Ground Zero Wars

                                                     Chapter 5(?)

                                                     Jenna Orkin



February 11, 2002. Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works are holding field hearings in Lower Manhattan.

Stuyvesant Parents' Association President Marilena Christodoulou is up. With her on the panel is Bernard Orlan, the Board of Education Supervisor of Buildings.



"Clinton: Mr. Orlan, let me turn to you, because there are two specific issues that were raised, and I want your direct response to them. The first, with respect to Stuyvesant, were the ventilation systems and the ductwork cleaned, and who did that work, if it was done?



Mr. Orlan. The air mixing chambers and the ventilation system were cleaned by an asbestos hazard abatement company prior to the reoccupancy of the school. Prior to that weekend, and there was a holiday weekend, to ensure that there was nothing lurking behind the ventilation system, the ventilation system was run, a number of air changes, after which air sampling was conducted throughout the school. The analysis was using the TEM analysis, we were able to get down to the smallest level of particulate. Those results were shared prior to reoccupancy of the school with both the environmentalists with the UFT, with the various regulatory agencies and with the parents' association consultant.



Senator Clinton. Ms. Christodoulou, you just heard Mr. Orlan's response. What's your response to that?



Ms. Christodoulou. I think it was not a direct response. Your question, Senator, was were the ducts cleaned. Mr. Orlan responded that the intakes of the ducts were cleaned. It's a----



Senator Clinton. Let me stop you. Were the ducts cleaned, Mr. Orlan?

Mr. Orlan. The ducts themselves were not cleaned."





The audience gasps.



A few weeks later, the playing of a tape of this interchange to the faculty of Stuyvesant galvanizes them to file a grievance about the conditions at the school.



"Senator Clinton. Is there some reason why the ducts couldn't be cleaned?



Mr. Orlan. The ducts, there was a sufficient number of air changes going through the ducts. Whatever was reachable by the ducts, the diffusers, the air chambers, the air handling chambers themselves, were physically cleaned. From that point on, sufficient amount of air was run through the ducts. It was a protocol agreed upon by the parents' association consultant prior to running this. We shared results with that particular gentleman and with the environmentalists with the UFT.



Senator Clinton. Well, now, I think this needs to be resolved. It's not going to be resolved here. But clearly, this is the kind of either misunderstanding or lack of information or just difference of opinion about what needs to be done that I would very much like to see resolved one way or the other."





The caught-with-his-pants-down interchange does not stop Orlan from continuing to assert that the ducts were cleaned by having air ‘vigorously blown’ through them.

“What he means,” says Howard Bader, the Parents' Association’s consultant, at a later meeting, “is that they turned the system on.”





Maggie Clarke is taping the hearing, dressed in a Polo shirt and khakis. She should be on a panel but instead we’re getting T., who works for a major Lower Manhattan landlord, and other EPA apologists.

My father’s genes assert themselves. (Among other things, he was a theatrical agent with a nose for talent.) I tell Ralph Penza of NBC that he could get a different view of the proceedings if he talked to Maggie.

Maggie explains what the government should be doing that it isn’t, using her “asbestos factory, incinerator, crematorium, volcano” analogy which is what NBC airs. Four other cameras cash in on the interview. A star is born.





Also taking place in February and on March 11, the six month anniversary of 9/11, are the EPA Ombudsman's hearings. Since his office lacks subpoena power, EPA doesn’t come. A prior engagement, no doubt. But Ombudsman Robert Martin says it’s unheard of for an Agency not to send a representative to a hearing investigating it.

“Looks as though they have something to hide.”

In the audience is Wendy G.*, [*some names and identifying details have been changed] a mother with a ten-month-old baby. (At a City Council hearing, Alan Gerson introduces her and she stands with Ben, who is nursing, as a symbol of the resurgence of Lower Manhattan.)

Unlike previous hearings the Ombudsman hearings don’t put agency reps on first. The first witness is Dr. Thomas Cahill of the University of California at Davis who drops one bombshell after another: About finding the highest levels of vanadium and other metals ever recorded in the United States; about very- and ultrafine particulates that were the highest of 7000 samples he'd taken around the world including at the burning Kuwaiti oil fields. Compounds had been found like 1,3 biphenylpropane which had never existed before. The measurements dated from a few days before Stuyvesant re-opened.

Lieutenant Manuel Gomez testifies that some workers at Ground Zero had been told not to wear respirators for fear of making everyone panic. He has brought along the mask that workers wore.

“Read the warning,” says Hugh Kaufman, the Ombudsman's Chief Investigator.

Manny reads the bold red letters on the mask: “DOES NOT PROTECT LUNGS.”

Heidi Mount testifies that her husband Kevin, a sanitation worker, worked unprotected at Fresh Kills and in addition to having new onset asthma, is in an acute state of hepatitis C.

John Healy testifies about his son, also called John, a big guy, a football player.

“‘Strong like bull?’ as my grandmother would have said,” says Hugh.

“Right. ‘Strong like bull.’ Now every night he coughs himself to sleep for forty-five minutes.”

Hugh proclaims that the 9/11 case is rife with conflict of interest. EPA Administrator Whitman owned hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Citigroup which was a major insurer of Lower Manhattan. Her husband worked for a Citigroup affiliated and funded company. Whitman was also a major bond holder in the owner of the WTC, the NY NJ Port Authority. Harold O. Levy, as Hugh calls him, making him sound like an Irish Jew, will return to his job at Citicorp when his stint as Schools Chancellor is over. It comes as no surprise, when googling Hugh, to learn that he was largely responsible for putting Assistant EPA Administrator Rita Lavelle in jail.



The hearing goes on til eleven.

“Don’t you all have something better to do?” grumbles a husband there to pick up his wife who has yet to testify.

“No, actually, we don’t,” replies T, who’s been fighting since day one. “There’s nowhere else we’d rather be today.”



Now that he’s out of Stuyvesant I throw out all the clothes Alex wore there as well as his bedding. It’s a good thing I buy bargains.

But he wants to go back when it's safe so I keep going to PA meetings.

At the next one a Chinese mother says, “My English is not good. My daughter is sick. Every night she coughs. For two weeks she can’t go to school. Then she goes back, she's sick again.”

The mother cries which is becoming par for the course at PA meetings.

Also at the meeting is new blood: Paul Edwards who is angry.

“We should have a demonstration,” he says.

I take him to a meeting of Lower Manhattan residents. The idea of a demonstration will be harder to write off as wacky when there are two of us.

Paul is no stranger to battling big guns. He once published a newsletter about travel discounts and was sued for $6 million by American Airlines whose discounts he'd mentioned.

He brought to court six folders of complaints. One was from American Airlines. The other five were from companies that wanted to be written about.

“The Wall Street Journal implied I made out like a bandit,” Paul says. How accurate that assessment was must forever remain a mystery since Paul isn't allowed to discuss the settlement.

One resident at the meeting is annoyed at our Promethean act of planning a demonstration before the idea has been put to a vote. What about the democratic process? he asks. We are being ‘inappropriate.’

Like belching at the dinner table?

But the resident works for kids’ rights and comes ‘round.

Since the barge hasn’t budged, it is the focus of the demonstration.

Now what would get the most press? Chaining ourselves to lamp posts? Lying down on West Street to stop the trucks from transporting the toxic debris to the barge? Some of us are willing to risk arrest except if the police get wind of the action too soon, it could all be over before the press even show up.

The World Trade Organization is coming to town; in its wake, a circus of demonstrators. A few of them, with multiple arrests on their resumes, organize a training session on Civil Disobedience.

A group of Quakers, dressed thriftily, take off their shoes and sit crosslegged on the floor.

“Bring any medication you may be taking,” says the trainer, a man of about thirty with the air of a leftover Hippy, minus the drugs. “You may need it in jail. If you normally carry nail scissors, leave them home; they’ll be confiscated and you may not see them again when you get out. Women should tie back their hair so the police can’t pull it.

‘Expect to stay in jail up to 72 hours.

‘Now, suppose they let you off the hook BUT,” the trainer does a 360 degree turn on his heel, “they give you a sentence of Community Service anyway.

‘You guys," he addresses the Quakers, "spend your whole lives in Community Service. Reminding people of this has worked in the past.”



Barbara Zeluck, whose husband died of asbestos-related illness from working in the shipyards during WW II, provides Paul and me with the email addresses of the WTO demonstration organizers with the idea that a few of them might be interested in beefing up the ranks of the barge demonstration.

The whole contingent would love to come, they email back. We would be the jewel in their crown.

We are pleased but wary. Aren’t these the people who threw rocks in Seattle?

What kind of demonstration were you thinking of? we ask queasily.

They don’t respond. (A month later an email arrives about a changed address.) But their New York demonstration is a model of decorum and I regret doubting them.



The barge demonstration takes place March 20 at the foot of the Stuyvesant bridge. Rochelle Kalish hangs a banner in red, white and blue; Marianne Edwards, who is Paul's wife and an artist, makes posters which get into the NY Times.

The activist who’d been annoyed at our vanguardism stands with us in the rain, bringing three relatives who chant up a storm.

Literally, for the weather is awful. But it helps our cause, making the two hundred plus demonstrators (thanks to the amazing work and savvy of Stuyvesant parents, residents et al!!!!) look especially dedicated and accounting for why there aren’t even more, in case any cynics are wondering. But they’re probably not. We have enough people to fill up a wide shot and that’s what counts as anyone knows who watched the supposed throngs cheering the downfall of Saddam’s statue. (Pictures of that demonstration imply hordes of people. But a distant photo shows that the rest of the square was empty.)

“Take charge, move the barge,” the crowd chants from under their umbrellas. L. composes a wittier chant: “Dust, dioxin, lead, asbestos/ We don’t care if you arrest us.” But since this crowd does care if they get arrested, the couplet bites the toxic dust.

CBS and NBC turn up as well as a number of radio stations and newspapers. The press devours Stuynews. Stuy is a Board of Ed triumph. Only one in twenty applicants gets in and many kids don’t even bother to try. A record number win Intel prizes every year. Even the English Department is celebrated with Frank McCourt a recent member. Angela’s Ashes is still showcased in the school library.

But we avoid the elite card; in a city of overcrowded, failing schools, it has only ever earned us resentment.