The heroes and victims of 9/11 who are suffering terrible and sometimes lethal medical problems from exposure to the toxic cloud that arose when Al Qaeda terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center have a right to know what City Hall knew decades ago about the environmental risks from Ground Zero. Any records being held by New York City and its agencies must be disgorged.

That seems like just a simple statement, however for nearly a quarter century, across four different mayoral administrations (Rudy Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and now Eric Adams) the records have remained hidden. It has to stop.

The fastest way might be to have the City Council pass a resolution requiring“the Department of Investigation to conduct an investigation to ascertain the knowledge possessed by mayoral administrations on environmental toxins produced by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and to submit a report to the Council thereon.” That’s the purpose of a resolution authored by Committee on Oversight and Investigations Chairwoman Gale Brewer with more than a dozen cosponsors.

There is a hearing on the resolution Jan. 29. Go for it and let DOI get the truth.

Meanwhile, the city Law Department, under just-confirmed Corporation Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant, has asked for the dismissal of a legally binding state Freedom of Information Law request presented to the city’s Department of Environmental Protection for any WTC health documents, claiming that DEP doesn’t have any.

Well if DEP doesn’t, someone does, as the same request was also submitted to the Department of Design and Construction, the Health Department, the Law Department, the Office of Emergency Management Department and the mayor’s office. The Law Dept. and OEM said to ask the mayor’s office, which hasn’t given a final answer, nor has DDC or Health.

Only the DEP FOIL matter has advanced to a court proceeding. The other FOIL requests are still pending.

At a minimum there is the Harding memo, written shortly after 9/11 and addressed to Deputy Mayor Bob Harding from an aide, warning that there could be thousands of liability claims, “including toxic tort cases that might arise in the next few decades.” The New York Times reported on the memo in 2007. So unless the memo is a fake or the Times made it up (both improbable), the memo exists. And that means it’s supposed to be sitting somewhere in the files. And what else is there?

There is no danger of bankrupting the city with liability claims as the Harding memo speculates for two reasons: 1) anyone who joined the federal Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund (either the original fund or the second fund) is barred from suing and 2) Congress capped NYC’s total liability at $350 million.

The information will come out. Maybe not this year. Maybe not under this mayor. But it will come out.

Last month, the WTC responders and survivors were disappointed once again after Congress agreed to permanently fund the WTC Health Program and failed to do so. It was supposed to be a small part of the year’s end big agreement to keep the government running, but Elon Musk wrecked the deal.

That struggle continues, as does the struggle to expose the full extent of the known risks from all those years ago at Ground Zero.

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