Speaker Menin questions lack of automated alert system for non-compliance

It was publicly reported by Melissa Rousseau of NBC that the department currently has no alert system to trigger quick enforcement when a building owner fails to comply with the new cooling tower rules, including the requirement under

Chair Shulman's bill to report Legionella testing every 31 days.

Is that accurate?

And if so, why doesn't the city's portal automatically or through some type of manual follow-up flag miss five-day reporting deadlines or overdue 31-day testing requirements for immediate review and enforcement?

Thank you for the question, Speaker.

We do have a process by capturing whether or not someone is compliant with that 31-day sampling requirement.

Let me hand it to Deputy Commissioner Karanja for more.

Thank you, Commissioner.

The local law requires reporting the level, the highest level

of Legionella bacteria to the department, which is when we get to the point where we really want to be providing ongoing assistance to that cooling tower operator.

So it is in the local law and also in our regulation that when Legionella bacteria, when the results from that sample and the council's innovation to increase the

frequency of sampling to monthly is giving owners much more information.

When they get that result back that shows that they have a level of bacteria where it's

starting to show that they're no longer adequately controlling the bacteria growth in that cooling tower.

They report that information to us, and we have a follow-up program to make sure that they are conducting the appropriate corrective action for that, that they are taking their compliance samples, that those compliance samples are showing that that remediation was

effective, and if not, that they are continuing to remediate.