New York City’s health commissioner was grilled by lawmakers Wednesday over the city’s response to the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak on the Upper East Side that killed 11 people.
Local residents and local leaders came to City Council chambers to push for answers about the source of the outbreak and how well cooling towers were inspected. Valerie Mason, of Manhattan Community Board 8, was among the speakers who joined the council’s oversight hearing to dig into the Health Department’s response.
“There seems like there was ample opportunity to catch it before they did,” Mason said during the hearing.
The city has said it detected the first cases before the July Fourth holiday. By the time the outbreak was over, 94 people had tested positive for Legionnaires’.
The warm air in cooling towers is a breeding ground for the bacteria, which spreads through mist. But the origin of the outbreak – the exact cooling tower that started it all – remains a mystery.
“We don’t have that data back yet. We should be able to report that later this fall,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin.
Council Speaker Julie Menin, who represents the Upper East Side, grilled the commissioner on whether the city did enough to inspect cooling towers and enforce new legislation that compels building owners to ramp up testing for legionella.
“What we’re trying to get to here is, why there wasn’t enforcement when we knew summer months were coming,” Menin asked.
The city has said the Health Department issued more than 110 summonses to building owners in the outbreak zone. But the city admitted staffing was a problem earlier this year, needing to fill more than 20 vacant positions for water ecologists, who inspect cooling towers.
“You are right. There are folks that we have not recruited. We have six open positions and we are trying to make sure we got the right people,” Dr. Martin said.
On Tuesday, the Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration announced new measures against the next potential Legionnaires’ outbreak, including tracking down buildings that do not have their cooling towers registered with the city and adding a mapping feature to the Health Department’s website that will help New Yorkers look up their cooling tower’s inspection history.
“We need to be more vigilant about compliance, making sure that people are reporting and the fines have to be stiff,” said Mason.
City Council is also considering eight bills focused on improving transparency with testing, creating a public hotline for New Yorkers to ask questions about Legionnaires’ disease, and requesting building owners to clean their cooling towers more frequently.