NYTimes.com Article: E.P.A. May Expand Plan to Clean Apartments

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E.P.A. May Expand Plan to Clean Apartments

May 9, 2002

By KIRK JOHNSON

Federal officials said yesterday that the government's new

commitment to clean any apartment south of Canal Street in

Manhattan, to remove dust and debris from the World Trade

Center disaster, might be expanded to include reimbursement

for residents who have already had their homes

professionally cleaned.

They also said the cleanup program, which was officially

announced yesterday at a news conference at the Manhattan

regional headquarters of the Environmental Protection

Agency, could be extended to include apartments outside the

boundaries if testing suggests the need for it. Depending

on what is found in the residential work, the interiors of

businesses may eventually be included as well, they said.

" No one should have to live with anxiety about the safety

of the air in their own homes, " said Jane Kenny, the

E.P.A.'s regional administrator.

The cleanup program, which is expected to begin next month,

reverses the position that was taken after Sept. 11 by

federal, local and state government officials, who insisted

that Lower Manhattan residents and business owners were

responsible for cleaning their own spaces.

Under the new policy, the federal government has committed

money to the cleanup, apparently without limit. " The most

important message is that FEMA, our federal partner, has

not said this is all there is, " said O. Ward,

the city's commissioner of environmental protection,

referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which

will pay for the work.

E.P.A. officials said that according to their initial

estimates, 15,000 apartments will be covered by the plan,

and that cleanup by a contractor for a typical two-bedroom

apartment might cost $3,000 to $5,000. If every resident

participates and each apartment is within that range, that

would bring the cost to $45 million to $75 million, not

including the possible expansion and reimbursement plans

mentioned yesterday.

At the news conference, Ms. Kenny and other city and

federal officials strongly rejected any suggestion that

waiting eight months after the disaster to begin a cleaning

program for New York's interior spaces has put residents at

risk. The collapse of the trade center towers blasted dust

and ash, some of which contained asbestos or other

potentially harmful materials, across a wide area of the

city, including parts of Brooklyn.

In fact, Mr. Ward said, the new cleanup program could

validate what health and environmental officials have said

all along: that most apartment interiors were not

contaminated.

The degree of participation will probably depend on whether

inviting government apartment cleaners into one's home

sounds reassuring or intrusive. The cleanups could take two

to three days, officials said. The E.P.A. will set up a

telephone number for the program by the end of the month,

officials said.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat who

also spoke at the news conference, said he would work to

see that apartments were cleaned en masse, with every

resident participating so that no dust or debris is left

over to be tracked back into cleaned spaces.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/09/nyregion/09CLEA.html?ex=1021973842 & ei=1 & en=f41\

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