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| The most famous skyline in the world before the attack. Now broken water and sewer pipes lie like severed veins and arteries, posing site remediation problems unmatched in both scale and sensitivity. |
By Tom Davey
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| The most famous skyline in the world before the attack. Now broken water and sewer pipes lie like severed veins and arteries, posing site remediation problems unmatched in both scale and sensitivity. |
The terrorist attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, is still reverberating around the world with admiration for the New York firefighters growing with every revelation. Their bravery and persistence in this unprecedented high-rise fire matches that of the most ferocious military encounters. The New York police and other US agencies also seemed to have responded with commendable ability.
There is a cruel irony in the name of the Staten Island site called 'Fresh Kills' landfill, which was reopened to take in the massive amounts of debris. The entire Trade Center area will require site remediation on a previously unimaginable scale. In addition to the complexities of residual chemicals and toxic compounds emitted by the disaster, the large loss of human life poses new ethical problems. Structural engineering teams from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, on request from the City of New York, surveyed buildings and structures near the World Trade Center so the City could assure the safety of search, rescue and debris removal operations in and around the affected areas.
At the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Corps dredged the Hudson River to allow the city better access in removing debris to the Staten Island landfill. Under a (US) $790,500 contract with the Corps, which lowered the depth between Pier 6 and a navigation channel, an estimated 75,000 cubic yards of material were removed and transported to the Newark Bay Confined Disposal Facility.
The Environmental Protection Agency brought 10 specialized trucks into lower Manhattan, equipped with highly efficient air filters capable of capturing particulate matter including asbestos fibres. Each truck had a (US) 3,000 gallon capacity to help clear streets, vehicles and buildings of potentially hazardous dust. Dust and other materials are collected in air tight storage containers which are part of the truck design. The collected material is off-loaded at two city transfer stations, classified and disposed of according to law.
Even cleaning up undamaged offices and apartments in the area became a mammoth undertaking. As this is being written, the formidable task of site remediation continues. In the gaping void that was the World Trade Center, broken water and sewer pipes lie like severed veins and arteries, posing an unmatched restoration problem for water services. A complex web of once sophisticated telephone and computer processing conduits - in a concentrated area unequalled anywhere - now lie severed like the residual nerve endings of a once mighty and viable commercial organism.
But this is America. New York faltered briefly after the saboteurs delivered their deadly blows, before its fabled emergency systems moved in to quell the fires, save lives, tend to the injured and begin the massive tasks of restoring services and site remediation. No one who saw the response teams in action can doubt that neither city nor country will falter in the task.
Canadians began their participation with American colleagues at WEFTEC 2001, October 13, in Atlanta, Georgia, barely a month after the catastrophe. ES&E staff were on hand to express their support for an organization that has served the public with life saving technology, research and engineering for decades.
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