As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I dug out an article that I wrote two months after the event, “The Birth, Death, and Rebirth of the World Trade Center and the Fate of New York.” Reading it for the first time in a quarter of a century, several things struck me.
First, the article is suffused with the multiple layers of grief and shock that afflicted all New Yorkers—and many others around the world.
Second, the article expresses concern about the asbestos and other toxic substances that were released into the air when the towers collapsed. I was practicing law in midtown Manhattan, about five miles north of Ground Zero, and the air there was OK. But downtown, the foul odors persisted for months. Just three days ago, Mayor Zohran Mamdani released boxes of documents that showed how much officials knew about this hazard but kept from the public.
Third, I was reminded that the decision in the early 1960s to build the twin towers was made before any of the modern environmental laws. There was no public participation or environmental review. The excavation of the 16-acre site destroyed an existing community and no doubt dug up contaminated soil and historic artifacts; all of it was landfilled into the Hudson River. The wooden timbers that were pulled from the shoreline were burned at sea. When the buildings were going up, asbestos was sprayed onto the beams. After they opened, the water from the cooling system poured, hot, into the river. None of that would be allowed today.
Fourth, in the months after the attacks there was talk of bypassing the environmental review and permitting processes in the rebuilding of the site. That didn’t happen. There were innumerable public meetings, a three-volume environmental impact statement (still posted here) and a very open debate about what to build at Ground Zero. I didn’t know it at the time I wrote the article, but two months later I became heavily involved in that process as environmental counsel to Larry Silverstein, the real estate developer who held the ground lease to the site. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process moved very quickly; the determination that an environmental impact statement was needed was published in June 2003, and the Record of Decision at the end of the NEPA process was issued in June 2004. Governor George Pataki drove the process and also insisted that the new buildings be green. The new One World Trade Center (the tallest building in the western hemisphere) received LEED Gold certification.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the environmental laws did not get in the way of recovery. The Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, which had closed four months earlier, was reopened to accept the demolition debris. Long-stalled dredging permits were issued to allow the barges to take the material. An office building just north of the twin towers had collapsed on top of an electrical substation that had served lower Manhattan; the substation and a new office building were quickly rebuilt using emergency provisions of the environmental laws.
Fifth, my article concluded by saying, “Years will be needed to know whether the fear caused by September 11 and its aftermath will make people more reluctant to live in big cities, and will further the suburban and exurban sprawl that many environmental policies have long worked to discourage.” We now know that didn’t happen. New York has continued to thrive.
Michael B. Gerrard is the founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, an affiliated center of the Columbia Climate School.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Columbia Climate School, Earth Institute or Columbia University.
