Building takedown held for environmental inquiry

BY LUIS PEREZ | Newsday Staff Writer

April 19, 2006

A commercial building a block from Ground Zero that was blanketed by dust after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 and was slated to be dismantled will be scrutinized for deadly toxins, officials said Tuesday.

The two-story building at 189 Broadway has been empty since December, when its new landlord, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, evicted a handful of commercial tenants to make way for a sprawling $785-million transit hub at Fulton Street and Broadway.

Those plans were shelved after neighborhood activists noticed what appeared to be preliminary construction work several weeks ago and worried that trade center dust might be seeping into the air.

"The truth is that 189 Broadway would be coming down right now if it weren't for vigilant residents," Rep. Jerrold Nadler said. "While the MTA is right to freeze demolition, we shouldn't have to rely on a neighborhood watch system."

Nadler (D-Manhattan-Brooklyn) criticized the federal Environmental Protection Agency for less than stringent oversight of razings near Ground Zero. He said the transit agency told him a new plan for taking down the building would be announced next month.

The development comes a week after a New Jersey coroner said the Jan. 6 death of James Zadroga, an NYPD detective who spent hundreds of hours working in the trade center rubble, was "directly related" to dust and debris there.

Work began recently to take down the badly damaged DeutscheBank building at 130 Liberty St. The EPA, which initiated a cleanup plan for lower Manhattan last year, is among a host of agencies mandated to supervise the work.

Several residents told Newsday they saw workers putting plastic tarpaulins on the 189 Broadway building and bringing in heavy machinery.

MTA spokesman Tim O'Brien said Tuesday that no work had begun to dismantle 189 Broadway. O'Brien said the agency "does not have a schedule" for taking down the building because it is "still talking with all of the experts."

O'Brien confirmed that MTA officials had met with Nadler and residents. He said the building was cleaned for trade center dust twice before, once by its previous owner and once in conjunction with the EPA.

An EPA spokeswoman said the agency never cleaned 189 Broadway but noted that the city Department of Environmental Protection did clean its exterior.

EPA regional administrator Alan Steinberg said the agency received a complaint from a resident and he subsequently got a commitment from the MTA that the dismantling work "would be done right."