Green Construction

When Paul Stein pushed for thick windows and fancy air filters for his new office in lower Manhattan soon after 9/11, it was mainly because he was worried about lingering contaminants from the collapse of the Twin Towers.

But these measures have also wound up protecting him against a different kind of pollution -- pollution that Stein, who works on safety issues for his union, says his office at 90 Church Street is "surrounded by": pollution from construction. It is a problem that goes far beyond lower Manhattan.

From the proposed Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn to the water filtration plant in the northern Bronx, critics almost always complain not just about the project itself, but about the inconvenience, pollution, noise and dangerous accidents they will face during its construction.

The construction downtown is unique in that the contaminants from Ground Zero are still an issue. In late September, the Environmental Protection Agency finally approved a plan to demolish the Deutsche Bank Building adjacent to the site, after a long debate over how best to ensure that the asbestos and other dangerous chemicals in the building are not released into the air; the building will come down over the next year. Similar issues must be resolved for other buildings that are either known or suspected to be contaminated. The huge scale of the development downtown also ensures that there will be more pollution than in a project of conventional size.

But, in varying degrees, the same problems face construction sites throughout the city. And, increasingly, those involved are finding solutions in the movement being called green construction -- a nationwide effort to build in a way that is sensitive to the environment. Within the last several weeks both the City Council and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have been bringing more focus to policies that will encourage the city to build greener.