{"id":302426,"date":"2026-07-22T00:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T00:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/302426\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T00:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T00:46:09","slug":"nyc-council-speaker-menins-bill-takes-mamdani-to-task-over-legionnaires-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/302426\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Council Speaker Menin’s bill takes Mamdani to task over Legionnaires’ outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"

City Council Speaker Julie Menin unveiled a bill Tuesday to curb the deadly Legionnaires\u2019 disease outbreak<\/a> on the Upper East Side \u2014 slamming Mayor Zohran Mamdani for dropping the ball.<\/p>\n

The new measure calls for a COVD-like public education campaign, stepped up inspections of buildings that have not conducted cooling tower inspections, and a Legionnaires\u2019 hotline to keep New Yorkers informed of the latest news and concerns.<\/p>\n

Four people have died since the outbreak was first reported July 2, with dozens more confirmed to be infected.<\/p>\n

City Council Speaker Julie Menin said the Mamdani administration didn\u2019t do enough to avoid a Legionnaires\u2019 outbreak. James Messerschmidt for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have so many questions that still remain unanswered,\u201d Menin said. \u201cThe past few weeks have been a very tense and difficult time for the East Side of Manhattan. We know that at least 76 people have been infected in the latest outbreak of Legionnaires\u2019, and that seven of our neighbors remain hospitalized.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe concern is that the health department opted not to proactively disinfect, to wait for test results to come back, particularly around the epicenter, where there were a lot of positive cases.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Post first reported<\/a> on the proposal on Monday. <\/p>\n

Menin said an understaffed health department has fallen behind on testing Big Apple cooling towers used for air conditioning systems in large scale buildings \u2014 where outbreaks of the Legionella bacteria, which thrives in warm water, typically occur in the summer months. <\/p>\n

A council hearing has been scheduled for September to review the Mamdani administration\u2019s response to the outbreak. James Keivom for NY Post<\/p>\n

More than 25% of buildings are not in compliance, Menin said. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs the number of cases have increased, so have the number of concerns,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve heard from so many constituents who lacked essential information on disease risk, on exposure, on prevention.\u201d<\/p>\n

The outbreak came after more than\u00a0250 cooling towers around the Big Apple<\/a>\u00a0were cited for issues relating to Legionella testing since last year, with more than half in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Rounds of tests on the Upper East Side after the outbreak showed 76 buildings \u2013\u00a0including the Guggenheim\u00a0<\/a>\u2013 harbored the bacteria.<\/p>\n

All those buildings cleaned and disinfected their cooling towers, health officials said.<\/p>\n

The council has scheduled an oversight hearing in September to review the Mamdani administration\u2019s preparation and response to the outbreak and determine why the public was kept in the dark.<\/p>\n

The council\u2019s position is that City Hall should have been more prepared after a Legionnaires\u2019 outbreak in Harlem last year killed five<\/a> people and infected more than 100 during the warm months.<\/p>\n

Legionnaires\u2019 outbreaks often begin in cooling towers for air conditioning systems like this one. Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post<\/p>\n

In the aftermath, the council passed a law requiring building owners to test for the bacteria every 30 days during the hot season \u2014 but the city has fallen short. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the budget, the Department of Health is supposed to have twice the number of inspectors they had last year,\u201d Lynn Schuman, who chairs the council\u2019s Committee on Health, said Tuesday. \u201cBut they haven\u2019t hired a lot of them.\u00a0We don\u2019t know if that\u2019s the administration. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schulman said the fear is the number of cases will only increase. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think those numbers are gonna creep up,\u201d she said. \u201cNot a lot, but they will creep up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill is expected to be officially introduced in the coming weeks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City Council Speaker Julie Menin unveiled a bill Tuesday to curb the deadly Legionnaires\u2019 disease outbreak on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5237,19077,8467,57,9,56,63,65,64,466,58,82],"class_list":["post-302426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-health-department","tag-julie-menin","tag-legionnaires-disease","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-upper-east-side","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}