Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:15:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC Rebuilding #479:Yet Another Comment Window! After all the rounds of public comment,here we go again. In today's mail I received a "Finding of No Significant Impact and Determination of Non-Significance" (dated September 7th) and a "Notice of Finding of No Significant Impact and Determination of Non-Significance" (dated September 11th) for "Proposed Further Refinements to the World Trade Center and Redevelopment Plan". The "Leave Manhattan Destroyed Committee" is accepting comments ONLY THROUGH 5 P.M. SEPTEMBER 28TH. The cover letter was signed by outgoing President Stefan Pryor on his last day on the job,September 11th...they are planning to let ALL their employees go by the end of the year. While they will be gone,they intend to leave their unforgivably bad plans behind them to blight the city for future generations...and WE NEED AS MANY NEGATIVE COMMENTS AS POSSIBLE!! They accept them by mail: Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Attention:Comments on WTC EA One Liberty Plaza,20th Floor New York,New York 10006 By fax: 212 962-2431 By email: wtcenvironmental@renewnyc.com This latest coat of lipstick on their obnoxious warthog of a site plan is a few fairly minor changes,hence their confidence that it can't restart the environmental review process. Nonetheless,our tack must be that THE WHOLE SITE PLAN IS GARBAGE AND THERE CAN BE NO JUSTIFICATION FOR PROCEEDING WITH IT. Both the "Finding" and the "Notice" allege that "Implementation of the Approved Plan began with the formal groundbreaking for Freedom Tower on July 4,2004" but as we well know all that happened that day was a "cornerstone" being laid at a soon-obsolete location from which it has been removed. Make clear to them that though they are going,resentment of their plans will linger as long as anything built pursuant to them endures...tell them we REALLY need full-scale Towers and nothing less,that the FGEIS totally disregarded the enormous preferability of the "Restoration Alternative",and that your feelings will NOT change! Write in your own words,of course,but THE MORE PEOPLE WRITE TO THEM THE BETTER.A solid record of public opinion dismissing the ENTIRE BASIS of the official plans is something we REALLY want to have be there for the next Governor! Do NOT delay,they LOVE their deadlines and PROMISE to ignore anything they get after them (though they admit they keep getting pro-Towers letters and I hope the default pro-Towers fax we have at http://www.put.com/wtc/fgeisbasic is one they keep getting!). As usual,when I complete my own prepared text I will add it to http://www.put.com/wtc/comments.html and alert the email list. A few items of interest were in today's NY Post, among them an article revealing that proposals for redeveloping Governor's Island are in for a total restart of the kind officialdom claims is impossible for the WTC site. Also present was an article where relatives of WTC victims were deploring the US military's decision not to bomb a funeral in a cemetery where Taliban leaders were gathered.These are some of the same people who claim the WTC site is a "cemetery"...why do they think building Towers big enough to recall those in which the dead died is not fitting but unleashing bombs on a funeral IS fitting to do in a cemetery? Today's Post letters are almost all good: http://nypost.com/postopinion/letters/five_years_after_9_11__holes_in_the_ground______letters_.htm Tal Barzilai's doesn't explicitly call for new Towers but I don't know if that was edited out.I regret that Stephen Szabo's calls the official plans something that WILL happen (but shouldn't) rather than something that MUST be STOPPED...but he makes the point of how wrong it is.However,only one cheerleader for the official garbage made it in among multiple advocates of better! We just need enough people to KEEP refusing to accept the unacceptable, and the official resolve will crumble.We can't be the ones to give up first! -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.