Jersey City brass: EPA didn't test, tell truth

Tuesday, June 26, 2007
By LYSA CHEN
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Several Jersey City officials yesterday said the Environmental Protection Agency failed to properly test the air near Ground Zero for dangerous chemicals immediately after the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, and that the agency did not underscore the dangers of working directly at the site.

"The bottom line is that if the EPA had done everything within their power to test the area for contaminants, there is no way they would have been able to come back and say the air quality was good," said Armando Roman, director of the Department of Fire and Emergency Services.

The critical comments came as Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA's chief during 9/11, was questioned by a congressional committee on her comments at the time that the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe.

Wayne McCarthy, president of Jersey City's fire officers union, described the EPA's and Whitman's performance following the attacks as appalling.

"Her priority should have been for those who were the first responders, who were put in the worst air conditions," McCarthy said. "The information she wanted to put out should have been specific to that level without the general terms that put these people in danger."

Gary Garetano, assistant director of the Hudson Regional Health Commission, said people should have realized conditions at Ground Zero were not safe despite Whitman's statements.

"Any smoke is hazardous. Period," he said. "Once the major dust settled, going out a week or so, yeah, probably the neighborhood was safe. But on the pile where it was smoldering? No, it wasn't."

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BRISTLING ON THE HOT SEAT
Whitman tells hostile panel she misled no one on Ground Zero air

Tuesday, June 26, 2007
BY ROBERT COHEN
STAR-LEDGER WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Declaring she is tired of the "innuendo and outright falsehoods," former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman vigorously denied yesterday that she made misleading statements about the air quality in Lower Manhattan in the days and weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Whitman, the former two-term Republican governor of New Jersey, told a largely hostile House Judiciary subcommittee that she re lied on sound scientific data when she told residents of Lower Manhattan that the air around Ground Zero was safe to breathe.

"Let me be clear: There are in deed people to blame. They are the terrorists who attacked the United States, not the men and women at all levels of government who worked heroically to protect and defend this country," Whitman said during a hearing packed with angry and sometimes boisterous visitors from Lower Manhattan.

Whitman denied that the Bush administration pressured her to present rosy air-quality assessments in order to restore public confidence and reopen Wall Street after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers released tons of hazardous chemicals into the air.

"I am disappointed at the misstatements, innuendo and outright falsehoods that have characterized the public discussion about the EPA in the aftermath of the terrorists' attacks," Whitman said.

"EPA's most extreme critics have alleged that I knowingly misled New Yorkers and the workers at Ground Zero about the safety risks associated with environmental contamination." she said. "This destructive and incendiary charge was investigated by the EPA's inspector general, who confirmed in her 2003 report that we did not conceal any of our test data from the public."

In fact, she said, the EPA did everything possible to get accurate information to the public, even posting the results of air-quality tests on a Web site.

During one heated exchange with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Whitman objected to some of the attacks she has endured.

"I have been called a liar and a criminal," an exasperated Whitman said.

She said her decisions were not political but were based on the facts she had at hand and believed to be accurate. Then, her voice breaking, Whitman added that her son was in the World Trade Center complex the day of the attack. "I almost lost him," she said.

Subcommittee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who represents Lower Manhattan, was among the most vociferous critics, accusing Whitman of reassuring the public when such reassurances were not justified. As a result of the actions by Whitman and others in the Bush administration, said Nadler, "our government has knowingly exposed thousands of American citizens unnecessarily to deadly hazardous materials."

Nadler suggested the White House pushed Whitman and the EPA away from sounding alarms about the air quality, adding that the administration continues in its "desire to cover up its misstate ments and misdeeds in the days after the attack."

"The issue is this," said Rep. William Pascrell (D-8th Dist.). "You said there was no conspiracy, no White House interference." The lawmaker representing Passaic and Essex counties then quoted from the 2003 EPA inspector general's report that found the White House exerting influence over all the agency's public statements and news releases.

"I felt no extreme pressure from the White House," Whitman insisted. She said the EPA's press re leases and statements were vetted by the White House environmental quality office to make sure they coincided with what other agencies were saying.


EDITED RELEASES
Whitman also made a distinc tion in her statements regarding the smoldering piles of rubble at Ground Zero and the residential neighborhoods nearby. Tests, she said, showed the air in the neighborhoods was relatively clean, but the air at Ground Zero was not.

She said her agency advised New York City officials that recovery workers should wear respira tors but lacked the power to order it. Whitman did not cast blame on city officials, however, saying at one point Mayor Rudy Giuliani's administration "did absolutely everything in its power to do what was right."

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) recounted some of Whitman's many statements about the safety of the air in Lower Manhattan: "Those quotes were dead wrong, they were literally dead wrong," he said.

Tina Kreisher, the EPA communications director at the time, also testified to the subcommittee and backed up Whitman's statement that the agency relied on appropriate air-quality tests in communicating with the public.

"When we were told the tests showed air quality within normal range, we accepted those findings," Kreisher said. She added that, while the White House Office of Environmental Quality did "edit" some of her press releases on the topic of air quality in ways that upset her, none was rendered false.

Administration actions were also defended by John Henshaw, the former head of the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

"The OSHA staff did everything they believed humanly possible to assure worker protection during the 10 months following the at tack," Henshaw said. He said OSHA's air samples "showed expo sures were well below the agency's permissible exposure levels for the majority of chemicals and substances analyzed."

Whitman served as Bush's EPA administrator for about 2 1/2 years, ending in 2003. During that time she was frequently at odds with the White House and came under harsh criticism from environmentalists who had hoped she would be a more potent protector of the environment.

She was sharply criticized by the federal judge in a lawsuit brought by residents of Lower Manhattan, who charged that her pronouncements needlessly ex posed them to dangerous airborne pollutants. A federal appeals court, however, ruled Whitman is immune from suit over her post-9/11 remarks.

Robert Cohen may be reached at rcohen@starledger.com or (202) 383-7823.