NEW YORK - A group of Sept. 11 family organizations, outraged by the city's plans to move the commemoration ceremony from the World Trade Center site, filed a permit request Wednesday asking to hold the annual event at ground zero.

The coalition filed the request with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, where the ceremony has been held every Sept. 11 since 2002.

“This is the place we have. A precedent has been set in letting us touch ground zero,” said Diane Horning, of WTC Families for Proper Burial.

Rosaleen Tallon, of Advocates for a 9/11 Fallen Heroes Memorial, said remains of people killed in the 2001 terror attack are still being found at the site.

“How can we possibly not go there to memorialize these people?” she said. “It is still their resting place, and I want to be there.”

The city has said that ground zero, now undergoing reconstruction, is not safe for the large annual gathering and it plans to move the recitation of victims' names to a nearby plaza.

Every year, the names of the dead have been read aloud from a platform along the western edge of the lower Manhattan site. The roll call stops only for moments of silence at the times the two planes hit and the twin towers collapsed.

During the reading, and throughout the rest of the day, families have had access to the seven-story pit that was once the basement of the twin towers, where they would lay flowers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said family members will have access to the site that day and will be able to leave flowers in an area along the southern edge but won't be allowed into the pit and won't be able to hold the ceremony there.

“It's just not safe,” Bloomberg said. “Listen, we've had enough tragedy on that site. Our first priority, No. 1, is to make sure that everybody's safe, and nothing's going to get us off that.”

He pointed out that the rebuilding effort will impact where the commemoration ceremony is for a few years and will prevent the city from holding the same event it has done for the past five years.

“There isn't a place to do that anymore, unfortunately, and next year there will be even less,” he said. “The next time you'll be able to have a ceremony on the site is really when we complete the memorial.”

Construction on the memorial began last year, and it's expected to open in 2009.

Attorney Norman Siegel, who is representing the families, said that the groups had gotten consultations on safety and security issues and that the site would be safe as long as the construction was halted on that day.

Port Authority spokesman Stephen Sigmund said construction would be stopped on the anniversary but the site still was not suitable for the ceremony.

“As an agency that lost 84 friends and colleagues on September 11, the Port Authority is sensitive to the needs of those who lost loved ones,” he said. “We are actively looking at ways to accommodate family members who want to pay their respects on the World Trade Center site on 9/11, but the substantial construction activity and current site conditions will not allow the formal ceremony to be safely conducted on the site.”

In New Jersey, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jon Corzine said his office had received a letter from the families advocating for the ceremony to be at the original site and was reviewing it.

“There must be significant logistical concerns with having a memorial in an active construction site, but those must be balanced with the reality that this is, and will always be, sacred ground,” Corzine spokeswoman Lilo Stainton said.

Siegel, the families' attorney, said that if the Port Authority rejects the permit, the families would consider a federal lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.