Council Member Maloney on Intros 1005 and 1006: cleaning and education
Council Member Virginia Maloney introduces her two bills: Intro 1006 requiring cooling tower cleaning three times per year including summer, and Intro 1005 requiring DOHMH public education and outreach about Legionnaires' disease for at-risk populations.
Now we're going to go to Councilmember Maloney.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Speaker Menon.
As one of the council members representing the Upper East Side where this outbreak occurred, this is a personal issue to me and to my district.
It's imperative that we get into the details of how this happened and how we can be better prepared as a city to get ahead of a recurring public health emergency that will happen in the future.
I'm introducing two bills before the committee today that focus on an improved response time next time.
Intro 1006 strengthens prevention at the source by requiring cooling towers to be cleaned and disinfected at least three times a year,
including during the summer cooling season when we know we are at highest risk of Legionella bacteria growing.
Intro 1005 focuses on public education and awareness by requiring the Department of Health to conduct outreach on Legionnaire's disease, particularly for New Yorkers who are at higher risk.
so that people understand the symptoms, their risks, actions to take, and when to seek medical care.
Preventing future outbreaks is going to require a multifaceted approach, stronger prevention, enforcement, better public information, and increased transparency.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember Maloney.
We're going to, there are a lot of statements from members on their legislation, so what we're going to do is we're going to go to the pre-panel first, so that, because these are people