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City Council Speaker Julie Menin is demanding that Mayor Zohran Mamdani cough up answers on how the deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreak that has sickened dozens of New Yorkers festered on the Upper East Side.
Menin will introduce a bill Tuesday requiring the city take proactive steps to identify cooling towers that building owners failed to test for the disease-causing bacteria and automatically disinfect them as a precaution.
A fourth death from the outbreak was confirmed late Monday, city officials said.
The council is also set to hold an oversight hearing in September to “examine” the Mamdani administration’s response and “determine why New Yorkers still lack access to real-time information about cooling tower compliance,” Menin said.
Her proposed legislation would set up a dedicated summer hotline so New Yorkers can get up-to-date answers during a Legionnaires’ outbreak, according to details of the bill shared with The Post.
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City Department of Health officials would also be required to spread COVID era-esque public information on best practices for preventing the respiratory illness.
A similar outbreak last year in Harlem that killed five people and sickened 114 led the City Council to pass a law requiring building owners to test for Legionella microbes every 30 days during warm weather.
The city previously only required building owners to take every 90 days.
But Menin, as she pushed her new legislation, argued that city officials under Mamdani’s watch needed to take more vigorous steps toward identifying buildings that flout the testing law.
“After last summer’s Harlem Legionnaire’s outbreak, the City Council strengthened the law because we believed New Yorkers deserved better,” she told The Post. “But the Administration failed to match those reforms with the urgency and transparency this moment demanded.
“The Council is now taking action by introducing new legislation and conducting oversight to help ensure New Yorkers receive the strong public health response they deserve.”
The one-two punch by Menin is her latest move to turn up the heat on Mamdani, a fresh-faced socialist mayor whose track record arguably hasn’t kept up with his lofty rhetoric.
The Legionnaires’ disease outbreak was first reported July 2, when DOH officials said at least two people had been infected, with exposure likely occurring in late June.
The cluster hit the Upper East Side neighborhoods of Carnegie Hill and Yorkville, infecting at least 74 people and killing three as of Sunday, when eight people remained hospitalized, health officials said.
One of the three who died in the outbreak was an 88-year-old Air Force veteran, ABC 7 first reported. His family plans to sue whoever owns the as-yet-unidentified cooling tower linked to causing the outbreak, according to the report.
The disease-causing Legionella bacteria can flourish in warm water inside cooling towers atop New York City buildings.
People can become infected by breathing in water vapor or mist contaminated with the Legionella bacteria. The flu-like illness is treatable with antibiotics but can become serious if left undetected, and about 1 in 10 people infected die from complications, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The outbreak came after more than 250 cooling towers around the Big Apple were cited for issues relating to Legionella testing since last year, with more than half in Manhattan.
Rounds of tests on the Upper East Side after the outbreak showed 76 buildings – including the Guggenheim – harbored the bacteria.
All those buildings cleaned and disinfected their cooling towers, health officials said.
Beyond holding Mamdani to task over Legionnaires’ disease, the ostensible moderate Menin recently pushed the mayor from his left flank by advocating for a costly expansion of a housing voucher program and a pay bump for public school teaching assistants that bypassed union contract negotiations.
Insiders believe Menin plans to challenge Mamdani in the 2029 Democratic mayoral primary.
