NEW YORK CITY-With power restored in much of Lower Manhattan and businesses returning to normalcy after super-storm Sandy ripped through the Tri-State Area, one of the area’s biggest assets – the World Trade Center – is coming back, too.
Construction work at the 16-acre site has resumed after 16 million gallons of water was pumped out from the area, Governor Andrew Cuomo said this morning. More than 95% of the seven feet of flooding from the storm surge has been removed from the site, which involved a massive pump-out effort at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero, he said.
Today is also the first day since Hurricane Sandy that major cranes are being used at One World Trade Center and at the PATH transit hub since the city’s Department of Buildings issued a mandatory order on Oct. 26 to suspend all construction work due to the impacts of the storm.
Cuomo said crews from the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and their contractors, along with the Army Corp. of Engineers, started pumping the water from the museum around the clock. At the present time, teams will now begin to focus on removing the small amounts of water that remain in pocketed areas as well as cleaning up of debris.
Silverstein Properties, developer of Two, Three, Four and Seven World Trade Center, said following a full inspection of its three building sites along the eastern portion of the site, all of its cranes at the site are in working order and no structural damage was sustained. In addition, no harm was detected to Silverstein’s major mechanical systems, including a major electrical room beneath Two World Trade Center, which supplies power to each of Silverstein’s towers, according to a statement from Silverstein. Four World Trade Center topped out earlier this year and is still scheduled for completion in 2013.
On Saturday, Cuomo said crews completed dewatering at One World Trade Center, the PATH trackbed and the Vehicle Security Center, which is where the storm surge entered the site. The Port Authority’s WTC construction team, which is overseeing the work, reports that they expect to complete the dewatering process at the PATH transit hub within the next 24-48 hours. The hub is the last major operation still ongoing at the site.
However, PATH rail service continues to be suspended damage to signal, control and substation equipment in multiple stations, according to the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. In the interim, NJ Transit has implemented an emergency trans-Hudson access plan, providing bus service in lieu of PATH.
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