The New York City agency responsible for safeguarding residents’ air and water was convicted of federal environmental crimes just weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, newly uncovered records reveal.
The disclosure involving the Department of Environmental Protection appears in a vast collection of 170,000 previously secret, 9/11-related city records released by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration.
Among the documents are letters the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office filed in federal court years after the World Trade Center attacks, detailing the DEP’s earlier conviction.
According to the records, the department pleaded guilty to two environmental offenses, including a felony, and was sentenced to probation in August 2001 under then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Officials acknowledged that the DEP had discharged mercury-contaminated water into a tributary of an upstate New York reservoir that supplied the city’s drinking water, violating the Clean Water Act. The DEP said the incident took place in 1998.
The agency also admitted violating the Toxic Substances Control Act by using machines contaminated with PCBs without authorization at a water-supply facility it operated in Westchester County.
As part of its probation, the DEP was ordered to establish an environmental and worker health-and-safety compliance program throughout New York City’s water-supply system. The agency was also placed under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor.
The department was further barred from committing another federal, state or local crime during the eight-year probation period.
That condition was later breached, according to a Feb. 7, 2006, announcement from the US Attorney’s Office, then led by Michael Garcia. Its headline read: “New York City Agency Admits in Federal Court To Violating Probation.”
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Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York said the DEP violated its probation by failing to properly maintain the emergency electrical system at Brooklyn’s Red Hook Water Pollution Control Plant, resulting in another Clean Water Act violation.
Garcia said the system failed during the August 2003 blackout, causing the plant to release approximately 30 million gallons of untreated sewage into the East River.
“The New York City Department of Environmental Protection is entrusted with performing critical functions for all New Yorkers, including the provision of drinking water and the prevention of water pollution,” Garcia said at the time. He called the agency’s admission in court “an important milestone in achieving the goal of this federal prosecution: to ensure that DEP complies with all applicable environmental and worker safety laws while carrying out its responsibilities.”
Andrew Carboy, a pro bono attorney for the advocacy group 911 Health Watch, which sued the city to obtain the long-hidden records, called the DEP’s earlier conviction “deeply disturbing.”
“DEP, which apparently was convicted of federal environmental crimes in August 2001, just weeks before the World Trade Center collapse, led the City’s September 11th air quality response,” Carboy told The Post.
“We cannot identify any other city agency with the dishonor of a felony conviction arising from its core function. The newly released DEP records are revelatory, and not in a good way,” he said.
“That DEP fought us in court for years and represented that these records did not exist or could not be found is even more troubling today.”
On Dec. 23, 2009, the US Attorney’s Office, then headed by Preet Bharara, informed the court that the DEP had improved its compliance program, effectively bringing the probation to an end.
A DEP spokesperson said Thursday: “In August 2001, DEP pleaded guilty to a Clean Water Act violation that occurred in 1998—before the Sept. 11 attacks. We fulfilled the terms of probation in December 2009 and have since strengthened and expanded our environmental, health, and safety compliance programs within the agency.
“We now have strong, comprehensive policies that guide how we protect our workforce every day. Protecting the people who operate, maintain, and protect New York City’s essential water and wastewater systems goes hand in hand with protecting the city we serve.”