EPA threat: De-Occupy NY City
‘Pullout’ over riots
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency has threatened to yank the federal agency’s office out of lower Manhattan, blaming the ongoing protests that have roiled the city for months and targeted federal workers.
In a letter to Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, EPA Administrator Andrew R. Wheeler (inset) torched the duo for failing to act during the violent July “Occupy City Hall” protests that damaged the federal agency’s office and surrounding buildings.
Wheeler also pointed to anti-ICE demonstrations last week in which at least a dozen people were arrested, and said he had received intelligence from law enforcement that the group wanted to create a “Portland-like” demonstration targeting the campus at which EPA staffers work.
“If you cannot demonstrate that EPA employees will be safe accessing our City offices, then I will begin the process of looking for a new location for our headquarters outside of the City that can maintain order,” Wheeler wrote.
“I have an obligation to our employees and if the City is unwilling or incapable of doing its job, I will do mine and move them to a location that can competently fulfill the basic mission of a local government,” he continued.
The EPA chief, appointed by President Trump in July 2018, said he was forced to keep staffers who needed access to their office at 260 Broadway last week at home because he feared for their safety.
“The demonstrators engaged in unwarranted, violent activity at the facility, breaking windows and defacing/destroying government property,” Wheeler wrote. That comes after a large anticop encampment in City Hall Park was allowed to swell in June and July as hundreds of protesters demanded a $1 billion cut to the NYPD budget in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
In his letter, Wheeler said Federal Protective Services — the uniformed police division of Homeland Security — notified him that a firearm was discharged at the Occupy City Hall camp and that at least one projectile penetrated the EPA office’s glass façade.
“Public safety is a core mission of state and local governments and your failure to fulfill that mission is putting EPA employees at risk,” he wrote.
Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi called the EPA threat “another transparent political game from this federal government.”
De Blasio spokeswoman Julia Arredondo called the letter a “political stunt.”
On Monday, The Post broke the news that New York City was among three cities labeled “anarchist jurisdictions” by the Justice Department for defunding cops and failing to control protesters — and could lose federal funding.