Last Updated

11 Dec 2002

Source: Associate Press, February 15, 2002.

Postal Service assures Corzine it plans to reopen Hamilton mail center

TRENTON, N.J. -- The head of the U.S. Postal Service assured a New Jersey senator that the postal service does plan to reopen the Hamilton facility where anthrax-tainted letters were processed.

In a letter to U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., dated Thursday, Postmaster General John E. Potter said the Hamilton regional processing center would be decontaminated and employees and customers allowed to return.

Employees of the Hamilton center, who are now commuting to various other locations around the state, had worried that Hamilton would not be reopened.

Darius Goore, a spokesman for Corzine, said cleaning is planned first for the Brentwood mail processing center near Washington, where two postal employees contracted anthrax and died. Goore said cleanup is expected to begin in Hamilton by midsummer.

Five people have died of anthrax since contaminated letters were mailed from New Jersey in September and October. More than a dozen people were infected in New York, New Jersey, Florida and Washington.

The Hamilton processing center, which handles mail for 46 area post offices, has been closed since Oct. 18 after 32 of 80 environmental samples taken there tested positive for anthrax.

The postal service also is negotiating a lease for space to serve as a temporary regional processing center until the Hamilton space is decontaminated, Corzine said.