Thursday, May 24, 2007

Getting Down and Dirty...aka Political

You know I hate to muddy the pristine, cheery waters of the Neophyte blog with atrocity, but a situation has been on my mind that just won't go away. An article written by Nicole Belle on March 25th, 2007, describes something that seems abhorrent to me. Entitled, "You'll Never Look at Potholes the Same Way Again," it details how "the pulverized remains of bodies from the World Trade Center disaster site were used by city workers to fill ruts and potholes." This is according to a city contractor statement in a sworn affidavit filed in a Manhattan Federal Court.

According to the article, which you can read in its entireity here, "Eric Beck says debris powders - known as fines - were put in a pothole-fill mixture by crews at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, N.Y., where more than 1.65 million tons of World Trade Center debris were deposited after the Sept. 11 attacks."

"I observed the New York City Department of Sanitation taking these fines from the conveyor belts of our machines, loading it onto tractors and using it to pave roads and fill in potholes, dips and ruts," Eric Beck said.

Thanks go out to Mugsy for bringing this to my attention.

6 comments:

Desert Songbird said...

Ergh.

Well, I've heard of people scattering their love one's ashes at sea, fertilizing rose bushes with their loved one's ashes, and keeping their loved one's ashes on the mantle, but this is by far the most...odd and disturbing one. I didn't read the article; what do the families of the victims say?

M@ said...

thanks for the sunshine, Tigger!

I just read an al queada torture instructional. It was a picture book.

M@ said...

You're just getting into that Green Day album, Tigger. Isn't that three years old?

Tiggerlane said...

desert songbird - one of the many reactions I read went as such:

“It’s devastating,” Norman Siegel, an attorney representing the families, said of Beck’s statement. “When the 9/11 families found about this, they were wiped out.”

matt - nothing like a little gore to show the true side of tiggerlane!

And I'm not just discovering the CD, I had to make 3 additional copies the year it released, b/c I had to have a copy with me at all times. Actually wore one out. Got the DVD two Christmases ago - and when I saw they were going to be singing on American Idol, I had to go back and relisten and rewatch these, to make sure they stood the test of time.

And the DVD rocks like a badass.

Pamela said...

I pray that it is an exaggeration.

Tiggerlane said...

pamela - I wish it were - but recently it got picked up by AP reports. Sickening.