http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/national/nationalspecial/16enviro.html

The Environmental Protection Agency could suspend any law governing air, water or land in responding to Hurricane Katrina under a measure introduced Thursday by the chairman of the Senate environment committee.

The legislation, which drew immediate criticism from environmental groups, would create a 120-day period in which the agency's administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, could waive or modify laws if it became ''necessary to respond in a timely and effective manner'' to a situation created by the storm.

 The proposal would allow changes in law at the discretion of the Bush administrator in consultation with the governor of ''any affected state.''

''This legislation is purely about providing E.P.A. the clarity and certainty it will need down the road to ensure a timely and effective response,'' said Bill Holbrook, a spokesman for the chairman, Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma.

Mr. Holbrook added, ''As Administrator Johnson indicated yesterday, there are a number of uncertainties remaining, and we, as well as the administration, do not want those uncertainties to delay actions that affect people's health.''

The proposed legislation was introduced shortly before President Bush addressed the nation from New Orleans, outlining his vision for rebuilding areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, where floodwaters have left enormous areas of environmental degradation.

Mr. Inhofe's legislation could make it easier for those efforts to proceed by setting aside laws and regulations that ensure that environmental standards for air and water quality are met. Already this week, the E.P.A. temporarily relaxed standards for diesel fuel to help Gulf Coast refineries return to normal levels of production and distribution.

But the ranking member of Mr. Inhofe's committee, Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont, an independent who usually votes with Democrats on environmental issues, said Mr. Johnson told members of the committee on Wednesday that he did not believe that environmental laws and regulations inhibited the agency's ability to clean up the mess caused by the hurricane.

''Based on the administrator's response, I am opposed to a blanket waiver for environmental laws,'' Mr. Jeffords said in a statement, adding, ''We should be focusing our energy on protecting the health and safety of people impacted by the hurricane, not paving the way for environmental abuse.''

Environmental groups, who routinely oppose Mr. Inhofe's approach to environmental policy, described his measure as an inappropriate response to the storm and an easy rationale for the agency administrator to grant waivers to states far from the directly affected areas.

Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust, called the legislation ''a blank check to ignore crucial health and environmental protections'' across the country.

Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said suspending laws might make sense ''in very limited emergency circumstances.''

But Mr. Clapp said he feared that the measure could invite other states to argue that they, too, have been affected by the hurricane and need to relax environmental laws for their benefit. Already, Mr. Bush has declared 41 states disaster areas as a result of the storm.

Mr. Clapp said California, for example, could argue that its rising gasoline prices and growing numbers of evacuees were reasons enough to claim an impact of the storm and seek waivers.

''These are waivers that would swallow environmental laws nationwide,'' he said. ''The measure is just way too broad.''

For now, Mr. Inhofe's measure has no companion bill in the House. No one on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles much of the House's environmental legislation, had proposed a similar bill.

Correction: September 17, 2005, Saturday An article yesterday about proposed legislation to relax environmental standards during the cleanup of Hurricane Katrina misstated the name of the environmental group whose executive director, Frank O'Donnell, opposed ''a blank check to ignore crucial health and environmental protections.'' It is the Clean Air Watch, not Trust.

Sep 15 - According to rules enacted by the Bush administration, the hailstorm of criticism targeted at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be spread to the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Though FEMA's director at the time, Michael Brown, has been widely blamed for the glacial and inadequate federal response to Katrina, December 2004 protocols put in place by the Department of Homeland Security clearly show Brown's boss, Michael Chertoff, was technically in charge from the beginning.

According to the National Response Plan, enacted to coordinate the federal handling of terrorist attacks or natural disasters, primary responsibility for coordinating aid and support to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina sat squarely on the shoulders of the Homeland Security secretary. A DHS memo from Chertoff shows that he did not put Brown in charge until two days after the hurricane slammed into Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

The National Response Plan, which was enacted by DHS under a presidential directive, plainly outlines the chain of command for local, state and federal agencies when dealing with a large disaster. In cases in which "resources of State and local authorities are overwhelmed and federal assistance has been requested," the plan designates the DHS secretary as the "principal Federal official" for "domestic incident management."

Officials in the three most-affected states requested federal assistance for dealing with the hurricane before the storm struck, which, according to the Plan, would have automatically placed Chertoff in charge of "coordinating Federal resources utilized in response to or recovery from" Katrina as early as Saturday, August 27.

But, according to a memo from Chertoff, obtained by Knight Ridder news service, the DHS secretary did not declare Katrina an official "incident of national significance" until Tuesday, August 30, even though the Response Plan says that any time state officials are overwhelmed and ask for federal assistance, "national significance" status should be declared.

In that same memo, Chertoff passed responsibility of "principal federal official" for managing the disaster off to Brown, the head of FEMA at the time, who has since resigned. The "principal federal official," according to the Response Plan, must coordinate all other federal agencies in the government's relief operations.

By order of the president, that responsibility falls on the DHS secretary. According to an analysis by The NewStandard, nothing in the Plan or in the presidential directive that the Plan stems from indicates that Chertoff had the authority to pass that responsibility off to Brown, or any other official. By doing so, Chertoff put Brown, who already was managing FEMA, in charge of coordinating the efforts of the Departments of Defense, Transportation, Health, and Commerce, among others.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Bush administration has dramatically centralized the nation's emergency response capabilities. In March 2003, the administration put FEMA, the premier agency for responding to national disasters, under the Homeland Security umbrella in order to bring a "coordinated approach to national security from emergencies and disasters – both natural and man-made."

Nine months later, the National Response Plan was enacted, laying out the protocols and lines of authority for coordinating and dealing with disaster preparation and relief. But it appears that government officials did not put the Plan into effect when the governors of the states slated to be hit by Hurricane Katrina asked for federal help.

© 2005 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.

The report, which was done at the request of local members of Congress, criticized the federal Department of Health and Human Services for suspending its efforts last March after screening only 394 of the estimated 10,000 federal workers who responded in an official capacity to the tragedy.

It said the federal program "accomplished little" by starting late - a year after efforts to monitor state and local responders - and ending early. Though $3.74 million had been provided to the department, the report said, only $177,977 was spent on examinations.

As a result, federal workers, including F.B.I. agents and forensics experts, might never have received a diagnosis or treatment for asthma or other ailments that have affected some Sept. 11 responders.

After reading the report, which will be publicly released today, several members of Congress and doctors who work with Sept. 11 veterans said that its findings confirmed what they had already witnessed. They said it showed that there is more to be done in monitoring the disaster's impact on public health.

"It's important scientific information," said United States Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat who represents most of Manhattan's East Side and parts of Queens.

Ms. Maloney and Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, requested the investigation that led to the report.

Ms. Maloney added: "If you don't monitor, you don't know if there's a problem. We have to get the response right for 9/11, because it sets the precedent for other natural disasters."

The Department of Health and Human Services did not return calls yesterday seeking comment. The report said that federal health officials told investigators that they closed the program because they lacked a comprehensive list of eligible federal workers.

Another problem, they said, was that the department did not have the authority to help people who responded to ground zero but later left their federal jobs.

"There were also concerns," the report said, about what actions "clinicians could take when screening examinations identified problems."

The last explanation - that screeners were not sure how to handle illnesses they diagnosed - has particularly galled doctors who work in the other federally financed screening programs, all of which offer free screenings. Dr. Stephen Levin and Dr. Robin Herbert, co-directors of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program, which has examined roughly 14,000 rescue workers and volunteers at Mount Sinai Medical Center, said that they faced a similar problem.

Dr. Levin said that without money for the screening treatments that started in 2002, and with hundreds of patients lacking health insurance, the program sought private donations and developed a roster of experts at area hospitals.

The Fire Department's screening program, which monitors about 15,000 firefighters, created a similar network.

By the time the federal program started, Dr. Herbert said, "There were enough other programs out there that could have provided assistance."

"No one," she continued, "ever came to us for help with treatment and referral issues."

Federal agents who worked at what they still refer to as "the pile" said yesterday that they were outraged by the department's decision to eliminate screenings.

Federal workers were ineligible for examinations at Mount Sinai or elsewhere, according to the report, and some turned to their own doctors for help, said Richard J. Gallo, president of the New York City Chapter of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. Others did without.

"Federal agents are left twisting in the wind," Mr. Gallo said. "You just do not know the long-term health implications of what happened and what the agents went through."

New York State employees who worked at the trade center site were also subject to bureaucratic delays, the report found. The state's program, responsible for National Guard troops and state employees who helped with the recovery effort, stopped providing examinations in November 2003, after screening about 1,700 of the estimated 9,800 state workers who responded to the disaster.

State officials told investigators that the program was stopped "in part because the number of responders requesting examinations was dwindling," the report said.

Those seeking help did not receive an alternative location until more than a year later, when they were told they could visit Mount Sinai for screening. Even now, the report said, the state has not informed the 1,700 workers it examined that they are eligible for continued monitoring.

Given the patchwork of care, some veterans of the Sept. 11 recovery effort have begun to call for a centralized screening program for all workers and volunteers who toiled at the site.

Dr. Herbert, for one, is tired of turning people away.

A report by the Government Accountability Office found that the health-screening program conducted only about 400 exams, a small fraction of the thousands of federal employees who worked on the hazardous debris pile in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The GAO's findings were to be presented Saturday at a special congressional hearing in New York City, but the hearing was postponed. The agency is expected to release the findings Monday; The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report on Saturday.

The federal worker screening program established by the Health and Human Services Department "has accomplished little, completing screenings of less than 400 of the thousands of federal responders," the GAO determined.

The study was requested by Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-Manhattan, who have for years complained that the federal government has not shown the necessary attention to possible long-term health problems from work at ground zero.

It has been known for some time that the government cut short the federal worker screening program, but the GAO report suggests that part of the reason for that may have been uncertainty about what to do with the results.

"Officials told us they were concerned about continuing to provide screening examinations without the ability to provide participants with additional needed services," the report stated.

As was discussed at last night’s Community Board 1 World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee Meeting, installation of the scaffolding will begin early next week. The cleaning of the building will take place this fall and the structure will begin to come down early next year. Deconstruction will take about one year.

The Governor as well as LMDC President Stefan Pryor and Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center Executive Director Charles Maikish reiterated that the safety of neighborhood residents is our number one concern, and a comprehensive air monitoring program and emergency action plan has been put in place. During the project, 12 air monitors will be in place on and around the building. The plan approved by the regulatory agencies can be viewed on the LMDC website at: http://www.renewnyc.com/plan_des_dev/130Liberty/default.asp

For Immediate Release: September 8, 2005

(05101) New York, NY ­ After months of leading a concentrated federal, state and local agency review of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s (LMDC) plans to deconstruct the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has accepted the final plan to first clean up and then take down the building. Throughout the process, EPA, the New York State Department

of Labor, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the New York City Department of Buildings, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have worked to ensure that the building would be deconstructed following procedures that protect people’s health.

"We now have a plan that calls for the precautions needed to ensure that the deconstruction of 130 Liberty is done safely and in a way that protects the health of area residents and

workers," said Regional Administrator Alan J. Steinberg. "We have worked diligently with our fellow regulators and LMDC to make sure the deconstruction project was well planned. Now we can take an important step forward in rebuilding Lower Manhattan."

The Agency began its review of portions of the plan on December 13, 2004 and submitted its first formal detailed comments, which included extensive input from the other regulatory

agencies, to LMDC in January 2005. After LMDC and its contractors made substantial revisions to the plan and developed new aspects, EPA again conducted a review -- coordinating with its regulatory partners -- and submitted detailed comments to LMDC on

July 26, 2005. Since that time, EPA has reviewed and commented on subsequent revised submissions, and now has found the plan acceptable.

EPA has taken the lead in coordinating regulatory agency review of and input into plans to demolish or deconstruct a number of Lower Manhattan buildings known to have been breached by the World Trade Center collapse and not fully cleaned or reoccupied. The agencies have made the building owners aware of their legal obligations to conduct the

"We will begin deconstruction in the new year and take it down over the course of about 12 months," said Stefan Pryor, the president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which acquired the building at 130 Liberty Street from Deutsche Bank last year. The structure was badly damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, and contains high levels of asbestos, lead, dioxins and other hazardous contaminants. It was never reoccupied.

In November 2004, Gov. George E. Pataki said he was "pleased to announce that demolition will begin next month."

But two months later, the environmental agency said the draft demolition proposal did not adequately guard against "significant potential for releases of contamination" and called for a "materially strengthened" plan.

Since then, the number of air-monitoring stations has been increased to 12 from seven, and quality controls have been devised to govern how samples are taken and how data are analyzed and submitted, said Pat Evangelista, the World Trade Center coordinator at the environmental agency. He said the new plan would be "protective of the area's residents and workers."

The development corporation has already awarded a cleanup and demolition contract to Bovis Lend Lease and a scaffolding contract to the Regional Scaffolding and Hoisting Company and the Safeway Environmental Corporation.

Yesterday, the corporation board approved a $150,000 grant to the Drawing Center, a SoHo museum that is one of the designated tenants for the cultural building at the trade center site, to help it look for alternative spaces in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Pryor also named Peter H. Woodin, a professional mediator, to try to help break an impasse over the International Freedom Center, the other designated tenant in the cultural building.

The center has faced strong opposition from many victims' relatives, who object to the presence within the memorial quadrant of an institution with political overtones that is not devoted exclusively to memorializing and commemorating 9/11.

Because Mr. Woodin served as the deputy special master for the government's Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, Mr. Pryor said, he may open "conversations that might not otherwise happen."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

The building, heavily damaged by the collapse of the twin towers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, has been covered in a black shroud while awaiting demolition. Plans for the work, originally scheduled to begin in January, had to be revised after the EPA found there weren't adequate safeguards against the release of toxic substances into the area.

"Whether you are in Battery Park City or one of the office buildings in the World Financial Center, you look across and you see this painful reminder of the attacks of Sept. 11,'' Pataki said during a ceremony next to the building, just south of Ground Zero. ``Beginning today, the deconstruction, the taking of this building down begins.''

Workers poured a concrete pad for a construction lift that would service a scaffold that will enfold the building. The skyscraper, torn open by the trade center's falling south tower, was permeated with asbestos, lead, dioxin and other hazardous substances released in the collapse and fire.

Once the scaffolding is complete late in the year, said Charles Maikish, director of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, workers would then place one floor at a time under "negative pressure.''

Wrapped

Under that procedure, floors will be wrapped in plastic and machines will assure that the air inside is under less pressure than the air outside. That way, in case the barrier is breached, outside air would get in rather than presumably polluted inside air getting out.

Each floor would then be cleaned and building materials removed until just the steel skeleton remains. Once the building is completely cleaned and stripped, the frame would then be dismantled.

As the building comes down, air will be monitored in several spots in and around the building, and ``comprehensive and easy-to-monitor reports air monitor readings and any corrective action taken'' will be posted on the development corporation Web site and http://www.lowermanhattan.info, Maikish said.

The parcel eventually will be used for a park, underground ramps to screen trucks making deliveries, and one of five planned office buildings in Pataki's $12 billion master plan for Ground Zero.

Earlier Objections

In its January review of the project, EPA officials objected to plans to treat the cleanup of the toxin-laden interior and the removal of building materials as separate phases, with separate monitoring provisions.

A revised plan unified both aspects, along with the effort to monitor both the air that workers would be exposed to, and the air outside the building.

There are apartment buildings across two narrow side streets from the tower. Residents have been pressing for the most careful demolition plan possible, along with an emergency warning system in case of an accidental release of toxins.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which oversees rebuilding at the trade center site, bought the building from Deutsche Bank AG for $90 million in February 2004. The agency has estimated the demolition would cost at least $90 million more.

One-Year Project

Maikish, who as command center director oversees more than 30 construction projects in and around Ground Zero, said the demolition will be completed ``on time and on budget.'' Stefan Pryor, development corporation president, said the building would take about a year to tear down.

To contact the reporter on this story: David M. Levitt in New York at (1) (212) 617-4765 or dlevitt@bloomberg.net.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0536,lombardi,67520,5.html

"The EPA said the air was safe," he remembers, as the fourth anniversary of 9-11 nears, "and when you read that coming from a government official, you don't second-guess it."

Now he does. Sanchez, 38, of Washington Heights, walks with a cane, hunched in pain, hampered by escalating respiratory problems. Doctors have diagnosed him with musculo-skeletal syndrome and asthma, attributed to exposure to the WTC dust. He takes as many as 23 medications.

Yet what bothers Sanchez isn't so much his own health"I'm already damaged goods," he saysbut the bigger picture. He thinks about people who live and work in the buildings surrounding ground zero, like the ones he used to clean, the ones he worries weren't properly tested for contamination. Residents, office workers, schoolchildren: These are the people who may still be breathing in toxic dust, yet not know it. "I'm afraid there are people who will end up just like me walking around these buildings today," he says.

Sanchez isn't alone. For more than a year, dozens of people who live and work in and around Lower Manhattan have been locked in a debate with the EPA over its latest proposal to test for lingering Trade Center dust. A coalition of activistsfrom labor, tenant, small business, and environmental groupshave pushed agency officials to do the right thingthat is, determine the 9-11-related contamination remaining in downtown and clean it up.

The coalition is helped by a few local lawmakers, among them Representative Jerrold Nadler and Senator Hillary Clinton, and fueled by distrust born of the EPA's initial response after 9-11. New Yorkers were told back then that conditions were safe when in fact they were not. None of these activists finds it easy to believe the agency's latest promises.

In July, activists pressed their case before an EPA advisory panel, made up of 18 technical experts and government officials, who are charged with helping the agency establish a sampling plan and identify unmet public-health needs. Attendees describe the scene as a "showdown," with residents and office workers offering emotional testimony. One resident even collected dust from the blackened filter of her air purifier and presented it to the panelists. "I said, 'This is the dust from my apartment. Why don't you take it home and eat with it and sleep with it every day?' " relays Esther Regelson, who lives two blocks south of ground zero, and who has noticed her pre-existing asthma condition worsening.

The EPA has defended its strategy, which is to analyze only limited samples from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. "I believe the plan is scientifically sound," says Michael Brown, of the EPA Office of Research and Development, which convened the panel after Senator Clinton put the screws to the agency. Though, he adds, "we still have what I'll call a short distance to go to get the plan to a place where the community will support it." He says the agency is committed to doing what's right. "We will spend whatever is necessary to assure the health and well-being of those living and working in Lower Manhattan."

But activists say the EPA has produced a plan so seriously flawed that it appears designed to find as little remaining pollution as possible. And the less the EPA finds, the less it has to clean up.

No one knows for a fact whether Trade Center dust lingers downtown. But as Catherine McVay Hughes, a Lower Manhattan resident who sits on the EPA board, points out, what people do know doesn't allay their concerns. To date, a handful of tall buildings have been deemed so heavily contaminated that they've been slated for demolition. Some neighboring buildings have been deemed in need of years-long cleanup. Others have seen no cleanup at all.

At the very least, McVay Hughes says, the community wants a sampling plan that answers the questions, once and for all. "We expect the EPA to design a plan that will look for the dust, find it, and clean it up."

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The community has every reason to worry about remaining contamination. The collapse of the 110-story twin towers released a lethal cloud of debris. Concrete, steel, glass, asbestos, plastics, mercury, lead: It all came crashing down, pulverized into dust. Add to this brew the fires that burned for three months, giving off a putrid plume.

"It was a toxic soup," says Suzanne Mattei, of the New York City Sierra Club, who wrote a 265-page report on the 9-11 fallout. "People were exposed to not one chemical but multiple chemicals" in short, to dangerous stuff.

It didn't take long for those most heavily exposedthe workers who sifted through the rubble and shipped it awayto experience health problems. Almost instantly, the coughing emerged, as did wheezing, throat irritation, and chest pain. Last September, the Mount Sinai Medical Center released data from its 9-11 medical-screening program, which has tested over 14,000 first responders and volunteers. The center reported that 88 percent suffered from at least one WTC-related ear, nose, or throat symptom. Over half endured respiratory ailments for months.

But you didn't have to work on the pile to get sick. Many, like Sanchez, who cleaned the Trade Center dust in downtown skyscrapers have suffered similar illnesses. In 2001, Queens College professor Steven Markowitz, an occupational-health physician, set up a medical van two blocks from the WTC site and screened 415 cleanup laborers. He recorded the coughs, the wheezing, the sore throats. A year later, he found most workers' symptoms were persisting.

Meanwhile, the few studies on residents uncover a wave of damage. In 2003, researchers examining 205 asthmatic children found that those who live within five miles of the WTC site endured more bouts, requiring more doctor visits and medicines. That year, researchers surveyed 2,812 residents and determined that half of them living within a mile of ground zero had developed respiratory troubles.

Count Kelly Colangelo among this group. The Lower Manhattan resident has lived in three apartments since the terrorist attacks, moving repeatedly in an attempt to escape adverse health effects. Her first apartment, on John Street, a block from the WTC site, was saturated in dust. "It covered everything," she says, from the sofa to carpet to drapes. She even discovered it inside her cabinets.

She hired cleaners, who wiped away the dust in what she calls "a once-over." Yet soon after she returned, she noticed symptoms. She couldn't breathe. She broke out in a rash. She felt dizzy. Worse, she endured searing abdominal pain. Seeking answers, Colangelo says she sent dust samples of her freshly cleaned abode to a lab, only to find asbestos at double the threshold for safety.

Things didn't get better at apartment two, along the Hudson River, overlooking the pier where debris was loaded on barges bound for Staten Island. So when another unit in her building went vacant last fall, she relocated again. This time, she has tossed the carpet, drapes, and upholstered furniture. And this time, finally, she hasn't experienced a single symptom.

"Personally," she says, "I feel my health problems have to be related to residual dust. What other explanation could there be?"

Gail Benzman, a city employee at the Housing Authority, wonders the same thing. She works at a municipal building on Center Street, seven blocks from ground zero. From the moment she returned to her office, two weeks after the attacks, she began experiencing ailments she never had before.

"Some days are better than others," she says, between strained-sounding coughs. Doctors diagnosed her with sinusitis and asthma, attributed to WTC-related pollution. She now uses an inhaler regularly; about four times a year, she takes antibiotics to relieve the infections.

Benzman knows the Trade Center dust blew into her building. And she knows it pervaded the place until November 2001, when a cleaning crew had at it. Still, she suspects traces linger to this day. Why else would colleagues who started on the job a year after the cleanup develop the same respiratory troubles she has?

"This isn't the only building where people keep getting sick," Benzman says, struggling to control her cough. She cannot believe that she and thousands more don't know the extent of WTC-related pollution downtown, even now, four years later. She tends to push the thought out of her mind. But whenever her asthma acts up, she says, "it brings back the anger that something is not being done."

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That anger, in many ways, stems more from the EPA's overall response to 9-11 fallout than from its current plan. Invariably, critics bring up the agency's actionsor lack thereofwithin days of the attacks. How administrators proclaimed the air "safe" to breathe. How their assurances provoked employees to return to work and residents to return home. How the agency shirked its mission to protect people from what amounted to a massive chemical spill.

The whole attitude about WTC-related contamination seemed, in the words of activist Kimberly Flynn, "sheer negligence." She confides, "It still boils my blood. I don't have words for what an outrage this is."

That outrage has only been reinforced over the years. In August 2003, the EPA inspector general issued a scathing 165-page report on the agency's 9-11 response. It disclosed some disconcerting factsthat the White House had pressured the EPA to sanitize its warnings about ground zero, for instance. In effect, the report revealed a whitewash the agency has yet to live down.

Even advisory panel members recognize the past has made the current debate over a sampling plan more difficult. Says David Prezant, deputy chief medical officer for the New York fire department, who serves on the board, "There's a lot of resentment about the way this issue was originally handled."

Brown, of the EPA, speaks of the distrust this way: "I believe that by judging EPA's actions not just our promise to do what's right, but our work in sampling and cleaning up whatever should be cleaned upthe community will recognize that we are worthy of their trust."

To hear critics, though, the EPA has never acted without outside pressure. Congressman Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, has drawn attention to the issue from the start, hosting press conferences, testifying at hearings. In April 2002, his office put out a critical "white paper" documenting how the EPA had violated its own rules by failing to test and clean up downtown.

"We've pushed and pushed and gotten nowhere," Nadler says. "The only time we've gotten anywhere is because Hillary pushed for it."

Indeed, as advocates like to point out, it was Senator Clinton's willingness to fight the good fight that spawned the EPA panel. Back in 2003, in response to the inspector general's report, she wrote a letter to the White House, calling for immediate testing. She could make that kind of demand, since she sits on a Senate committee that oversees the EPA. Clinton blocked President Bush's nominee to head the agency for 45 days, agreeing to lift her "hold" only after the White House agreed to have the EPA set up the advisory panel.

"New Yorkers deserve a firmer assurance that they are safer in their homes," the senator said when the EPA finally formed the body, in March 2004, "and I am hopeful that this panel will lead to that point."

So were advocates. As they see it, the panel has given them a chance not just to voice concerns about residual toxins, but to keep the EPA in check. Without it, there'd be no talk of testing, let alone cleanup. Still, the process has turned into a protracted fight, with advocates poring over proposals, criticizing the same main issues. Since January, the sampling plan has undergone three revisions. Panel members expect a fourth soon.

"We have gone back and forth," says Micki Siegel de Hernandez, a union representative who sits on the panel and considers the plan "quite inadequate." The struggle, she says, has left residents and workers "feeling as if [EPA officials] haven't been listening."

The EPA's Brown insists the agency has made a good-faith effort. "We're doing everything we can to make sure it's safe to live and work in Lower Manhattan." And some panel members agree, saying it'd be unfair to paint the EPA as hostile. The panel, they contend, has made the plan more responsive to the community.

When panelists first convened, the EPA had proposed testing for re-contamination, not for residual toxic dust. That meant excluding every place that hadn't been cleaned up beforearguably, the places most in need of testing. Panelists shot that idea down, they say, after resounding community complaints.

What's more, the original plan ignored workplaces. Now, it won't. Originally, it tested only for asbestos. Now, it includes such toxins as lead and fiberglass. Originally, it focused only on the blocks south of 14th Street, then Canal Street. Now, it extends up to Houston Street, and over to parts of Brooklyn. Brown suggests the boundaries could expand further. "If the data suggests we need to go further, we will," he says.

Even Clinton's aides say the panel has resulted in a better plan. Philippe Reines, the senator's spokesperson, explains that if the panel had stuck with the initial proposalwhich reflected the agreement between Clinton and the White Housetesting would have been limited. "It was the senator's hope all along that once the panel got started the EPA would look more broadly at World Trade Center air quality issues," he adds, "and that has happened."

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Still, the plan has shortcomings. As it stands, critics tick off a litany of technical problems. Like how the plan would test oft used areas, such as countertops, rather than hidden ones, such as ceiling beams. Or how it would rely on what they see as improper methods to collect dust on soft surfaces and in ventilation systems.

By far, the biggest complaint has to do with the so-called "signature"or as Mattei says, "some magic substance that's a marker of WTC dust." The signature consists of slag wool, mostly, an insulation used in the towers. Under the plan, if the EPA detects slag wool, it'll clean up. If not, it won't. Critics contend it's foolish to reconstruct a signature years after the Trade Center collapse; it's more foolish to require one to clean up.

Another thorny issue deals with access. Currently, the plan would select 150 buildings to test if owners agree to participate. That leads to dilemmas: Employees can't volunteer their offices; tenants can't volunteer their lobbies.

Even panel members find the complaints reasonable. The problem, says Markowitz of Queens College, who sits on the board, is that many issues come down to policy, not science. To wit: the debate over the plan's voluntary nature. "We've tossed it around for months," he explains, yet it has nothing to do with dust particles. So panelists have little influence in the outcome.

"Ultimately," Markowitz says, explaining his frustration over the fight, "if we don't get to some action on the ground, then I don't think we've served any useful purpose."

Evidently, Senator Clinton would agree. Over the past 17 months, she has remained a force behind the panel, working quietly to move deliberations forward. When advocates have bumped up against the EPA, they've turned to her for help. Explains Siegel de Hernandez, "It's easy for the EPA to discount us; it's not as easy to discount Senator Clinton."

Last June, the senator met with critics to discuss the plan. They asked her to intervene. And so, on June 29, she wrote a letter to EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, highlighting ways the plan "does not go far enough." In July, her office stepped in again, arranging a negotiation session between the EPA, panelists, and critics. That meeting is expected to happen later this month. Her staff says they're hoping a deal can be hashed out.

So is the EPA. "I'm very hopeful this work-group meeting will get us into the homestretch so we can resolve outstanding issues," Brown says.

Who knows what will come of the effort? The agency could revise its plan, or not. Things could unravel, or not. Many people expect the EPA to undertake some type of testing, if only to show that it has acted. But whether the sampling plan will provide answers about the full extent of WTC-related pollution is anyone's guess.

Advocates don't sound optimistic. After all, they note, the decision rests with the EPAand the White House. And toxic Trade Center dust seems like one of many environmental causes the Bush administration has ignored, despite evidence. "It's a hard fight," Mattei says, "when you have a government that doesn't listen to science and doesn't want to admit it did anything wrong."

No one understands the consequences of this more than Sanchez. Every day, as he struggles with his health, he says he's reminded of how the administration first failed New Yorkers. And as he's become more active in the EPA fight, he's reminded of how the agency continues to fail the city. If it had come through for people, he asks, wouldn't the testing and cleanup have been finished long ago?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-briefs5.4sep05,1,3856540.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

The Congressional Budget Office said claims to the fund over a 50-year period would range from $120 billion to $150 billion.

The report also warned that revenue the trust fund was to collect from companies "could be significantly less" than the $140 billion proposed in the legislation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/nyregion/06fdny.html

But at the site, where he logged long hours, he rescued no one. A face, an arm, a leg, a scalp with hair, shoes with feet in them, a headless body. Those were some of the remains that Firefighter Kelly found, and in the months that followed, he said, they kept finding him.

Overwhelmed with death, he rarely slept. When he did, he often awoke to nightmares, still swatting at the maggots he dreamt were on his face and helmet. He became depressed and suicidal and began to engage in risky behavior, including, he said, the occasional use of cocaine.

In January, he failed a random test at his firehouse in Queens and was suspended. He is now slated to be fired, ending his career and, under civil service law, forfeiting his pension.

"What man in his right mind would ignore the warnings?" Firefighter Kelly wrote earlier this year in a journal. "And the answer to me is, nobody in their right mind would do that."

Firefighter Kelly, who was found to have post-traumatic stress disorder in February by a psychiatrist at Safe Horizon, a nonprofit treatment center, acknowledges that much of his problem was of his own making. But friends and co-workers say they consider him one of the latent casualties of 9/11, a rescue worker whose inability to process the horrors of what he saw on his job ran counter to the Fire Department's zero tolerance policy on drug use.

That policy was tightened after a spike in reported substance abuse within the department's ranks after 9/11 and a series of embarrassing incidents, including an accident last year in which the driver of a fire truck was found to have had cocaine in his system. (An administrative judge recommended that the charges be dismissed on the grounds that the accident was too minor to justify a cocaine test.) The policy stipulates that firefighters caught once using drugs are fired unless they have come forward to report their problem. The Fire Department says the policy, and a decision last year to do random testing, are sensible, necessary measures to protect the safety of other firefighters and the public.

The department says most of the 49 firefighters who have been fired, or are slated for firing, for drug and alcohol problems in the past two years have been young firefighters who were not working for the department in September 2001. But several of those caught have been veteran firefighters, viewed by many in the department as solid workers with no prior disciplinary problems and whose drug use may have been related to the trauma of 9/11.

One is a 10-year veteran from Lower Manhattan who on the morning of Sept. 11 dodged falling bodies to help set up a command post in the north tower lobby.

Another is a firefighter from a battalion that lost an entire company of men that day. On Sept. 12 three years later, a day after the memorials to the 2,749 who died, he contacted the department's counseling unit, seeking help for a growing drug problem.

Told he had to enroll in a residential counseling program, he balked. The next day he was caught in a random drug test and, after 19 years, he was dismissed last October.

Fire officials say that that after more than 2,000 random drug tests, the small number of firefighters who have failed is an indication that the policy is a reasonable one that all but a few have been able to comply with.

"There was a consensus," said Francis X. Gribbon, a spokesman for the department, "that drug use had no place in an occupation that is so dangerous."

But mental health professionals question whether it was wise to make the policy stricter at a time when the department was facing a possible surge in substance abuse.

"As an outsider, this one-shot policy strikes me as a little extreme," said Dr. James Pennebaker, a social psychologist at the University of Texas who studies how people cope with trauma. "Somehow, we view mental health as totally under a person's control, whereas physical health is not."

In Oklahoma City, after the 1995 bombing, one study found that firefighters who drank began to drink more heavily as they struggled to deal with their anguish, although city officials there do not believe that the number of substance abusers actually increased. The city resisted enacting a zero tolerance policy even as it upgraded its counseling efforts.

"The whole policy was put in place to help our folks," said Maj. Kim Woodring, a human resources supervisor for the Oklahoma City Fire Department. "The whole basis of the policy was to try to get our employees to be productive employees."

Zero tolerance works, officials say, because it is a bracing deterrent to those who do not take the prohibition seriously. After the volunteer Army adopted such a policy in 1980, alcohol and drug abuse in the military decreased considerably, said Dr. Ronald Rosenheck, the director of the Veterans Administration Northeast Program Evaluation Center.

"As in so many areas of public policy, it's a matter of balancing the well-being of the individual against the well-being of the public," Dr. Rosenheck said. "And it's clear that the Fire Department's position, sticking to the no-tolerance policy, comes down on the side of their responsibility to the public."

In New York, in the years before 9/11, fire officials did not strictly enforce the zero tolerance policy, which had been adopted in 1996. In 1999, for example, not one of the 32 firefighters charged with alcohol or drug violations was fired. Firefighters say the leniency was particularly apparent in the weeks after 9/11, when they said officials seemed to recognize the toll taken by the deaths of 343 department members and the long hours spent at the site and attending funerals.

But as the number of incidents involving alcohol and drugs began to climb, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said he became concerned about the uneven application of discipline and announced in April 2002 that the department would strictly enforce the zero tolerance policy. Critics say the department uses the policy to get rid of troubled firefighters without considering whether the substance abuse they suffer from may directly stem from their experiences on the job.

"They have all this talk about rebuilding the department," said Stephen Cassidy, the president of the firefighters' union, "but the truth of the matter is they are willing to throw guys aside."

In the months following 9/11, the department made a historic outreach, bringing in hundreds of counselors and volunteers to work with its wounded force. Though some firefighters have complained that the efforts fell short, there seems little question that much more counseling has been done. The agency's counseling unit now sees about 500 firefighters a month, or 10 times the number before September 2001.

Many of the new cases are firefighters coming forward to report problems with drugs and alcohol. Before 9/11, counselors typically saw 180 firefighters a year who were suffering from alcohol and drug abuse, both new and old cases. In 2004 alone, the department opened up 185 new cases, and by last month it was treating a total of 723 firefighters for substance abuse.

Dr. Rachel Yehuda, the director of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder program at the Bronx Veterans Administration Hospital, said many rescue workers resisted counseling early on because it was contrary to the image of strength associated with firefighting. As adults, she said, they should be held responsible to seek the help they need.

Dr. Rosenheck said if the department adjusted its policy to one with more discretion, it would be taking on the unenviable task of distinguishing between those whose drug use really did spring from the trauma of 9/11 and others who might be using the misery of the day as an excuse.

Still, Dr. Yehuda said, drug abuse is a treatable problem and one that argues for an approach that gives employees a second chance.

If Firefighter Kelly had come forward to report his problem, he could have saved his job, under the city's policy. Yet this opportunity is not taken by some firefighters, according to private counselors who report seeing firefighters who pay for their own treatment because they do not trust the department to keep their problem a secret.

Firefighter Kelly said he did not feel comfortable opening up to the counselors he was assigned to see after working at ground zero. He said he did not think they could understand what he was going through.

The remains were haunting him, he said, first at the site, where he encountered them as he sifted through debris, and later at home, where he could not escape what he had seen.

During one shift, about 4 a.m., after finding additional body pieces, Firefighter Kelly said he alerted a supervisor. The supervisor began asking him a series of questions: Name? Rank? Badge number? The information was used to tag the remains with the identity of the person who had found them, quite possibly the only identifying markers they might ever have.

"Is this in case we go nuts a few years from now?" Firefighter Kelly asked.

There was no reply, he said.

Firefighter Kelly said he felt anxiety and guilt. He had lived. Others close to him had died, including three lifelong friends. A co-worker, Firefighter John Hegeman, said he saw a transformation in Firefighter Kelly during that period, though he did not know about any drug use. He said Firefighter Kelly had been known as the General, a no-nonsense man who barked commands. Now, Firefighter Hegeman recalled, he could be brought to tears by firehouse teasing.

In 2003, Firefighter Kelly stunned co-workers by leaving Engine Company 281, his busy unit in East Flatbush, for one with less fire duty in the Rockaways. There, he said, he spent hours on the roof, scanning the skies for incoming planes or smoke over the other boroughs.

"I was shocked," Firefighter Hegeman said. "Nobody transfers out of our firehouse - no one."

Firefighter Kelly said simply, "I didn't want to be around any more dead people - people who burned to death, got shot to death, fell off a roof, car accidents, suicides, dead babies, crib death or by parents rolling over and killing them."

In January, he tested positive, was suspended and was given a desk job at a cubicle, where he had little to do but dwell on what he had seen. As the breadwinner for five children, he said, it weighed on him that, three years from being eligible to retire with a full, lifetime pension, he was now in danger of losing it all.

He said he began to view his predicament and the zero tolerance policy as deeply unfair and, despite the stigma of being viewed as a drug user, came forward to speak out about it at length. Other firefighters in similar positions declined to be interviewed, saying they viewed their drug use as a personal matter.

"I did what I could for 17 years for the Fire Department," Firefighter Kelly said last Friday. "It got me into this trouble. They don't want me anymore, and under these conditions, it stinks."

EMT Timothy Keller would have understood why two of those closest to him had to leave halfway through his funeral.

Hunched over a plastic tube in the back of an ambulance outside St. James Church in Seaford, emergency medical technicians Karin DeShore and Bonnie Giebfried sucked on albuterol to open up their seizing airways.

It wasn't the church incense that caused their asthma attacks on that rainy June day, they said: It was the loss of their friend. Timmy -- the jokester, the big guy with the big smile -- was one of them, he was part of their private support group. They suffered from the same respiratory ailments he had: They were together when the Twin Towers crumbled on Sept. 11, 2001, and they breathed the same hot, thick, black air.

Keller, who had been an EMT with the New York City Fire Department and a volunteer firefighter and EMT in Levittown where he lived, died at age 41. In clinical terms, the Nassau County medical examiner's office said his death was the result of "congestive heart failure due to hypertensive and atherosclerotic heart disease and associated conditions, ... chronic asthmatic bronchitis and pulmonary emphysema."

But his friends and colleagues said they know the cause of his death. As the Rev. John McCartney said to the several hundred gathered at the funeral: "Tim is a casualty of September 11. His death merely took longer to occur."

Along with countless other men and women that morning, Keller raced to the Twin Towers with the goal of saving lives.

In the end, he couldn't save himself. Nearly four years later, he died almost penniless in his Levittown apartment, unable to take care of himself, supported by his fellow EMTs.

After Sept. 11, he coughed up dirt and stones for two days. Like DeShore, Giebfried and thousands of others who responded, Keller went on to develop asthma and other severe respiratory problems that left him gasping for breath or sent him into coughing fits.

"I am the oldest one of them all. Somehow I thought I would be the first to die," said DeShore, 60, of the loyal group of friends. She retired as captain in the city Fire Department's Emergency Medical Services in 2002 because of severe respiratory problems associated with Sept. 11. "Sooner or later, will this overtake all of us who were down there? It has started now. Which one will be next?"

Little compensation for his suffering

Friends paint a portrait of a man who clung to his EMT job until he was unable to walk across the room without going into a coughing fit and turning blue. Finally, he had to quit in December, 2004. "Timmy would have gone to work with his arms hanging on by threads. What's more desperate than not breathing? That was Timmy," said Marianne Pizzitola, pension coordinator for Local 2507 of the Uniformed EMTs and Paramedics of the New York City Fire Department, Keller's union.

His friends also describe a man living on unemployment checks, with no health insurance or drug coverage.

Although diagnosed with severe chronic asthmatic bronchitis, severe chronic sinusitis and severe obstructive sleep apnea, records show, Keller was denied workers' compensation and line-of-duty-injury benefits from the city. City and state officials said they cannot comment on specific cases, but defend the complicated task of trying to determine who should get compensation.

Through a different city agency, Keller was granted three-quarters disability pay in January. But by the time he died six months later, he still had not received his first full check, Pizzitola said. Money became so tight he relied on food donations from his union and the kindness of his landlord who didn't evict Keller, a single parent, and his son David, 19, although at one point David said they were $10,000 behind in rent.

Thousands of stories have emerged out of the horror of Sept. 11 about men and women who risked their lives to save others and miraculously escaped death. Keller's story is far different. His is a story about an unsung hero, a man who did everything he was asked to that day, and, because of it, his friends and colleagues said, eventually lost his health, his job and his life.

Despite $7 billion amassed for Sept. 11 families and survivors, Keller's health and financial problems are not unique. A study by the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program, a federally funded program following 12,000 Sept. 11 responders, found last year that half of more than 1,000 examined had persistent respiratory and mental health problems. "We remain surprised and disturbed at how chronic the World Trade Center consequences are," said Dr. Robin Herbert of Mt. Sinai Medical Center, which administers the program.

"We're still seeing a record number of new patients as well as follow-up visits for respiratory and mental health issues," said Dr. David Prezant, deputy chief medical officer for FDNY. Prezant said that between July of last year and June of this year, the fire department's Bureau of Health Services has seen about 2,000 firefighters and EMTs with respiratory complaints and another 3,500 with mental health issues connected to Sept. 11 -- not including those already on medical leave.

A losing battle for their benefits

Most firefighters and police officers, whose benefits are handled differently, appear to be getting the medical help and disability benefits they need, according to interviews. But an untold number of EMTs and other workers -- union and elected officials say it's in the hundreds -- find themselves sick and unable to work with little or no health insurance or other benefits.

Bill Gleason, 44, of Hicksville, an EMT lieutenant who retired from DeShore's 46th Battalion in April, said he arrived at Ground Zero the night of Sept. 11 and worked there for seven months. Two years later, he had developed severe respiratory problems. He was approved last December for a line-of-duty disability pension, which has not been finalized.

He said he is awaiting a decision on whether he will be approved for workers' compensation. "I have seen five doctors in the past two years and all five have said this is a permanent problem. But workers' comp keeps making me jump through all these hoops," he said. "The problem is I have no money coming in.

"To hear that Timmy had died -- what a kick in the head. It's not us; it's our families that are going to suffer from this," said Gleason.

While they said they don't regret their part at Ground Zero, many now see themselves as overlooked or abused by a system they deeply believed in. "How many heroes have to die like Timmy Keller?" said John Feal of Nesconset. "Shame on everybody who opposes helping us."

Feal, 38, was one of about 40 World Trade Center workers who traveled from New York to Washington, D.C., in July to tell legislators about their deteriorating health, their battles to get benefits and their dwindling finances. A field supervisor for a demolition company that worked at Ground Zero, Feal had his foot crushed on the site. He said he was hospitalized for two months after his foot developed gangrene. Half was amputated and he spent months more in the hospital undergoing foot surgeries. He said he also has failed his last four breathing tests.

"My bills are $4,000 a month and I'm getting $1,200 in Social Security," he said. "Why do I have to be in this position 46 months later? That's just not American."

Rep. Carolyn Maloney agrees. "These people need help," said the Manhattan Democrat who has fought to keep $125 million allocated for workers' compensation funds the federal government has said it will take away. "This is beyond the pale."

Work that energized his life

By all accounts, Keller was big-hearted, loyal and stubborn. He loved being an EMT: The tape for his telephone's voice mail played ambulance sirens. His son David said his father filled their home with fire and rescue memorabilia and painted the chimney fire-engine red.

He was also known as a prankster. So DeShore said she didn't believe him when Keller came into her office at Elmhurst Hospital Center where she headed the FDNY's 46th EMS Battalion on Sept. 11 and said an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center.

Keller was not a regular in the 46th but had been sent to DeShore's battalion from the 50th in Jamaica after an incident that had cost him several months of restricted duty. According to DeShore, Keller was sideswiped driving on the Grand Central Parkway; in retaliation he later went to the driver's house and slashed her tires. He pled guilty and received a conditional discharge, said Kevin Ryan, a spokesman for the Queens District Attorney's office. He had spent his time doing menial tasks and playing jokes on DeShore, who always called him "Mr. Keller" in her German accent. He always called her "Cap."

"I said, 'Mr. Keller, not this morning or I'll have you fired.'"

But soon she and Keller, in a borrowed helmet, turnout coat and boots, were speeding toward the plume of smoke rising from the edge of Manhattan Island.

Then the nightmare began. They left the ambulance at the West Side Highway and made their way toward the South Tower to look for the injured. It took some moments before DeShore realized the "whooshing" sound around them was that of bodies falling, she said.

Giebfried and Jennifer Lampert, EMTs at Flushing Hospital Medical Center, arrived and were unloading their gear.

DeShore had never met the pair but began yelling at them to take their stretcher to the South Tower. "The last I saw of them they were walking into the building," DeShore said. "I thought I had sent them to their death."

They weren't killed but were buried under debris -- twice, as first the South and then the North Tower fell. "God knows what we swallowed; a tree, a piece of a car, part of a building, it was hard to tell ... ," Giebfried later wrote. Giebfried, who had had asthma as a child but had not had an attack for years, had three that day.

Meanwhile, as the South Tower crumbled, DeShore and Keller were saved by a pedestrian crosswalk where they had stationed themselves. Although just feet from each other, DeShore lost track of Keller once the air became black. Keller, according to what he told DeShore afterward, was trying to get into the American Express building next to the crosswalk as the first tower collapsed. The force hurled him through a window.

All four were evacuated to New Jersey. Believing he was not injured, Keller returned that afternoon to Ground Zero to help out. He found a nearby store that gave him two instant cameras. One of the photographs he took shows his outline in the plate glass.

Giebfried and Lampert called DeShore a week later when they heard the captain feared they were dead. This marked the beginning of their friendship. "We became like a family," DeShore said.

Theirs was the fellowship of the walking wounded. DeShore said she coughed up "granulated glass and grayish, blackish specks" every morning for a month. Keller told Newsday in 2003 that for two days he coughed up handfuls of dirt, sand and stones "as if someone had ground his face and mouth into a sandbox." Nonetheless, for five months, he, like many EMTs, worked his normal shift and returned to Ground Zero at night to help search for body parts, said EMT Eileen Hix, 40, of Medford.

Although a picture taken on the first anniversary of Sept. 11 at Ground Zero shows a smiling Keller, DeShore, Giebfried and Lampert, it was about then that his son and friends began noticing Keller's cough. Friends said Keller would turn blue as he gasped for breath during long coughing spasms. Walking also became increasingly difficult. "He would walk two blocks and have to stop. Then that shortened to where he could walk a block and have to stop, and then he could only walk a couple of feet," David said.

Slow decline toward death

Stubborn, proud and deeply worried that he would lose his job, Keller hid his worsening condition for a time behind jokes and bravado, friends said. But soon that became impossible. He also acquired sleep apnea, in which a person stops breathing, then briefly wakes, sometimes dozens of times a night. Exhausted, Keller would sometimes fall asleep at a traffic light for a few seconds when he was driving, said EMT Sherri Fiebert, 40, of Fresh Meadows. "I would punch him and say, 'Timmy, what's going on?' He would just say 'I'm so tired; I don't know.'"

Eventually he also began having hypoxic seizures, or breath-holding attacks, several nights a week, Hix said, and she would be called to his apartment for help. "His lips would turn blue and he would begin to seize," she said. "I would give him oxygen ... He would refuse to go to the hospital; he was only for going to work. He didn't want to go out [on disability]. We don't make that much money and as a sole supporter, everyday counts when you're working."

By the spring of 2004, there were complaints that Keller was unable to do his job and he was assigned to 50th Battalion headquarters in Jamaica on light duty, said his captain, Stephen Lincke. "That's when I noticed he couldn't walk more than 10 feet without having coughing fits that lasted three or four minutes," Lincke said.

Lincke had him treated at battalion headquarters and the next day drove Keller to the fire department's Bureau of Health Services. There, Lincke said, Keller's third attempt on a pulmonary function test showed his lungs were operating at 33 percent of capacity. The first two times his breath was so weak the test "didn't register," Lincke said. Other tests confirmed that his lung function was 33 percent of normal and he was diagnosed with severe chronic asthmatic bronchitis, severe chronic sinusitis and severe obstructive sleep apnea. Despite an oxygen machine at night, bronchodilators, steroids, antibiotics and nasal sprays, Keller remained "severe symptomatic (sic)," his doctor wrote, according to records.

In early September of last year, Keller applied for workers' compensation, which for New York City Fire Department's EMTs is filed through the city's Law Department and then, if denied, passed on to the state Workers' Compensation Board. He also applied for line-of-duty injury benefits, known as a LODI.

In October, both were rejected by the city. Despite a letter from his pulmonologist stating his condition "appeared to have been related to the World Trade Center disaster," the Law Department found that Keller's condition was not an "industrial accident," not an "occupational disease," there was "no medical evidence of a causal relationship," and that the "accident did not arise out of/in the course of employment." Because he was denied workers' compensation, LODI was also denied, said Pizzitola, Keller's union pension coordinator.

Pizzitola said about half of the 50 or so claims she is working on are Sept. 11-related. Like Keller's, almost all of those filed after Sept. 2003 -- the two-year deadline required to file for an Sept. 11-related injury -- were initially rejected by the city. Pizzitola pointed out that, for an occupational disease, which often takes longer to surface, a worker must file for benefits within two years of diagnosis, not the initial event. And these, like Keller's, are the cases she said she now sees.

Denial of a workers' compensation claim can be appealed to a state board but the process can take up to a year -- with no guarantee the decision will go the worker's way, she said. If it does, the city can appeal. Keller appealed the workers' compensation finding, and about a month before he died, the board found that "prima facie medical evidence exists for worsening of chronic asthma and sinusitis" -- a small victory. The board said Keller was referred for "vocational rehabilitation evaluation." He died before his next scheduled hearing July 7.

Although officials would not comment on Keller's case, John Sweeney, who heads the workers' compensation division in the city's Law Department, said his department approves 95 percent of applications. He was unable to say how many were Sept. 11-related. "EMS [Emergency Medical Services] is no different from any other employees' injury on the job," he said.

But Jon Sullivan, a spokesman for the state Workers' Compensation Board, said the average rate of rejection for World Trade Center-related applications was indeed higher: 27 percent of all Sept. 11-related applications, including injuries and deaths, were rejected. This is compared with 16 percent of all other applications from 1998-2004, Sullivan said. Without commenting specifically on Sept. 11 cases, he said: "The more complex the case, the more likely it is to be contraverted ."

In a recent letter to President George W. Bush seeking restoration of $125 million for workers' compensation funds, members of New York's congressional delegation said they "remain concerned that 9/11-related workers compensation claims have been wrongly denied or terminally delayed, when they should have been expedited, with a fast-track review and appeal process."

Struggling to cover costs of living and illness

Unable to function at work and with no other means of support, Keller in November applied for disability retirement, which is three-quarters pay, through the New York City Employees Retirement System. He formally retired in December and was approved for disability retirement the next month.

For the next few months little money was coming in and David said his father couldn't afford to pay for his medications. It typically takes six to nine months before the full retirement benefits kick in, Pizzitola said. Keller received no retirement money until April, when he got a check for $1,497 -- a partial advance payment retroactive to January. The next month he got $374.

Concerned about her friend's financial situation, DeShore took Keller to an American Red Cross meeting to find out how he could apply for some of the $1 billion Sept. 11 relief funds allocated to charity. She and David said Keller was turned down.

Jeffrey Hon, communications director for the Red Cross Sept. 11 recovery program, said there is no record Keller applied for funds. But given the eligibility criteria at that point -- proof of an injury on one of the World Trade Center sites or a diagnosis of a Sept. 11 injury before May 2002 -- it is doubtful he would have qualified, Hon said.

Keller's rent was $1,800 a month. Proud, he was forced to take food handouts from the union. "Timmy didn't tell us how bad he was having it but we worried about him," said Pizzitola. In June, he received a check for $10,017, retroactive disability retirement payments for January, February and March. Most went to his landlord, Pizzitola said. Keller died two weeks later. "As of the date he died, he was still not receiving his full pension payment," she said.

The last time DeShore spoke to him on the phone, she said, "He had this gurgling sound; you could hear him. ... He said, 'Cap, I just want to die.'" Two days later, on June 23, he was dead.

Co-sponsors Scott Stringer and Jonathan Bing said during a press conference at the World Trade Center site that the legislation was necessary because of the "alarmingly high" rate at which such claims were being challenged by insurers.

'Neglected Heroes'

According to data obtained by Assemblyman Stringer's office, 27 percent of the 10,398 World Trade Center-related claims have been contested - twice the rate for typical claims, he said.

Jon Sullivan, spokesman for the state Workers' Compensation Board, confirmed that WTC-related claims were controverted 27 percent of the time, but added that "from 1998 to 2004, 16 percent of all Workers' Compensation claims were challenged."

Of the 8,248 claims filed that were related to a 9/11 injury or sickness, not a 9/11 death, 34 percent have been challenged, Mr. Stringer's researchers said.

"We told thousands of workers and volunteers when they selflessly performed on 9/11 that we supported them, that they were heroes," Mr. Stringer stated. "Yet here we are, four years later, and our responders continue to be neglected."

Assemblyman Bing said the legislation won't increase costs to the city. "This bill doesn't give extra benefits, but rather ensures that 9/11 workers who became or become ill are justly compensated," he noted.

9/11 Presumption

The bill directs the Workers' Compensation Board to regard any death or disability incurred on 9/11 or the following day as presumptive evidence that it was a work-related incident.

It allows for re-hearings on Workers' Compensation claims that have already been rejected, requires a statewide report on projected Workers' Compensation costs for 9/11 volunteers, and says responders can file a claim within six months of acquiring medical knowledge of an injury or illness.

Like the 9/11 disability pension bill that Governor Pataki signed into law in June, the legislation covers work done at Ground Zero, the Fresh Kills landfill, or on the barges that transported waste. The bill requires proof of 40 hours or more of on-site work for people who responded after Sept. 12, 2001.

Lending their support to the bill were U.S. Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, who have lobbied to get Congress to restore $125 million in Federal funds for 9/11 aid that the Bush Administration rescinded earlier in the summer.

Congresswoman Maloney, who is a member of the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, said she'll make sure that the public health impacts of the WTC disaster get ample coverage when the subcommittee convenes in Manhattan for a Sept. 10 oversight hearing.

Mr. Nadler called the Workers' Compensation treatment of most 9/11 responders a "great fraud" that needed to be exposed.

A slew of public employees, volunteers and private-sector workers were on hand to discuss their problems getting through the Workers' Compensation system, including a group of Emergency Medical Service members who were there on behalf of some colleagues too sick to attend. Unlike firefighters, EMS members must apply to the city for their Workers' Compensation claims, and many of them have been critical of how the process works.

'Get What They Earned'

"We aren't all 9/11 responders," said Israel Miranda, director of health and safety for District Council 37 Uniformed Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics Local 2507. "But we support the members of our union that are ill and need help. We're working hard to try and get all the responders the protection they deserve and have earned."

A spokeswoman for the Law Department said she had no comment on the legislation, except to note that it was a statewide initiative and not aimed at the city. Calls to Mayor Bloomberg's office for comment were not returned.

Dr. Stephen Levin, medical director of Mount Sinai Hospital's Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, said its screening of WTC volunteers and workers had yielded some disturbing results.

"We've seen about 14,000 people, and the vast majority have breathing ailments like asthma, bronchitis and sinusitis. Some have cancers, or other debilitating diseases," he stated. "These are very persistent illnesses, despite the best medical care, and there's no doubt they're related to Ground Zero. Yet the Workers' Compensation cases are being challenged at a higher rate than they were before 9/11. The system was always bad, but it's actually now worse for 9/11 responders."

Short on Funding

Dr. Levin said existing funding guarantees that Mount Sinai can continue to treat and track 9/11 responders for five years, through 2009. But that isn't nearly long enough, he added.

"I've done occupational medicine for more than 25 years, and I know what you need for long-term, comprehensive health care and studies," he said. "We don't have enough funding. We don't have a system in place to keep data from responders who came from other parts of the country. We need to do more now so that in five, or 10 or 20 years, when more people get sick, we have an early diagnosis and early treatment already established. That will help save lives."

Mr. Levin, who has done long-term studies on asbestos exposure among construction workers, said there's no way to tell which workers will fall ill. For the compensation system to be effective and fair, he said, administrators must assume that all workers are in need of protection.

Impact Varies

"I've seen two guys work side by side and get the same level of exposure, and 15 years later, one's got crippling scarring in his lungs and the other one's barely affected," Dr. Levin said. "You've got to account for variations in a number of ways."

Mount Sinai doctors first became aware of the difficulties some responders were having with Workers' Compensations when patients reported that they were unable to fill their prescriptions through the Injured Workers' Pharmacy.

The Workers' Compensation system stopped accepting IWP's direct-billing invoices last year, even though IWP kept filling prescriptions in the hope that it could resolve its situation with the state and city.

Workers caught unaware during the changeover sometimes ran up thousands of dollars of medical expenses that have yet to be paid.

Insurers Too Picky?

Assemblymen Stringer and Bing expressed their dismay with the system, stating that insurers were challenging too many cases and relying on technicalities to deny claims.

Dr. Levin said he'd asked the Workers' Compensation Board several times for a complete breakdown of approved cases, but has never gotten what he wanted.

"I'd like to see how many of the claims approved are injury cases, which is like, boom, you fall down, you break your leg on the job," he said. "They've given me a general number on overall approvals, but I'd like to know what percentage of those were occupational disease claims."

Dr. Levin would also like a further breakdown of how many occupational disease claims were challenged, on what grounds, and how many of them were resolved in the workers' favor.

"I think releasing that information to the public would go a long way toward ending what I suspect are a lot of frivolous controversions," he added.