Council Member Salaam on proactive approach and equity across communities

Councilmember Salam?

Thank you.

You know, our constituents, they've been calling for a more proactive approach in identifying and addressing potential sources of Legionella.

The question still remains, and that is, is what has been actually, is what has been done actually solving the problem?

We've been told that this is a preventable illness, but yet decade after decade, we still see our people dying.

My question is what specifically is different about the department's approach in response to the Upper East Side today?

And why was that level of urgency not applied to the communities that experienced recurring cases in previous summers?

And also,

As you know, we passed legislation calling for water tower inspections in coordination with the Department of Buildings to be inspected more.

And why hasn't the city moved with greater urgency in implementing that mandate?

And lastly, how many water towers and other potential high-risk water systems have been inspected in the affected communities?

And how many have not?

Thank you for the question, Councilmember.

The answer is that we apply a systematic protocol to our cluster response, and that protocol does not depend on geography.

zip code, our neighborhood.

We apply the protocol that we have that the system demands, that the cluster demands.

And yet, every time we do this, Councilmember, we identify ways to improve our already strong system.

And so every single cluster that we have,

we learn something.

We have that experience, then improve and enhance our process.

And so the enhancements that you identified this time, again, we ran the most aggressive cluster we ever have, moving the

full remediation to the PCR step, not waiting the two weeks.

We had the most transparent cluster we've ever had, not waiting the two weeks for the culture results before we shared the names.

We responded quickly and immediately in this case.

And the bottom line is every time we do this, we enhance and improve our process.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.