Politicos Divided Over How City Handled UES Legionnaires’ Disease Outbreak

The Legionnaires’ Disease outbreak plaguing the Upper East Side has killed five people as of July 24, with a total of 82 total cases reported. Eight people are currently hospitalized as we went to press. But as the Health Department reported no new outbreaks of the Legionnaires’ Disease in over a week, there appeared to be sharp divisions emerging among political leaders on how the city handled the crisis.

City Council members at a July 21 town hall led by Speaker Julie Menin, were sharply critical of the Mamdani Administrations early response to the Manhattan outbreak, particularly the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH).

Menin and Council members including downtown’s Harvey Epstein and Virginia Maloney, who represents Stuyvesant Town and part of the UES, and Liz Schulman who had introduced last year’s tougher testing standards bill, were among those who convened at Lenox Hill Hospital July 21 to discuss the disease that impacted the Upper East Side neighborhoods of Carnegie Hill and Yorkville. It follows an outbreak in Harlem last year killed seven and an outbreak in the East Village earlier this year.

But not all politicos on the Upper East Side joined in the criticism. NYS Senator Liz Krueger on July 24 said, “We must acknowledge the work of NYC Health Department staff, who saved lives by acting quickly and aggressively, listening to the experts, and following the best epidemiological practices.”

The New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM) defended its commitment to alert the public about Legionnaires’ Disease.

“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 Straus News.

City Council members announced that they will push new legislation package that include a real-time public health response database and hotline, requiring immediate proactive disinfection of cooling towers, and strengthening inspection capacity.

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 a building where the bacteria was discovered in the East Village.

“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 immuno-compromised 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.

Schulman highlighted the legislation she championed following a Legionnaires outbreak in Harlem last summer, legislation she said 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). Bacteria like Legionella thrive in warm climates.

Council member Mercedes Narcisse, a former nurse and chair of the city council committee on hospitals expressed frustration over the city response to the outbreak and said subsequent fatalities were preventable.

“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 percent 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.”

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.

NYS Senator Krueger who represents an UES in Albany, praised the Health Department’s efforts. “I’m pleased that we seem to have turned the corner on the Legionnaires’ cluster on the Upper East Side. My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of our neighbors who have died. There are always lessons to learn, including the critical importance of every building following the laws around testing, inspection, and remediation. But we must acknowledge the work of NYC Health Department staff, who saved lives by acting quickly and aggressively, listening to the experts, and following the best epidemiological practices.”