Under Fire, NYCEM Affirms Efforts to Combat Legionnaires’ Disease

The New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM) affirmed its commitment to expanding public education on Legionnaires’ disease following a July 21 town hall in which New York City Council members were sharply critical of the city response to the health crisis.

City Council speaker Julie Menin, who represents the UES district where the latest outbreak has been concentrated, was critical of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the response by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s (DOHMH) to the ongoing Manhattan outbreak.

Council Member Lynn Schulman said that she had been in communication with NYCEM during the town hall as she, other Council Members, and community leaders emphasized the importance of effective communication during public health crises.

“We’ve had some great conversations with Council Member Schulman about including information related to Legionnaires’ disease in our National Preparedness Month education efforts, and we look forward to working with our partners across government and beyond to provide New Yorkers in every community with the information they need to prepare for emergencies of all types and sizes,” NYCEM Senior Press Officer Alexia Nizhny said in a statement to Our Town.

Speaker Julie Menin, and Council Members including downtown’s Harvey Epstein and Virginia Maloney, who represents Stuyvesant Town and part of the UES, was among those who convened at Lenox Hill Hospital July 21 to discuss the disease now impacting the Upper East Side neighborhoods of Carnegie Hill and Yorkville. City Council members also announced that they would develop and push new legislation package to strengthen the city’s response to similar outbreaks and push for monthly testing of water cooler towers.

Dana Cruz, president of the tenant association for Haven Plaza, an East Village apartment complex and one of the first sites of Legionella detection this summer, shared sobering anecdotes from their building.

“We have had the health department come in and talk to us, but the end result is we’re not allowed to shower,” Cruz said. “We have 370 units in our complex. No one’s allowed to shower. And this has been going on since May. I don’t know most people in New York City that can handle a situation in the middle of the summer with no showering allowed.”

She said about one-fourth of the complex is either immunocompromised or seniors who are expected to carry buckets of water to bathe, and that property managers should be ashamed of themselves.

“I’ve heard from so many constituents who lacked essential information on disease risk, on exposure, on prevention,” Menin said. “They were not sure how they should stay safe, how the spread was evolving, whether they should remain at home, or if it was okay to walk in the city streets.” She added that her team learned about the second death associated with the outbreak from a news report, rather than official city channels.

Council Member Lynn Schulman highlighted the legislation she championed following a Legionnaires outbreak in Harlem last summer — legislation she and other City Council Members say hasn’t been acted on, despite its enactment in May. The legislation requires building owners to test their cooling towers for Legionella bacteria every 31 days when the towers are operating (three times more frequent than stipulated by past regulations). Towers are normally operating during the summer months, and bacteria like Legionella thrive in warm climates.

Council Members like former nurse and Chair of the NYCC Committee on Hospitals Mercedes Narcisse expressed frustration that the outbreak and subsequent fatalities were preventable—especially because the Harlem outbreak last summer that killed seven and sickened over 100 had so recently reminded the city about the disease and its risks. Despite the legislation pushed by Schulman’s last year, she said she was seeing inadequate enforcement this year.

“There’s no explanation for the folks that lost their lives through the process,” Narcisse said.

Council Members said that the Department of Health and Mental Hygeine (DOHMH) had failed to efficiently communicate which cooling towers were marked uncompliant with the legislation and to whom they issued fines.

“I appreciated that the health department did a number of town halls, but for those of us that were at the town halls, I think that frustration level was mounting because people really wanted more proactive testing,” Menin said. “About 25% of the towers were not compliant with Council Member Schulman’s law, meaning they were not providing the test results that they were supposed to.”

She said that the Council will hold an oversight hearing in September “to examine the administration’s insufficient response,” to this outbreak. We have a lot of questions and we want to get answers there.”

The Legionnaires’ outbreak plaguing the Upper East Side has killed five people as of July 22, with a total of 82 total cases reported. Eight people are currently hospitalized.

According to June reporting by The City Reporter, Haven Plaza’s property managers, Catholic Homes and Wavecrest Management, said they were working closely with DOHMH and had retained outside consultants to oversee remediation efforts. DOHMH also said it worked with building management to promptly test the building’s water system.

Mayor Mamdani on July 22 pushed back on the criticism leveled by Menin and other city council members regarding the administration’s response to the deadly outbreak. “What we have done time and time again is follow public health experts and their advice,” Mamdani said. He said he believes the city has eliminated the source of the initial cluster and no new cases have been reported in the past ten days.