The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 225

Mayor Bloomberg released his plans for the City that stretch into 2030. Very little was actually said about the one place that should be a focal point for redevelopment - Ground Zero. Steve Cuozzo takes him to task for that oversight.

Cuozzo has been slamming the Transit Authority as well, for making Lower Manhattan impossible to live and work in because of all the construction and very little to show for it. Streets are torn up in a haphazard manner and businesses suffer because people are reluctant to go to area restaurants because of all the construction.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jerrold Nadler is calling on the EPA to widen its study of health effects as a result from the collapsing towers beyond just those workers who toiled on the pile and include thousands who lived downwind from the burning wreckage for weeks and months.

Speaking at a Congressional hearing held in Brooklyn Borough Hall, they said that with the recent focus on the deaths and illnesses of people who worked at the World Trade Center disaster site, effects on those farther from ground zero were being overlooked.

Several experts presented evidence that they had gathered in recent years of increased asthma rates and widespread home contamination in Brooklyn, and urged more research to at least determine the extent of the problems.

Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan, said that having already misled ground zero workers that the air they breathed was safe, the E.P.A. was now engaged in a “second cover-up.”

“This,” Mr. Nadler said, “is that the people in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City and Queens are still being poisoned daily.”

The hearing was conducted by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform and was presided over by Representative Edolphus Towns, a Democrat of Brooklyn.

Nadler is also engaging in quite a bit of embellishing considering that there is no evidence that anyone is being poisoned on a daily basis nearly six years after the attacks. There's no reason to exaggerate an already serious situation and all Nadler does is undermine the legitimacy of need for additional science to be conducted.