A Home News Tribune editorial

                        January 2004

No landfill is a suitable burial site for the remains of World Trade Center victims. Properly, Gov. James E. McGreevy acknowledged as much last week, signing off on legislation that would move ash containing the remains of WTC dead from the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island to a memorial at the trade center site. All that remains for the plan to move forward now is for the New York Legislature to pass a similar bill. Empire State lawmakers need not delay.

The process would not be easy or inexpensive, and that has put off quick support of the proposal. Relocation could cost as much as $450 million. There are concerns that biohazards may be stirred up at the landfill during the work. The plan also presents new design challenges at the site chosen for the memorial.

But New York lawmakers should get past their practical concerns for cost and trouble -- as New Jersey lawmakers have managed to do -- by considering the emotional closure that a proper burial would represent, both for the families of the victims and for their countrymen.

"Right now I feel that my son and 2,700 others were dishonored by this crude way of being mixed in with household garbage as an eternal resting place," said Arthur Russo, a founding member of WTC Families for Proper Burial. "It's as crude as can be."

His indignity should remain the nation's indignity so long as the fragments of Americans who died at terror's door lie scattered about a dump.

The victims, and their memory, deserve better.