New York CIty Council Bill Would Prevent Independent Environmental Disaster Testing

Jenna Orkin*


It is by now a truism that at the height of the environmental disaster of 9/11, the federal government proclaimed, "The air is safe to breathe." New York City's Department of Health followed suit, telling residents to clean their apartments using a wet rag. As a result of these fatally seductive lures, tens of thousands of Ground Zero workers are now sick as are uncounted residents, office workers and students. Some victims have already died.

What was the excuse for the government's lies to the public? Repeatedly, we have been told of the need to prevent "panic" and "anxiety."

Using the same rationale, a bill before the New York City Council would ensure not only that history repeats itself; it goes beyond that, plugging those leaks that allowed fragments of truth to seep out in the fall of 2001.

In the chaos following the attacks, when the world was focussed on the devastation of Lower Manhattan and the rallying cry was to "show the terrorists" by getting back to business as usual, relatively few people focussed on the environmental conditions that prevailed.

But independent testing performed by the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, among other organizations, led to a seminal cover story in the Daily News which laid out the hideous truth, thereby landing its author, Juan Gonzalez, in journalistic purgatory (the next article this writer saw by him was on page 32) for the next several years.

A bill before the New York City Council, Intro 650, is designed to ensure that should another terrorist attack occur and should the government once more determine that the public's ignorance is bliss or at least better than the alternative, no one will be allowed to redeem the situation.

In order to prevent "excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety," Intro 650 would require the New York Police Department to okay any independent environmental testing with permits.

The bill does not discuss what to do when the anxiety is warranted. As pointed out in testimony by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) and the New York City Central Labor Council, "neither press reports nor the scientific literature nor the city's own web site provides any support for the assertion that the 'excessive alarms and unwarranted anxiety' have been or are real-world problems."

Just how wrongheaded is Intro 650? It would render immediately illegal tens of thousands of safety devices including carbon monoxide detectors and legally required smoke detectors.

The sheer brazenness of submitting Intro 650 at the epicenter of one of the greatest environmental disasters in the history of this country and with the government's recklessly indifferent history in handling that disaster, is alarming in itself. The bill is a scaled down environmental equivalent of the Patriot Act. The difference is that we're not fresh from a terrorist attack; there's no 'emergency' now. We have no excuse to allow the wool to be pulled over our eyes.


*Jenna Orkin is one of twelve original plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the EPA.