By Karla Schuster
Newsday (New York)
NEW YORK — Fire safety improvements and environmental sealing will be done simultaneously at a contaminated lower Manhattan skyscraper where a seven-alarm blaze killed two firefighters last month, in a deal brokered yesterday during a meeting of city, state and federal officials.
The agreement ends a dispute between the Environmental Protection Agency and the state-run Lower Manhattan Development Corp. over how work should proceed at the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty St., which was being decontaminated and demolished at the time of the Aug. 18 fire.
Since then, the original work on the building has been suspended, but the LMDC had been clearing debris and making other repairs that agency officials said were aimed at making the structure safer for first-responders in the event of another emergency.
But the EPA objected, saying no work should be done at the building until it was resealed to prevent the toxins it contained from seeping into the air. EPA officials had said that the resealing and the fire safety improvements could go on at the same time. Tests have shown the air quality around the building is safe, city and federal officials say.
“LMDC has said all along that we will work closely with all of the regulators as we proceed to take the Deutsche Bank building down,” said LMDC spokesman Errol Cockfield. “We are glad to have the EPA as a partner in that process and we are gratified that we have made progress with them and our city partners in assuring that the work proceeds in a manner that protects both first responder and environmental safety.”
The demolition of the Liberty Street building, heavily damaged and contaminated in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, required EPA approval because of the toxins inside the structure. It is unclear when the demolition and decontamination of the building will resume.
An EPA spokeswoman said the city and the LMDC, which owns the building, submitted a new plan yesterday for the fire safety and resealing work to federal regulators.
Copyright 2007 Newsday, Inc.