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Cleaning up of Ruins of WTC to Take a Year
Cleaning up the estimated 1.2 million tons of rubble left by the destruction of the World Trade Center could take up to a year and cost $7 billion, officials said Friday.
The unprecedented work will require the removal of pieces of the trade center and other buildings that were hammered into the ground by the force of the falling twin 110-story towers on Sept. 11, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton estimated that cleanup costs are running $100 million a week. Senate aides put the eventual cleanup cost at $7 billion.
Overall, city and federal officials are looking at a total recovery price tag of roughly $39 billion, which includes about $8.2 billion for rebuilding the Trade Center, aides said. But they cautioned that the numbers change frequently; no decision has been made on whether to rebuild.
Just 130,000 tons of debris has been removed so far.
"The amount of time they need to remove and clear the site will range anywhere from nine months to one year," Giuliani said before leaving to attend memorial services for four victims.
The mayor has already warned that the bodies of some of the 5,960 missing victims may never be found. As of Friday, 306 bodies had been recovered.
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