http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1182745743118460.xml&coll=1Whitman again faces questions on post-9/11 air
Ex-EPA chief to testify before House panel on U.S. response to the danger
Monday, June 25, 2007
BY J. SCOTT ORR
STAR-LEDGER WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- Ever since she stood on Canal Street just north of Ground Zero on Sept. 13, 2001, and pronounced the air in Lower Manhattan safe to breathe, then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman has been caught in the fallout.
Whitman has been attacked by environmentalists and sued by residents of Lower Manhattan who say they are suffering the effects of pollutants released into the air by the collapse of the World Trade Center. She has been scolded by a federal judge and criticized by the EPA's own inspector general.
Today Whitman will be asked again to account for how the EPA and the Bush Administration handled air quality issues in the days after the 9/11 terror attacks. The former Republican governor of New Jersey is to testify before a House Judiciary subcommittee chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), whose district includes Lower Manhattan and who has been one of Whitman's sharpest critics.
Nadler said he hopes to "bring the truth to light" and "answer some of the many questions that remain about the federal government's response to post 9/11 air quality.
"We still don't know why certain decisions were made and who was ultimately responsible for them. We owe it to the thousands that have since become sick to determine the absolute truth about what happened," Nadler said.
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