Mamdani, NYC health commissioner address Legionnaires' enforcement

[00:00:00]Our focus has been and continues to be on accountability.

[00:00:05]Accountability, identifying the cooling tower owner or owners uh that's at the source of this and holding them accountable to the full extent of the law. Now, turning to Speaker Menin's point.

[00:00:17]Here's what would happen if we blanket disinfected.

[00:00:21]Number one, as you've heard from the mayor, uh every time we do this biocide treatment, it actually does degrade the cooling towers and thus in the future allows them to potentially harbor more Legionella bacteria. Now, we're it's always about finding the right uh sort of happy medium, but that's the first.

[00:00:39]The second is had we blanket disinfected from the beginning, we wouldn't be able to actually get the samples.

[00:00:47]And we need the samples to know what caused this and then that will give us an opportunity to learn. So, thank you for the question.

[00:00:54]>> Given the fact that now you're >> This >> It seems to me that if 30 or of the towers came back as having had live Legionella, that seemed to me and according to some people I've spoken to to be higher than what we anticipated.

[00:01:09]We thought maybe you know, a small number would would have would have come back positive. So, separately, what does that tell you about whether or not the procedures in place already to try to prevent live Legionella bacteria in these cooling towers are working? Where where's the breakdown that so many of these towers on the Upper East Side were problematic.

[00:01:32]>> Thank you for that question. So, first of all, this bacteria is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. It is found in nature commonly.

[00:01:42]And uh to give you a sense of how common it is, when we looked uh at the data for last year's Harlem cluster, uh we had 12 of the 47 towers, right? In that case, that had live Legionella bacteria. So, that's the first piece. These numbers are not out of what we've seen in the past, and in fact, the overall rate of Legionella bacteria in these cooling towers has decreased over time because the enforcement is working.

[00:02:12]Uh now, in terms of enforcement, let's talk about that. So, uh over the course of the last year, we've issued countless violations. Just in the last year, 1,300 violations to cooling tower operators and owners.

[00:02:25]And uh this, you know, amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. And the reality is that, um you know, our job is to enforce this law and to make sure that we hold cooling tower operator operators who are not following the law uh accountable to the full extent of law. And that's what we're going to do here once we identify which tower or towers are responsible.

[00:02:47]>> I'll just add one one thing to what the commissioner said, and I also want to acknowledge the deputy mayor who's here who's been overseeing a lot of this work.

[00:02:55]Um we will not rest until each and every New Yorker is living the public health that they deserve.

[00:03:04]And that means not only continuing to address this cluster, but doing the work after this point to ensure that what has become a annual event in New York City is one that we are developing far enhanced processes for. Because what we've found over the course of this process itself is that there are so many more procedures that the city had had been taking years prior that in fact could be expedited. And I want to credit our health department and the leaders that are here on the stage for having taken that decision time and again. And we also know that while we are able to stand here and tell New Yorkers of the fact that no new symptoms have been developed for anyone in the last 10 days, that we are confident we have found the source, we know that there are still New Yorkers who are in hospital as a result of this cluster and so we will continue to do this work and also continue to monitor this outbreak.

[00:03:57]Thank you.

[00:03:58]>> Thank you. I know Chris you had an off topic.

[00:04:00]>> Yes, thank you.

[00:04:06]>> [clears throat] >> All right, so we've been listening to Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Bassett as well as the Health Commissioner and they're talking about Legionnaires the the outbreak. So let's he's just asking about some of the enforcement for building owners. Let's take a listen to him real quick.

[00:04:25]>> fines and violations totaled over 600,000 uh in terms of all of the cooling tower operators that were not compliant with the laws. That was a 2025 number. And so we have just begun the implementation and the promulgation of this new law in May. And what we see from the data is actually vast majority of cooling tower operators uh have been compliant giving us the information that we need, which is good and we expect that by the way.

[00:04:52]Now, for the groups that have not been a couple reasons. Some of them have not uh gotten a cooling tower operational yet so their cooling tower has not been operational.

[00:05:02]And for the ones that have uh a cooling tower that is operational and have not given us the required information, of course there are consequences and there are fines.

[00:05:11]>> Thank you.

[00:05:12]>> Uh we are working on making sure that every single one of those cooling tower operators uh complies with our laws and if they don't there are consequences.

[00:05:20]>> All right, thank you. We're going to go to I'm sorry.

[00:05:23]I will give it to you.

[00:05:38]>> Why why don't you provide an answer to this question earlier than you did?

[00:05:44]Did you forget to look into the legality of it when you came up with this security plan?

[00:05:54]>> I've been very clear about the fact that I believe that the warrant that the International Criminal Court has placed upon Benjamin Netanyahu is one that should be honored. And I've also been clear about the fact that I would follow and respect our local laws.

[00:06:11]And so I asked my team to do a review of all applicable law, and it's clear that the city does not have the authority to execute this warrant. However, what is also clear is that the federal government does have the authority to execute this warrant. And I call on the federal government to join the International Criminal Court and to execute both this warrant as well as any warrant the International Criminal Court holds.

[00:06:32]>> Thank you. Out of respect for your colleagues, let's try to keep it to one off-topic question. We're going to go to Jeff Mays.

[00:06:37]>> All right. So, you heard the tail end of that Q&A was about Benjamin Netanyahu.

[00:06:42]The mayor has said previously that if it was up to him, he would have Netanyahu arrested when he comes to the city, but looking closer at some of the laws, he doesn't have the authority.

[00:06:51]And he's called the federal government to do it, but the Trump administration said no way that's going to happen. When Netanyahu comes for the General Assembly, which is in September. But before that, they were talking about Legionnaires' disease, and there have been you know, there's a reason why the health commissioner is at this news conference today because the questions and the scrutiny has ramped up, and just overnight we got word that a fifth person has died because of the outbreak.

[00:07:14]>> So, a fifth person has died, and we're also taking a closer look at the numbers. Of course, numbers you always have to put them in context, as you know very well, Dan. So, according to the city, at this point, 183 cooling towers have been tested in 160 buildings. So, I guess some buildings have more than one.

[00:07:33]In total, 77 at 75 separate buildings tested positive for the presence of the bacteria.

[00:07:41]But then, there's some Yeah.

[00:07:45]It was confirmed that inside 34 cooling towers at 33 separate buildings, they found live Legionella. Basically, that's what gets you sick, and that's how you can get Legionnaires' disease. As you know, um it can be contracted by inhaling uh water droplets that are contaminated.

[00:08:04]Um and we've seen uh several people getting sick. 82 people tested positive so far in connection to this outbreak.

[00:08:11]Uh specifically, two neighborhoods on the Upper East Side, as we've been reporting, Dad. Eight people are in the hospital right now, and now five deaths.

[00:08:18]>> Five five have died. And so, we heard uh a question there for the health commissioner. Um two two things. One, why not just go ahead and disinfect and try to test all of them?

[00:08:29]>> what Menin has been saying.

[00:08:31]>> speaker, Julie Menin, has been calling for, um and his answer, essentially, was saying that that's physically not something that would be possible within the time frame of doing it, and it would sort of slow down some of the operations overall, just because of how it would have to play out. Um and the second question that you heard was, "Well, where was the enforcement? Why hasn't that happened?" Um and he's saying that it's going to happen now. Um and kind of didn't really give a specific clear answer about why it hasn't happened, because we know that these laws have changed so that they have to report it every 30 days instead of every 90 days, which is how it was before. But still, a lot of the business owners weren't um reporting it as quickly as they could have been. So, that was another big concern. And