Schiff describes DOHMH follow-up on Legionella notifications
Schiff explains that a 1,000 CFU result suggests a cooling tower operator may not fully control their maintenance program. She says a DOHMH unit follows up with buildings to ensure corrective action, sampling, and reporting, and notes the new 30-day sampling requirement will give operators more information.
When DOHMH receives a notification from a cooling tower operator regarding the presence of potentially harmful levels of Legionella bacteria, what is the procedure for reviewing the notification?
So first, I want to just say that the way we think about that 1,000 CFU limit is that it's really an indication
that the cooling tower operator may not have full control over their maintenance program and plan.
And one of the reasons we were so supportive of your legislation in 2025, Chair, was that changing the
frequency of sampling from 90 days to 30 days, or 31 days technically, is that that was going to give operators so much more information about their control program.
As we discussed last month and last year, our regulations, the local law and our regulations, set out very specific requirements for owners of cooling towers on their maintenance program and plan.
And there's things that they need to do.
Every day or multiple times a week, weekly, bimonthly, monthly, biannually, annually.
They're really maintaining their systems constantly.
But the new sampling regime is going to give them a lot more information about how that program is working to control the Legionella bacteria.
And I think we're still early days in seeing how that works.
But to answer your question, when we get those reports, we have a
There is a unit within the cooling tower program that does follow-up with those buildings, making sure that they take that corrective action, report the corrective action to us.
They have to then do sampling to see that that corrective action was successful.
They have to report that to us.