe," she said.
The Koulmentas family is from Kalamata, Greece. Ms. Koulmentas said her father came to America when he was a child and loved his restaurant. The operation was a family affair, with Ms. Koulmentas and her brothers all working in the diner, called George's and Sons.
Eleni Koulmentas, 30, who married into the family, said the diner was like a second home. "It's so sad," she said.
Tourists visiting ground zero wandered by the building after it was torn down, and some snapped pictures. Neighbors, meanwhile, recalled the diner fondly but did not express any concern about their own buildings' safety.
"I'm not worried," said Robin Bourlon, who lives just across Greenwich Street from the diner. She said she got a fabulous deal on her apartment, which she moved into only a month ago, and had no intention of leaving.
Anastasia Boboris, 25, said she would drive in from Long Island to eat at George's and visit with the Koulmentases, with whom she was friendly. "They had the best hamburgers in the whole city," she said.
If Mr. Koulmentas has his way, he will soon be cooking hamburgers on the same spot. He said he could take the money and leave, since he was insured, but felt a sense of duty to rebuild downtown. "This is my city, my home," he said. "I want to pass it on to my kids."
You Should
Have Seen the Air in '53
dry, wheezing, watery-eyed cough became common. The
number of emergency room visits climbed, and the theaters in Times Square went dark for
lack of business. Smoke and haze drifted across the region.
Lower Manhattan after Sept. 11? No. It was November 1953, in the middle of a six-day siege of air pollution that fouled the region with a ferocity unimaginable by the standards of today's far cleaner air. Through one bad week, a stagnant stew of soot and lead and who knows what else killed or hastened the death of 25 or 30 New Yorkers a day, according to an analysis conducted years later.
Many people have probably forgotten how bad the good old days really were. But some historians, environmentalists and public health experts say that in thinking about Sept. 11 — and the broad consequences that are emerging for public health, government regulation and the science of air pollution monitoring — turning back the clock can be a revealing exercise.
November 1953 was a very important moment, in part — and here's where the apt comparison to Sept. 11 comes in, the experts say — because it illuminated in full fumbling glory how little science knew. Air researchers in those days were not even sure what to call the stuff that had descended on the city, let alone what health impact it had. (They tried the word "smaze," to describe the combination of smoke and haze, but it never caught on; smog had more punch.)
But within a generation of those first smog crises in New York and Los Angeles, the federal Clean Air Act had encoded into law not only the standards about what was safe to breathe, but how government could enforce the rules on the public's behalf.
Similarly, scientists after Sept. 11 have come up with a huge array of evidence suggesting that most residents of Lower Manhattan who were not directly involved in the rescue or recovery work at ground zero have little reason for long-term concern about their health. But the same doctors and researchers have been forced to acknowledge that because Sept. 11 was so starkly different from any past event, their reassurances are approximate, based on standards and comparisons that do not provide an exact fit.
Most of the horrors of New York's environmental past, they say, like the grim air episodes in 1953, 1962 and 1966, were chronic and cumulative. Sept. 11 was sharp and sudden, but for most residents at least, relatively brief. Most past events had a thousand sources and causes — a vague diffusion of responsibility that made no one responsible. Sept. 11 had one source and one cause: the smoking, reeking, dust-blown ruins of the World Trade Center.
"There are chronic disasters that dwarf 9/11, but this is the largest acute environmental disaster to ever befall New York City," said Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, chairman of the department of community and preventive medicine at Mount Sinai in Manhattan.
Dr. Landrigan and other experts say that because most pollution research has focused on chronic day-after-day exposure, hard knowledge about the health consequences of intense brief pollution encounters is a hole in the medical library. Before Sept. 11, it never really came up. He and other experts stress, however, that the anecdotal evidence is very strong for things like asbestos that brief exposures hardly ever result in disease, and that, judging by air test results, most residents were probably only minimally exposed, if at all.
But the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christie Whitman, told a Senate committee this week that her agency was still, a year later, trying to come up with indoor residential air quality standards so that contractors who began testing apartments in Lower Manhattan this month could know how to interpret what they found.
The pattern, public health historians say, is unmistakable — watch for those moments when knowledge hits the wall, then stand back. Things will change.
"We are constantly building worlds that end up being dangerous, and all the turning points in public health are the times when we realize that," said David Rosner, a professor of history and public health at Columbia University. "This is one of those moments."
Just this week, for example, state environmental regulators in New York announced that the construction vehicles involved in rebuilding Lower Manhattan would be retrofitted to burn low sulfur diesel fuel to reduce air emissions. The idea, which had been pushed for months by groups like Environmental Defense and the American Lung Association, arose in part from a scientific fumble last fall by researchers who attributed some high pollution levels downtown to the smoldering ruins at the trade center. Reworking through the data, they found that the ordinary diesel trucks idling in the street waiting to haul away the debris were the real cause.
But not just science hit a bumpy patch after Sept. 11. Many Lower Manhattan residents have simply refused to believe the results from the hundreds of thousands of air samples that were taken in the months after the attack. The vast majority of the tests showed that even as close as a few blocks from ground zero and within a few days of the attack, things like asbestos were barely detectable.
One resident of Little Italy who came to a public hearing earlier this month at Borough of Manhattan Community College to listen to the medical community talk about the disaster's aftermath cheerfully said she did not believe a word of it. The doctors, she said, had been corrupted by pressure from property owners who feared a collapse in real estate values. And so another wall emerged, and perhaps another cycle of history: If the air pollution victims in 1953 were in the dark because they couldn't know, some Manhattan residents now are perhaps just as in the dark because of what they cannot accept.
Some environmentalists say that people are right to disbelieve — not because science failed them, but because government officials did in communicating what scientists did not and could not know.
"The public would have understood the inability to answer health questions with certainty if it had been openly and fully discussed," said Eric A. Goldstein, a senior lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based conservation group. "But the response after Sept. 11 was more of the Soviet style, to deny there was a problem."
Mr. Goldstein said that he definitely saw a wave of environmental reforms emerging from the disaster. A crucial one that his group will work for is to make sure that independent scientists are included from the beginning in the assessment of any future disasters — not because government scientists will lie or are incompetent, he said, but because their conclusions will not matter if no one believes them.
Other researchers say that broad shifts in how society thinks about the environment are unlikely to emerge from one event — even one of the magnitude of Sept. 11. The beginnings of the environmental movement in the 1960's and 1970's, they say, were tied to a whole raft of forces, as was the general decline of the issue as a social and political force in the 1980's and 1990's.
"Generally during times of wealth and security, environmental concerns tend to drop," said Michael D. Mehta, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada who studies environmental attitudes.
Wealth and security are hardly the words that most people would use to describe the world after Sept. 11, and Professor Mehta thinks the end of the 1990's culture — in lifestyles and economics — and the awakened connections between the environment and public health that have emerged after Sept. 11 in New York will eventually mark a turning point.
"I don't think it's quite arrived yet," he said. "But Sept. 11 contains the seed."
Seen
as Safety Net, 9/11 Program Is Anything But, By David W. Chen, NY
Times, 9/28/2
he financial assistance program in New York State that
officials described as a kind of ultimate safety net for those who lost their jobs or had
their property damaged because of the World Trade Center disaster has given grants to only
a small fraction of the people who applied. Indeed, program officials admit they have not
even reviewed more than half of the nearly 73,000 requests for aid that they received in
recent months.
Officials involved in the effort, known as the Individual and Family Grant program, said they had approved only 10,100 grants, and had yet to examine about 37,000 applications for emergency help. The average grant they had made was roughly $1,040 — far short of the nearly $15,000 apiece that state officials had said would be available to applicants.
Both those figures — the number of approvals and the money distributed — fall below the rate and size of awards made by other states that have run similar joint programs to address emergencies in recent years, according to federal government statistics.
And in a measure of the program's troubles, seven members of New York's Congressional delegation this week beseeched officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency — administrators that they have criticized for months, calling them slow and incompetent in their relief efforts — to take over the grant program's effort because the state is "ill-equipped" and "ill-prepared" to continue. FEMA finances 75 percent of the grants that the state approves.
State officials yesterday defended their performance, saying many of the backlogged requests had come in over the summer. Robert M. Lillpopp, a spokesman for the State Department of Labor, which administers the program, said that it was vital that the department verify the legitimacy of claims. He said the department had reviewed the applications more speedily at first and before the deluge of summer requests. Mr. Lillpopp suggested the criticism from Democratic lawmakers in Washington concerning the program was politically motivated.
A spokesman for Gov. George E. Pataki, who had announced the creation of the program in the weeks after the attack, did not return several calls for comment.
Some people who applied to the state program, however, said they experienced a mix of near-comic confusion and even hostility.
David Katzoff, who lost his personal computer in the collapse of the trade center, said he was erroneously offered a free steam cleaning of his apartment — on the Upper East Side. When he pointed out the mistake to officials, he said, his application was rejected two weeks later.
Ilona Kloupte, a business analyst who designs software for fixed-income trading operations, received little of what she requested, even though she submitted photographs and receipts of all the personal property that had been destroyed in her Battery Park City apartment.
She said she cut short her search for help after she was asked for a letter from a doctor stating that she wore glasses, as well as a letter from her employer stating that she needed a computer for business.
"I said, `This is not Bangladesh; this is the United States of America,' " said Ms. Kloupte, recalling a conversation with a Labor Department caseworker. "You are asking people who are financial professionals, who live in New York, who work on Wall Street, to provide written documents that you use your computers for work? What century are they living in?"
The response to victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, including government programs and private charitable efforts, has for a year produced a blend of great generosity, extraordinary effort and repeated problems with inefficiency and duplication.
In a certain sense, the state's program was offered as a kind of antidote to the confusion and frustration wrought by other efforts. Mr. Pataki, in announcing the program, said it was set up for those who felt abandoned, overwhelmed or excluded from the other relief efforts.
Initially, FEMA asked state officials to allow its administrators to run the program, said Brad Gair, FEMA's federal recovery officer in New York. But New York officials declined, confident of their experience handling upstate disasters.
In a Sept. 19, 2001, news release, Linda Angello, the state labor commissioner, said, "The State Labor Department is prepared to take whatever steps necessary to help New Yorkers recover as quickly as possible and return stability to their lives."
In the trade center disaster, the grant program was expected to cover home repairs and the replacement of personal property, along with reimbursement for air purifiers, vacuums and air-conditioners that needed replacing. It would also make grants to help people who had lost their jobs with transportation costs as they sought new employment.
But from the outset, the program had problems, according to applicants and lawmakers. Many applicants have questioned the state's insistence that they be rejected for a loan by the Small Business Administration in order to qualify. Others have complained that the documentation requirements are too onerous, since federal regulations say that "families do not have to provide real or property estimates or receipts."
"Our members have reported very spotty results, and a lot of confusion and miscommunication on the part of the administrators," said Kevin Curnin, a lawyer and co-founder of the From the Ground Up foundation, a coalition of nearly 300 small businesses in Lower Manhattan.
By April, seven months after the attack, the program had received 17,000 requests for assistance, but had granted only 3,500. Then came the summer, when a surge of applicants from Chinatown and other parts of Lower Manhattan sought reimbursement for air purifiers or the replacement of air-conditioners that coughed up dust. Many people were also given inaccurate information, via misleading advertising, that they would receive a new air-conditioner at no cost, Mr. Lillpopp, the Labor Department spokesman, said.
"They found themselves way behind in their ability to process," Mr. Gair, the FEMA official, said of the state's efforts.
As of yesterday, the New York program had offered $10.5 million to applicants, for an average of $1,039 per claim. By contrast, in the 27 different disasters in 23 states in the 2001 fiscal year, similar state-federal efforts averaged $16 million per disaster, and $2,586 per claim, according to federal statistics, with a 55 percent approval rating.
"Of all the problems we've seen in the delivery of aid, the failures of I.F.G. program are really the worst," said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Manhattan Democrat.
Recently, FEMA has pitched in to assist by taking over the state grant program's help line, contributing 150 employees and scanning 15,000 receipts and other documents to relieve the backlog of mail that had piled up in Albany. As a result, the grant program program processed 4,000 cases last week.
Two weeks ago, Mr. Pataki requested that the program's deadline of Sept. 30 be extended to Jan. 31. But on Thursday, state and federal officials announced that they had sliced two months off that request, to Nov. 30, because one year had been enough time to get reimbursed.
Pataki
Orders Strict Controls on Pollution in Rebuilding, by Richard
he Pataki administration said yesterday that it would
require the construction equipment at the World Trade Center site to adhere to strict air
pollution controls — a move that environmentalists and Democrats had called for all
year.
Diesel-powered construction machinery like cranes, backhoes and bulldozers put out many times more pollution, per gallon of fuel burned, than diesel trucks or, in many cases, power plants that burn diesel oil. The State Department of Environmental Conservation said yesterday that it would order government agencies and private contractors to take steps to reduce some emissions by well over 99 percent, through the use of ultralow-sulfur diesel fuel, for example, and emission controls like particle traps and catalytic converters in exhaust systems.
"The steps that New York is committing to now are going to make the Lower Manhattan reconstruction a national model of clean construction techniques," said Andrew Darrell, New York regional director of Environmental Defense, one of the groups that had pushed Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, to adopt the rules. He said similar rules had been adopted for only a few other projects around the country.
Sheldon Silver, the Democratic Assembly speaker, said that he and others had asked the governor to take these steps at the beginning of the year, and that an opportunity had been missed to prevent significant pollution during the digging-out phase of the recovery. "While I am pleased that the governor has finally taken action, I cannot understand why it took him so long to take this step to protect the health of those who live, work and attend school in Lower Manhattan," Mr. Silver said.
The fuel requirement will be phased in over a few weeks, officials said, while the emission controls are likely to take a bit longer. Some construction is under way at the trade center site, particularly on transit lines, but other activity is at a lull now.
"These kinds of heavy diesels emit more fine particulate matter than cars, trucks and power plants combined," Mr. Darrell said.
Under federal regulations, the diesel fuel sold for vehicles used mostly on roads cannot contain more than 500 parts per million of sulfur. But the fuel for construction equipment and other nonroad diesels can be as high as 5,000 parts.
The Pataki administration will require that the machinery at the trade center site burn diesel with just 15 to 30 parts per million of sulfur.
Sulfur is the main source of particulate pollution, or soot, that contributes to asthma and other lung diseases, and it is a major contributor to acid rain. The smokestack controls will reduce both soot and nitrogen oxides, major sources of smog and acid rain.
NY1 For You
NY1
For You: Episcopal Charities Helps Downtown Intern With Medical Bills, Susan Jhun, 9/27/2
Although there's a lot of
concern about the effect air quality has had on those in downtown Manhattan since
September 11, 2001, there's no way to tell whether it's caused certain health problems,
and that has left one woman in a bind. NY1’s Susa Jhun tells us how "NY1 For
You" was able to help her.
After an eight-month internship downtown, Columbia University graduate student Romona
Jennings says she's come away with two things: experience, and a pile of medical bills.
“I interned there three days a week, and the air quality for, I would say the first
month and a half, was pretty much smelling fires burning,” Jennings says.
That's because Jennings’ internship started in September, 2001. And while she wasn't
on the job on September 11, she was back at work on Wall Street only a week after the
disaster.
Around mid-October, Jennings started to feel sick. Thinking she had a common virus, she
went to the school doctor, who gave her an antibiotic. She says she felt better for a few
weeks, but in November she became ill again.
“I couldn't sleep because if I wasn't coughing up phlegm,” she says. “I had
this dry, hacking cough, and if I didn't have a dry, hacking cough I had a fever. There
were a couple of times in December where I would throw up and I couldn't keep my food
down.”
Jennings says she went back to the school doctor twice, but couldn't get an appointment.
She says she contacted her internship advisor at Columbia to ask for advice and was simply
told to use her two sick days.
The intern continued to come down to her job on Wall Street, breathing the smoky air while
suffering from persistent respiratory pains. Eventually, after no luck getting an
appointment with the school doctor, Jennings went to a health clinic near her home. The
doctor treated her for a respiratory infection.
”My health improved, and I got so much better,” she says.
But her insurance only covered a portion of her medical bills. Recently graduated, with
large student loans and struggling to find work in a slow economy, Jennings couldn't pay
the remaining amount. She reached out to several charities for help, but came up dry. Then
she contacted "NY1 For You."
NY1 turned to Episcopal Charities, which offered to cover Jennings’ medical bills of
almost $400. Although Episcopal Charities doesn't have the financial resources of larger
charities, it continues to work with clients on a referral-only basis.
“We're trying to make sure that those clients that fall through the gaps from other
charities are getting covered, when we can assume that they're being honest with us and
their medical caregiver is fairly certain that their injuries are related to September
11,” says Peter Guidities of Episcopal Charities.
On top of helping with her medical bills, Episcopal Charities is meeting with Jennings,
who now has a Masters Degree in social work, about a possible job. NY1 will let you know
what happens.
A Green Ground Zero, by Amanda Griscom and Will Dana, The Nation, 9/23/2
The debate over how to redevelop the World Trade Center site has revolved around several key concerns: the commercial interests of the real estate industry, the public’s desire to embolden Manhattan’s skyline with exciting architecture and the historic obligation to memorialize thousands of lost lives. As we continue to address and balance these concerns, let’s also seize the chance to reclaim Ground Zero in the spirit of the twenty-first century, showcasing one of today’s most inspiring and politically meaningful industrial movements: the revolution in clean energy.
Imagine for a moment that the structures surrounding the memorial will be sheathed in an invisible skin of electricity-producing solar cells. During the day, while electricity demand is peaking, the buildings will silently, automatically produce energy. No power plants or transmission lines necessary. No greenhouse emissions. No need for oil, coal, natural gas or nuclear energy. No risk of blackouts. No spiking electricity prices. Computer and phone networks, elevators, clocks, air conditioners and ATMs will all run simply, cleanly, like a crop of corn or a grove of trees, on sunlight. (The complex will be connected to the grid, drawing electricity when necessary – at night or on cloudy days – and pumping power back in when it creates a surplus.)
These high-tech buildings will supply all the services and comforts of a traditional commercial or residential complex but require less than half the electricity because of their green design features: super-insulated walls and windows; highly efficient appliances and lighting, heating and cooling systems; and a motion-sensing laser system that will automatically switch off lights and equipment when not in use. Whereas the original World Trade Center complex guzzled nearly 100 megawatts of electricity on peak days, with associated emissions, the new complex will be a net-zero-emission development. Moreover, this mini-El Dorado of energy independence and its surrounding neighborhood will be designed to have minimal need for cars and trucks. Once there, visitors will be in the greatest walking neighborhood in the world. The three airports, Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark, will be connected by train to the downtown terminal, making it an easy commute. An expanded network of ferries connecting lower Manhattan with Brooklyn, Queens, New Jersey and uptown will provide a fast and pleasurable way to get around. The heart of lower Manhattan will be knitted together by a clean, quiet street grid restored for use by pedestrians alone.
“From both a technological and cost standpoint, this scenario is entirely possible,” says Ashok Gupta, an energy economist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Solar systems, fuel cells and energy-efficiency measure have already been implemented in the design of several skyscrapers in Manhattan, including the Condé Naste building at Times Square and the residential tower at Battery Park currently under construction. As clean-energy technologies become rapidly more sophisticated and affordable, a large-scale application at Ground Zero would galvanize their acceptance in the marketplace. As for transportation, fuel-cell-powered buses and taxis may be too expensive today, but already they’re technologically feasible. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) and the Port Authority have approved additional rail connections for commuters beneath the new complex; they are also considering plans to depress the West Side Highway for a more pedestrian-friendly environment, and to add new ferry lines at Battery Park and on the East River.
The opportunities are real, but they can’t be realized without leaders. Yet neither Governor George Pataki, site developer Larry Silverstein nor Mayor Bloomberg has expressed much interest so far. “Mr. Silverstein isn’t really thinking about this,” says his spokesperson. “It’s just too early to get bogged down in these kinds of details.” Pataki’s office expressed a similar lack of initiative, saying the issues are important but not yet a priority. Alex Garvin, vice president of planning for the LMDC, was more assertive in his commitment: “We plan to establish standards for sustainability and green technology that architects will be not only encouraged but required to meet. But we can’t get started on this now; it’s too early to determine the details.”
Prominent green architects disagree. Robert Fox, senior principal of Fox and Fowle, the architecture firm that designed the Condé Nast building, says planners should adopt the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system, the gold standard for sustainable building practices. “Now is the time to address this, at the beginning of the planning process,” stresses Fox. “Sustainability measures must be incorporated into every aspect of the design, from the infrastructure of the water, sewage and electricity systems to the external PV-integrated paneling.”
It’s a safe bet that the public will support much, if not all of the larger zero-energy vision. In addition to the LMDC, two coalitions – Civic Alliance, representing more than 100 institutions, and New York New Visions, representing dozens of local architecture firms – have endorsed principles for downtown re-development that promote sustainable design and clean energy. Furthermore, there’s impressive evidence that supports the use of clean-energy systems: Richard Perez, a scientist at SUNY Albany who’s been tracking sunlight in New York City for more than ten years, has found that the average amount of sun that hits the city annually is only 12 percent less than that in cloudless Tucson.
Right now the Pataki administration is considering a proposal to limit power-plant emissions of carbon dioxide 30-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. Building a zero-energy complex and a state-of-the-art transportation system would advance these goals and address the mounting crisis of global warming, while making a clear statement about America’s commitment to energy independence. Since September 11 many energy experts have called for a massive, government-funded research project, a “Manhattan Project of alternative energy” to alleviate our dependence on foreign oil. The opportunity for such an initiative now lies at the foot of Manhattan. Nothing would be more appropriate for a memorial to a traumatic past than one that points us in the direction of a sustainable future.
ARRISON, N.Y., Sept. 27 — Two federal agencies
identified weaknesses today in the emergency plan for the Indian Point 2 nuclear plant,
but concluded that the plan was more than adequate for protecting the public from a
nuclear accident.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission outlined their preliminary findings during a crowded public meeting at the Westchester County Airport here, three days after observing an elaborate drill in which scores of Indian Point workers, state and county agencies, police officers and radiation technicians in four counties responded to a mock leak of radioactivity.
Officials of the two agencies criticized a breakdown in communications among the drill participants that resulted in inaccurate and outdated information being released about the make-believe accident. At the Joint News Center, which was set up at the airport for press briefings, emergency officials mistakenly announced at one point during the drill that no radioactivity had been released when, according to the script, it had been. The officials corrected themselves later.
The federal officials also noted mistakes in some of the messages broadcast through the emergency public alert system, and raised questions about a variety of procedures and evacuation issues, including whether rail-freight service and toll collection would be suspended in an emergency.
But on the whole, the federal officials emphasized that state and county emergency workers were able to successfully order a simulated evacuation of residents within a 10-mile radius of the plant. "We are confident that all of the issues and problems identified at the Joint News Center can be fixed through planning, procedural changes and additional training," said Joe Picciano, FEMA's acting regional director in New York.
Today's findings are bound to fuel the opposition to the Indian Point plant, in Buchanan, about 40 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. Since the World Trade Center attack, many local officials and residents have called for the closing of the plant, saying that its emergency plan does not address the possibility of a terrorist attack and rapid dispersal of radioactive material, among other things.
The intense public scrutiny turned a routine drill, held every two years, into a larger test of whether Indian Point could operate safely. In August, Gov. George E. Pataki hired James Lee Witt, a former FEMA director, to review the safety of communities near Indian Point and other nuclear plants.
State Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a frequent critic of Indian Point, accused the federal agencies today of bowing to political pressure and playing down the problems revealed by the drill. "There is a sort of genteel cover-up going on," he said. "They spoke with great clarity about the things that went well. On the things that went wrong, they shrugged, they winked, they grinned."
But Michael Beeman, a FEMA spokesman, said that federal officials were still in the process of evaluating the drill and would release a detailed report within 90 days with notes on areas needing improvement.
Larry Gottlieb, a spokesman for the
Federal officials have evaluated emergency drills at Indian Point and other nuclear plants since the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island. Besides the daylong drill, FEMA officials also conducted 40 interviews with bus drivers, hospital workers, school officials and others with roles in the Indian Point emergency plan.
Communication problems are hardly new for Indian Point. The first emergency drill for the site, in March 1982, was marred by a failure of several warning sirens and a telephone hot line. The nuclear commission even threatened to shut down the reactors unless emergency preparations were improved, but later dropped the threat.
The most recent emergency drill at Indian Point, in November 2000, involved the Indian Point 3 reactor. At the time, FEMA officials identified 26 minor weaknesses, among them not releasing information in a timely manner. Nearly all of those were later corrected, Mr. Beeman said.
The Red Cross -- what jerks !!
Top Stories
NY1
For You: Engineer Injured In WTC Attacks Still Needs Help With Surgery Costs, Susan Jhun, 9/25/2
After a year out of work, engineer
Bobby Hall is struggling to make ends meet.
While working for ABM Engineering at the World Trade Center on September 11, Bobby was
injured in Tower One.
“We were going to our shop to make a call and find out what the first explosion was
and the place just came apart on us,” Bobby said. “What we found out later was
the hot wind was the number 50 freight car falling from the 88th floor and it just came
into the area where we were and just blew us back out into the parking lot.”
Hall returned home later that day in a state of shock. Realizing his right hand was
injured, his wife took him to a doctor.
“They X-rayed it and they told me it would need surgery to be repaired,” Bobby
said.
Bobby was operated on, but the nerve damage was so severe it was impossible for him to
return to work without further surgery. And while he waited for the second surgery, his
mortgage, homeowner's insurance, car and student loan bills were piling up.
“I just don't know what we're going to do as far as our monthly bills,” he said.
“Do we start selling off the things we own that we worked so hard to get?”
He said he did receive two cost of living gifts from the Red Cross' family gift program.
And in December, the Red Cross notified him it was extending the program for a full year.
Bobby thought this meant he'd be receiving a third gift, but when he called the Red Cross
to find out when it was coming, he was told he wasn't eligible.
“The Red Cross criteria that needed to be met was a seriously injured person that
spent 24 hours in the hospital,” he said. “I didn't spend 24 hours in the
hospital.”
Although he didn't spend the night, Hall did go to the hospital and he did receive major
surgery. But he says the Red Cross still doesn't consider him an injured applicant.
“I don't understand why Bob would not meet the requirements,” said Maryanne
McCann-Hall, Bobby's wife. “He is, in my opinion, seriously injured. He's had one
major surgery and he's scheduled to have a second major surgery. He's been out of work for
a year and they still consider that not serious enough.”
After the Halls contacted "NY1 For You,” NY1 called the Red Cross and asked why
he didn't qualify, especially since he did qualify for the first two grants as a
"seriously injured" applicant. A spokesperson told NY1 that the criteria for the
first two was much more lenient and since Bobby was not in the hospital for 24 hours, he
doesn't qualify.
The spokesperson went on to say the Red Cross is continuing to work with the Halls to meet
their needs and has set up a meeting with them for next week. In the meantime, Bobby and
his wife say they are facing financial ruin.
“I'm still out of work. I'm not looking to make any money off of them, I'm just
looking to survive,” he said. “I don't want to go into bankruptcy because I was
injured at the World Trade Center. I want to try and get on with my life here.”
NY1 will keep you updated on this story.
Fortune
Small Business: Struggling Businesses Face Taxes On 9/11 Aid, Rita Nissan, NY1, 9/25/2
SEPTEMBER 25TH, 2002
Small businesses still
hurting from the World Trade Center attacks may take another financial hit as the IRS
decides whether to tax the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants given out
after September 11, 2001. NY1's Rita Nissan has reaction from the businesses still
struggling to survive.
The clock tells the story. It's just before noon. The pasta is cooked. The muffins are
baked. The chairs are empty.
No one is buying lunch at Charlys.
“It's really devastating for me to come here and see lunchtime with no people,”
said Steve Zamfotis. “Nobody is here. It's heartbreaking.”
Charlys, a deli right across from the World Trade Center, was badly damaged in the
September 11, 2001, attacks. It took nine months to re-open. Insurance money and a $14,000
federal grant helped a little. But now, the IRS said it's deciding whether the grant money
will be tax exempt.
“That's absolutely ridiculous,” Zamfotis said. “They should've given us a
lot more and it should be non-taxable.”
There are similar reactions across Lower Manhattan, where the government has given out
$772 million in aid to small businesses. As it stands, Downtown businesses will have to
pay federal income taxes on the assistance that has been doled out so far. Cash-strapped
business, many of which have already spent all their aid, could have to return nearly a
third of their grant.
“We are just glad we are getting some grants,” said Steve Wu of Chameleon
Comics. “The tax thing is just another thing to worry about.”
“If you are going to give money to the businesses that suffered Downtown,’ said
Joel Kopel of William Barthman Jewelers, “you need to give the money without any
strings attached.”
Richard Cohn, of South West NY restaurant said that facing an additional tax burden
“could make the difference between some business staying open and other businesses
going out of business.”
The small businesses are getting some support from Washington. Senators Chuck Schumer,
Hillary Clinton and Rep. Carolyn Maloney have taken up the issue, lobbying the Treasury
Department to do away with the taxes. If that doesn't work, they say legislation may be
the next step.
They point out that other disaster aid is not taxed. Besides, the businesses who feel they
got too little money in the first place said this could force them to close.
“I don't know how long we are going to keep going,” said Zamfotis. “We
can't keep losing money.”
The IRS says it hopes to reach a decision soon.
Meanwhile, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he too wants the IRS to do away with the taxes and
will lobby the Treasury Department.
“We'd like to do everything we can to help small businesses and keep taxes down. If
the federal government has to do it, they have to do it,” said Mayor Michael
Bloomberg Wednesday. “I don't think that's going to be a deciding thing as to whether
or not a small business comes to, stays in or succeeds in Lower Manhattan.”
Downtowners
request more time for aid, By Timothy J Burger, NY Daily News, 9/25/2
WASHINGTON - People worried that their lower Manhattan homes are contaminated by dust from
the destruction of the twin towers pleaded with the feds yesterday for more time to apply
for a cleanup program.
"There is still a great deal of anxiety among residents regarding the type of pollutants that entered the atmosphere," Madelyn Wils, chairwoman of Community Board 1, told a panel headed by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Federal Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman told Clinton she may be willing to push back the Oct. 3 deadline - it has already been extended once - but said the city has not made a formal request.
City Environmental Protection Commissioner Christopher Ward would not say whether the Bloomberg administration would make that request.
In a written statement, he said the city would "continue to work with the EPA to ensure full participation in the cleanup program."
The EPA's office and residential dust cleanup program stretches from Canal St. to Manhattan's southern tip. This month, officials in Brooklyn also faulted the EPA for not expanding its testing to neighborhoods right across the river from downtown.
The agency created the program in May to help fund cleanup and testing of homes socked by the debris dust cloud. It assists in testing and even the purchase of heavy-duty vacuums. Information is available by calling (877) 796-5471 or by going to the Web (www.epa.gov/wtc).
Wils said that the concerns of people living in the neighborhood have gotten less attention because most officials outside of New York are more focused on firefighters and rescue workers. "Because we're more like bystanders or survivors, I don't think we've captured that same kind of respect," she said.
EPA Says Toxins Near WTC
Low, But Emissions Persist: EPA, By Pete Bowles, NY Newsday, 9/25/2
The amounts of toxins in cleaned apartments and offices near the World Trade Center site
are low and well within public health guidelines, according to a study released yesterday
by the American Lung Association of New York City.
But the study confirmed the fears of local residents that the concentration of diesel
emissions from construction trucks and backup generators in lower Manhattan is "quite
high."
"The equipment that was rolled in expressly to help this city rebuild and heal is, in
fact, contributing to long-term health concerns," said Peter Iwanowicz, the
association's director of environmental health. "The pollution from these engines is
poisoning us and contributing to the incidence of respiratory illness today and in future
generations," he added.
The association recommended that all equipment and vehicles running on diesel fuel be
supplied with low-sulfur fuel to reduce the diesel emissions. New York City Transit
currently runs all of its buses on low sulfur fuel and is installing filters as well.
Diesel exhaust particles are known to exacerbate allergies, trigger asthma episodes and
decrease lung function and can cause cancer with prolonged exposure, officials said.
The study, which tested air samples at two apartments and two offices in May, found little
evidence of very fine particles from the collapse of the trade center once the spaces had
been cleaned according to Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. The sites were
checked for particles of silicon, sulfur, vanadium, nickel and lead.
"We knew that large amounts of very fine particles, which can get deep into a
person's lungs and cause serious health problems, were released from the super-hot WTC
collapse piles," said Thomas Cahill, head of an air-quality research group at the
University of California, Davis, who took part in the study.
"Our new analysis shows that in the sites we tested, those very fine particles either
never penetrated the indoor spaces or were effectively removed by professional
cleaning," he said.
The EPA announced in May that it would clean the apartments of area residents worried
about lingering debris from the site.
Feds taxing WTC grants, By Greg Gittrich, 9/25/2
Cash-strapped businesses trying to hang on in lower Manhattan expect to take another
financial hit - this time from the IRS.
Every penny of the $772 million in federal grants being given to struggling small businesses near Ground Zero is taxable, the Daily News has learned.
"This will put more people out of business," said Meyer Feig, president of the World Trade Center Tenants Association, a coalition of 80 companies that were in the twin towers.
"They say here's a $20,000 grant, here's a $30,000 grant. It never entered into my mind that it would be taxable," said Feig, head of Intera Corp., an information technology firm.
The IRS has been reviewing the matter but has not declared the grants tax-free, agency spokesman Kevin McKeon said.
Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, both New York Democrats, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney are furious about the hidden costs and have been lobbying the Treasury Department to do away with the taxes.
"This is Uncle Sam giving with one hand and taking away with other," said Schumer. "We are going to push the IRS to not tax them. If that doesn't work, we will introduce legislation."
Maloney (D-Manhattan) said it's "ridiculous to consider these recovery funds as taxable income."
"All sorts of disaster relief aid is exempted from taxation," she said. "So the argument that these funds might be any different makes no sense."
The tax hit varies significantly depending on how much grant money a business has received since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Feig used his situation as an example.
"Say you got about $70,000 in grants, which doesn't begin to cover all your losses. ... Now you have to pay back about 35% of that money in taxes," Feig said. "The bureaucratic machinery is so slow. I don't know if it's going to be fixed by March 15 when [businesses] have to pay taxes."
Kevin Curnin, legal counsel for From the Ground Up, a nonprofit group that helps small businesses, said taxing the grants violates the spirit of the federal aid.
"This makes recovery much more difficult," said Curnin, a lawyer with the firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan.
The federal money is being distributed through the state and city economic development corporations. When asked, both agencies confirmed the money is taxable. But state officials said they have asked federal Treasury Department officials to make changes.
"We are hoping to get a favorable response. If not, I will take this up with senior officials at the Treasury," said Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corp. "This is such an extraordinary situation, and hopefully the Treasury will take another look at it."
FBI scorned terror
tips, By Greg B.
Smith, NY Daily News, 9/25/2
The FBI received at least four warnings that terrorists were training in U.S. flight
schools, but the bureau repeatedly dismissed them, a congressional committee was told
yesterday.
The revelations were the latest evidence that the country's intelligence agencies failed to detect the airborne terror threat before Sept. 11 despite specific warnings.
The most striking example of field agents trying to alert Washington to the danger was an exasperated Minneapolis supervisor arguing in August 2001 that he wanted an investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui "to make sure Moussaoui didn't take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center."
A headquarters official responded, "That's not going to happen. We don't know he's a terrorist. You don't have enough to show he is a terrorist. You have a guy interested in this type of aircraft - that is it."
Two agents were sent to Moussaoui's Airman Flight School in Minnesota to investigate, including one who had been sent to the same school two years earlier to check on someone identified as Osama Bin Laden's personal pilot. The agent said he had forgotten about the connection.
In a fourth day of congressional hearings into the pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures, staff director Eleanor Hill said, "No one will ever know whether a greater focus on the connection between these events would have led to the unraveling of the Sept. 11 plot."
The Senate Intelligence Committee focused yesterday on the so-called Phoenix memo, a July 2001 memo from the FBI's Phoenix office that noted a large number of Middle Eastern men - some with terrorist ties - enrolling in local flight schools.
The FBI has been harshly criticized for ignoring that warning.
But the committee revealed yesterday that the FBI booted three other warnings between 1998 and 1999 about terrorists training in flight schools.
In 1998, an Oklahoma City agent noticed Middle Eastern men enrolled in local flight schools and wrote to a superior that the training might be linked to "planned terrorist activity."
"Light planes would be an ideal means of spreading chemical or biological agents," he wrote. His memo was sent to the bureau's Weapons of Mass Destruction unit and forgotten.
Later in 1998, the FBI received information "that a terrorist organization might be planning to bring students to the U.S. for training at a flight school."
And in 1999, the FBI was tipped again that a terrorist group was going to send recruits to U.S. flight schools for training.
When the 1999 warning arrived, FBI headquarters sent a communique to 24 field offices requesting an all-out investigation.
"To this point, there is no indication that the FBI field offices conducted any investigation after receiving this communication," Hill said in her report.
Until yesterday, U.S. officials said the FBI had no reason to connect the subjects of the Phoenix memo to any of the hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
But the committee revealed that the FBI now believes one of the men the Phoenix FBI referred to was associated with hijacker Hani Hanjour, who flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
As senators heard the new disclosures about missed clues and lack of coordination by federal agents, they voted 90 to 8 for a wide-ranging independent commission to investigate other pre-Sept. 11 actions. The House of Representatives voted earlier to create such a commission, and President Bush has agreed to accept one.
Few of Those Eligible Register for Cleanup Help Near 9/11 Site,