Memo: NYC Reopened WTC Area Despite EPA Warning

Marcia Kramer Reports
CBS
Sep. 08, 2006

> Video: Part I -- Documents: Feds, City Knew Of Ground Zero Toxins
> Video: Part II -- Memo: NYC Reopened WTC Area Despite EPA Warning
> Read the EPA Document
> Read the NYC Department Of Health DocumentRudy Giuliani was hailed a hero after 9/11. But CBS 2 has learned his administration may have knowingly put New Yorkers in harm's way after the attacks.

CBS 2 obtained memos that show the city was told the air at Ground Zero was toxic, but reopened Lower Manhattan anyway.

What did the former mayor know about the air quality at Ground Zero and when did he know it?

An explosive memo from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to an associate commissioner at the city health department -- dated October 5, 2001 -- told the tale.

"This site ... poses threats to workers related to potential exposure to hazardous substances," the head of EPA's Response and Prevention Branch wrote.

The memo went on to list the hazardous substances, which included asbestos, refrigerants, hazardous wastes, ethylene and "products of combustion emitted from the long-burning fires."

Just two days before EPA's private memo to the Giuliani administration, the agency said publicly that the air quality in Lower Manhattan was safe. It's a position the administration was still maintaining weeks later.

"For residents and people who are working in the open area that has been created downtown, there is no realistic danger to health," said Joel Miele on October 26, 2001. At the time, he was the city's Commissioner of Environmental Protection.

People believed City Hall.

"If the mayor says it's OK, then I believe him. It's OK," one person told CBS 2 in October 2001.

No more.

"If that information existed how dare they keep that from everyone -- not just the workers but the people who lived down there," said Leigh Ann Vinciguerra, the wife of a 9/11 first responder.

The head of the city's fire union charged that firefighters and rescue workers in the pit were left unprotected.

"The fact that the city knew that the air wasn't safe and had a responsibility to protect us and didn't do anything is a disgrace," said fire union president Stephen Cassidy. "It was all about money and it wasn't about the safety of first responders. Those people should be ashamed of themselves."

Former Mayor Giuliani was not available for comment.

His then-Deputy Mayor for Operations, Joe Lhota, told CBS 2 he had no knowledge of the EPA memo and if he had, he would have made it public.

Related: Documents: Feds, City Knew Of Ground Zero Toxins