After denying several times that it had any records about air quality after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Department of Environmental Protection has admitted it has found some boxes of documents it believes have relevant information.

What You Need To Know

  • The Department of Environmental Protection in several court filings has claimed it has no documents from the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks

  • The agency has admitted in the past its extensive role in testing and investigating the air quality and environmental concerns in lower Manhattan after the attacks
  • In court filings this week, the agency claimed it recently found boxes with potentially relevant documents

The admission comes in court records in a lawsuit filed against the city agency for rejecting a Freedom of Information Law request for an extensive list of documents related to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in 1993 and 2001 at the World Trade Center.

“I don’t know what to make of it. It’s extraordinary and it’s unexpected,” said Andy Carboy, the attorney who filed the lawsuit against the city on behalf of the nonprofit 9/11 Health Watch.

In 2023, seven different agencies, including Department of Environmental Protection, were sent a request for 28 separate items.

The inquiry asked for documents related to testing done in the early days after the attack, decision-making into reopening evacuated areas of Lower Manhattan, the correspondences and testing to reopen schools near the World Trade Center, materials for then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s daily press briefings, and conversations about liability risk for the city.

In January 2024, Carboy received an email from the Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, that his request for documents was denied.

“This agency does not have the records requested. You should direct your request to a different agency,” reads part of the denial email.

It noted Carboy had the opportunity to appeal the ruling, which he did.

Less than a month later, Carboy received a letter from the DEP FOIL appeals officer, Russell Pecunies.

“I hearby certify that a diligent search was performed in DEP’s records in response to your FOIL requested, and no responsive records were found,” wrote Pecunies.

This denied appeal stated that Carboy could again take action, this time by filing a lawsuit against the city. Which Carboy did, yet again. The city tried to get the lawsuit thrown out.

“Compelling an additional search in this case, where DEP has repeatedly certified that it has no responsive records, will have no practical effect on the parties,” said Saarah Dhinsa, the assistant corporation counsel for the City of New York in November of last year in her filing to have the lawsuit dismissed.  

She called the request “a fishing expedition” that should be “dismissed as moot.”

Yet less than a year later, Dhinsa sent another letter, revealing that there were, in fact, potentially relevant documents discovered.

“Respondent has located multiple boxes that are believed to contain at least some responsive records,” she wrote on Sept. 16.

It marks a complete reversal within one year’s time of when Carboy’s initial FOIL and appeal were denied.

“I want to find out what the explanation is. And there’s a variety of explanations here,” he said. “I don’t think any of them are good.”

This summer, the City Council passed a resolution compelling the New York City Department of Investigation – the city’s inspector general – to launch an investigation into the city’s response to the air quality and environmental concerns in lower Manhattan after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The report is due within two years, as NY1 first reported on the legislation last September.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Carboy said about the boxes being located now. “We’re within 2 months of the passage of the resolution.”

He said he believes the Department of Investigation should look into what he has called in the past, “grinding obstruction” to obtain documents from DEP.

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand,” he said in a zoom with NY1. “But the public is owed an explanation. My clients are owed an explanation.”

He said he intends to do what he can to get to the bottom of what happened.

“We are completely serious about having a hearing with multiple witnesses in a live forum before the judge assigned to our case,” said Carboy. “And we intend to get that.”

NY1 reached out to DEP for comment, specifically asking where the boxes were located, why they couldn’t be found in what the agency described as a “diligent search,” and how it can be convinced more documents are not going to be discovered. A DEP spokesperson referred NY1 to City Hall.

“As one of the many first responders at Ground Zero on 9/11 and in the weeks that followed, Mayor Adams has been unwavering in his commitment to ensuring victims, their families, first responders, and survivors receive the care and services they deserve,” a city hall spokesperson said in a statement to NY1 this weekend. “While we cannot comment on pending litigation, we remain dedicated to getting 9/11 victims and their families the answers they need.”

NY1 has covered the fight for the release of documents since last September.

Despite DEP’s past insistence that no documents existed about its work on the air quality after 9/11, NY1 obtained an internal memo from October 2001 from the Department of Health that said DEP believed air quality on some blocks near the World Trade Center was “not yet suitable for re-occupancy,” and doing so would make the commissioner “uncomfortable.”

In 2002, testifying before a U.S. Senate committee, the head of the DEP at the time, Joel Miele, told senators in his opening statement the agency had analyzed more than 3,000 outdoor samples and another 500 from the four schools near the World Trade Center.

And a 2003 federal inspector general report said the DEP “conducted extensive ambient air monitoring for asbestos around Ground Zero and Lower Manhattan.” The report even includes a letter from the DEP to downtown residents talking about all the testing they had done.

The court filing from the city nor the statement provided by city hall gave any indication how many boxes were found recently, how many documents were inside, what’s in the boxes, or why it took so long to locate them.