Newsman: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the new anti-Legionnaires’ Disease measures on Tuesday morning. The Legionnaires’ outbreaks that left 18 people dead and hospitalized many dozens more over the last two summers. The City Council has scheduled the hearing over Legionnaires’ outbreaks.
Among the changes, the mayor said the city will Synergize Health Department and Building Department tracking systems of cooling towers on buildings. The towers are where Legionella bacteria, which cause the disease, form. Legionnaires’ disease is contracted when the bacteria are breathed in, typically through water vapor produced by buildings’ cooling towers.
The City will add a map feature to the city’s cooling tower lookup tool, which is already accessible online here. And explore faster and newer testing approaches; assign the earliest dates possible for hearings on penalties for buildings that violate rules requiring monthly testing for Legionnella, Mayor said.
‘Convene a scientific advisory panel to look at new cooling system technologies
The new measures were met with general approval by members of the Harlem’ Legionnaire’s Coalition. However, said the organization’s founder, one thing has to be emphasized if any of the new steps are going to be effective.
“How will we enforce things?” Smith asked. “What are the regulatory adherence issues that need to be taken care of?”
She pointed out that the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene admitted earlier this summer to only having about two-thirds of the number of inspectors they needed to fully enforce rules for inspecting buildings’ cooling towers.
Without a full inspection force, Smith said, “It can be akin to busywork.”
