Lawsuit Against EPA Proceeds
by TChris
Jenna Orkin just wants her government to tell the truth.
Within days of the World Trade Center collapse, someone ordered Environmental Protection Agency administrators to tell New Yorkers the air was safe. ... No matter that private tests showed the air remained full of lead, asbestos, mercury, benzene. No matter that, according to documents forced out of the EPA by a Freedom of Information request, the agency's own tests agreed that the air in Lower Manhattan--who wanted to bother with Brooklyn?--wasn't fit to breathe.
Orkin joined other plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the EPA, contending that her constitutional right to be protected from harm by government officials was violated when "Christine Todd Whitman, then the EPA administrator, and her staff made false statements and failed to carry out its cleanup duties." An initial ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Batts might pave the way for the truth to come out.
In her 83-page ruling, Judge Batts found enough evidence for the case to proceed. She not only denied the EPA's motion to dismiss it, but refused to grant Whitman immunity. On the contrary, she scolded the former EPA head, declaring her statements so "deliberate and misleading" they "shock the conscience."
"No argument can be made that Whitman could not have understood from existing law that her conduct was unlawful," Batts wrote. ...
Batts' decision paves the way for the plaintiffs to sit government officials down and make them testify under oath.
Had the EPA been honest, New Yorkers could have taken steps to protect their health.
Bob Gulack [is] a plaintiff who works for the Securities and Exchange Commission. One month after the attacks, the SEC leased offices in a building on Broadway, two blocks from ground zero. Almost from the moment Gulack arrived, he began experiencing ailments he never had before. His lungs filled with fluid. He struggled to breathe. Doctors diagnosed him with reactive airway disorder and permanent lung damage, and attributed the ailments to 9-11.
Orkin and the other plaintiffs hope that discovery of the truth will lead to accountability.
"Somebody has to blow the whistle on these guys," exclaims Diane Lapson, a plaintiff who heads the tenant association at Independence Plaza North, an affordable-housing complex three blocks from ground zero. ... She's furious with the government officials who told her not to worry. "They're the naked emperors," she seethes. "Somebody has to stand up and say, 'You guys have no clothes.'"
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