WAKSAL THE FLOORS By AL GUART and JOHN LEHMANN
Martha Stewart's champagne-swilling, insider-trading pal, Sam Waksal, will do his time in a prison facility in the mountains of Pennsylvania where he'll be working for as little as 16 cents an hour cleaning dishes and sweeping floors.
The disgraced ImClone founder wanted the Bureau of Prisons to find him a spot in balmy Florida at Eglin Air Force Base - a facility once rated by Forbes magazine as the "Best Place to be Incarcerated" in America.
But The Post learned yesterday the disgraced biotech entrepreneur has been told to surrender at the Schuylkill Federal Correctional Institute in Minersville, Pa.
While Waksal will be housed in Schuylkill's minimum-security facility, his new life will have little in common with his high-flying days on the Manhattan celebrity cocktail circuit.
He'll be put to work from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. five days a week, undertaking menial tasks, such as cleaning cooking utensils, trimming garden beds and sweeping floors, prison sources said.
Instead of pulling in millions of dollars a year, he'll be working for between 16 cents and 40 cents an hour.
About 300 inmates are housed in the camp facility, sleeping in dormitory-style accommodations and sharing a TV room, Bureau of Prisons spokesman Dan Dunne said.
Internet access is forbidden.
"Schuylkill's not the worst place to be, but it's certainly not as nice as Eglin and it's going to get cold up there in winter," said Manhattan lawyer Joel Winograd, who's had clients do time in both facilities.
"It looks like a college campus - there's no gates or fences."
Waksal, 55, is due to begin serving his seven-year, three-month sentence on July 23. Manhattan federal Judge William Pauley handed down the stiff sentence after Waksal pleaded guilty to eight federal charges, including securities fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury and bank fraud.
Waksal's sudden attempts to dump more than $10 million in family-held ImClone shares on Dec. 27, 2001 after learning the FDA would not approve the cancer drug Erbitux, prompted Martha Stewart to sell her parcel of nearly 4,000 shares, the feds charge.
Stewart has been given a new court date of July 21 for arguments to be heard on motions filed by her legal team.
The motions, which are being kept confidential by Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, tackle several matters, including the grand jury which indicted Stewart last month on securities fraud, conspiracy and lying to a federal agent.
She is due to face trial Jan. 12.