• S1908 Suliga/Inverso/Gill/Stender/Cohen - Requires Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to use transported remains of victims of September 11, 2001 from World Trade Center in a memorial.

 

 

While our families have been included in meetings regarding the future of the WTC recovery site and Fresh Kills Park, we have made certain points absolutely clear. First, we agree that the Borough of Staten Island has waited patiently for this well deserved green space. Most of the decisions about that space should be left to the Staten Islanders. Second, we want the record to show that we agree that a meaningful MONUMENT should be erected at the location where the tireless and careful World Trade Center recovery operations took place. This is an historically significant place as well as a place where people need to be honored.

However, we cannot ever accept The Fresh Kills Landfill as the final burial place of those who died on September 11, 2001. The record must show that the WTC Families for Proper Burial, Inc., sees this landfill only as a temporary repository for those remains. We continue to insist that a more suitable and dignified site be offered for their permanent cemetery. The household waste currently below these remains and the construction fill above them continue to show the disrespect with which they have been regarded. An international cemetery in a respectful and more easily accessible location is still the ultimate goal of our organization. This goal is NOT negotiable.

While you project a park in the near future, we continue to read that such a plan will be decades in the making. The section of Hills 1 & 9 where the WTC material has been left was still actively accepting household refuse as of March 2001. As the last area closed, we cannot expect that it will be the first area developed. Nearly a year ago ( September 30, 2003), The New York Daily News, quoting Mayor Bloomberg, wrote that,”...any new parkland or memorial could be years-if not decades-in the making,... because of dangerous methane gases still underground...” In November 2002, Philip Gleason, director of landfill engineering at the Department of Sanitation was quoted in The New York Times: “Any community that wants a park, wants a park,“ he said. “They say: ’my grandkids will be the first to see it.’ They say they want it sooner.” Advice to Staten Islanders: keep waiting. It may take another 55 years before the park is completed. Mr. Gleason said it would take at least 30 years for the garbage to decompose completely and the four trash mountains, which are 150 to 200 feet tall, to settle...but the construction cannot be finished until the methane and polluted water dissipate. he said.” Mr. Corner, the finalist in the design competition, was quoted in the same article saying that, “The technical obstacles to building any kind of park are ‘very, very difficult’ The release of methane and polluted water will go on for decades, as the trash mountains settle. One mound shut in 1996 ( 5 years before the WTC materials area of 1 & 9 was shut) has shrunk by 15 feet and is expected to shrink 15 more.” “ Major construction, however, is unlikely to begin before 2030 or so.” ( Mr. Gleason)

Our loved ones were not buried at Fresh Kills; they were dumped. Not only are we now being asked to accept that gross indignity, but we are also being asked to wait a 25 or 30 year minimum to see a memorial built at that site. I am 57 years old. Do not expect me to wait that long.

When the American public, and indeed, compassionate people around the world, sent financial aid to this country, I cannot believe they thought the remains of those who died would merely be discarded. When President Bush addressed the nation on September 11, 2002 he said, “ Our deepest national conviction is that every life is precious, because every life is the gift of a Creator who intended us to live in liberty and equality. More than anything else, this separates us from the enemy we fight. We value every life; our enemies value none---not even the innocent, not even their own...” How do we show that we value innocent lives if we leave them dumped in a landfill atop household trash? What did FEMA Director Joe M. Allbaugh mean when, on February 6, 2003, he said, “More than 15 months after the tragic events of September 11, President Bush continues to honor his promise to support New York City through the monumental recovery and rebuilding process.?” Did he mean that our Government would fund the $1,570,530 restoration of a baseball field in lower Manhattan, but that our government would not see to the proper retrieval and burial of the dead? Did FEMA, which provides funds for recovery, intend to leave the dead un-recovered while $1,404,774 was used to improve Pier 11 and $1,257,330 was used to upgrade stationary barges at Pier 11? While we are told that there are no funds for a proper burial, $850 million in public subsidies intended for the area devastated by the September 11 attacks have been used in midtown Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. While President Bush authorized FEMA to pay 100 percent of the program costs for response and RECOVERY efforts related to the Sept. 11 tragedy, did he mean our government would not pay to recover the dead?.

The City Planning Commission is obligated to insist that the Federal Government honor its promise to fully fund the recovery efforts, including the recovery of the cremated remains, small tissue particles and bone fragments so unceremoniously bulldozed into the ironically named Fresh Kills Landfill. Only after that recovery has been accomplished, as promised, can the City Planning Commission begin to determine a plan for those 40 acres of the Fresh Kills Landfill. There is a moral imperative here. Remember there were only two things that all the victims had in common: the place they died, the World Trade Center, and every victim was somebody’s child. We do not leave our children in a garbage dump. It’s as simple as that.