The Battle For Ground Zero

The Trade Center cleanup is ending. But the struggles over what should arise there are just getting started

Though it may never feel right to describe the place as clean, the cleanup of the World Trade Center site is done. What was "the Pile," a jagged mountain of knotted steel and concrete, is now a hole, a neatly squared-off, rectangular cavity of 16 gray-brown acres. On May 30, in a ceremony to be attended by thousands of recovery workers, uniformed officers and family members of the victims, an honor guard will carry a flag-draped stretcher out of the pit. With that, the search for bodily remains will effectively end. The fire fighters and construction workers who have raked through...

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