Exclusive | Over half the cooling towers in NYC Legionnaires’ outbreak area issued violations in recent months: records

More than half of the Upper East Side water cooling towers under investigation for a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak were dinged by health officials during their latest inspections, The Post has learned.

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The violations — issued between March 2025 and March 2026 at roughly 59% of the cooling centers in the three zip codes under the city’s probe — include failing to perform regular monitoring and cleaning and failing to submit Legionella test results to the health department, as required by law, records show.

The sites with the highest number of violations in the Carnegie Hill and Yorkville neighborhoods include 1520 York Ave., with nine violations, and 1101 Lexington Ave., with seven violations.

Both were dinged with cleaning, monitoring, chemical use and Legionella sampling infractions in February.

A total of eight cooling towers in the affected area were not collecting, recording, analyzing or submitting Legionella samples to the city, as mandated by law, since March 2025, according to records.

Those towers are located at: 445 East 86th St.; 247 E 87th St.; 188 E 78th St;  1520 York Ave.; 1150 Madison Ave.; 1101 Lexington Ave.; 1025 Madison Ave.; and 1010 Park Ave.

Meanwhile, more than 200 water cooling towers across the city were flagged for violations during the same period, including 70 Legionella-related monitoring violations.

“We enforce laws and we institute fines, when people fail to meet the city’s requirements to maintain their cooling towers – if they’re not testing regularly, or reporting what they need to report to us,” a city Health Department rep told The Post.

Fines start at $500 and can rise to $2,000 for repeat violations.

“But, the most important thing now is sampling every tower that we need to,” the rep said, “and then ordering all of them to remediate if they come back positive for even the presence of dead or alive Legionella.”

The latest Legionnaires’ outbreak in the Big Apple, first reported on July 2, has sickened 36 people in the 10028, 10128, and 10075 zip codes as of Wednesday.

Cases are expected to rise with additional testing as city investigators continue to probe the source.

The outbreak follows a deadly cluster that killed seven people and sickened 114 more in Harlem last summer.

This year’s investigation is expected to take longer, as there are roughly three times as many cooling towers in this investigation zone as in Harlem, according to a source familiar with the matter.

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A new law, which went into effect in May, now requires cooling towers to be tested for Legionella bacteria every month.

Before that, testing was only required every three months.

But only about half of all active cooling towers in the affected Upper East Side zip codes had Legionella test results on file from this year, Gothamist reported.

As of Thursday, the health department had tested “almost all” of the cooling towers in the affected area, and results are coming in on a “rolling basis.”

The mayor’s office has also vowed to release the addresses of buildings that test positive for Legionella.

So far, one cooling tower at 1511 Third Avenue has tested positive for the bacteria, CBS News first reported.

That cooling tower — which has amassed dozens of violations since 2017 — was last inspected by health department officials in December 2024, despite the city’s goal of inspecting each site at least once a year.

Any cooling tower that has already tested preliminarily positive during the latest outbreak — either containing dead or live Legionella bacteria — has been ordered to be completely drained and disinfected, a health department rep confirmed.

As part of the investigation, city inspectors must compare the DNA sequencing of Legionella bacteria found in cooling towers that tested positive with that of samples from sickened New Yorkers.

Speaking at an unrelated event Thursday, New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who represents the Upper East Side, said she remains “very concerned” that the source of the spread has yet to be found.

“We represent a neighborhood that is very dense and has a lot of seniors,” Menin said Thursday, adding that she has sent a letter to the health commissioner demanding the agency order the buildings that have not yet been inspected — or where the cases have not yet come back negative — to be disinfected proactively. 

“We’re going to wait for more people to get sick and potentially die,” she added. 

“Every day that goes by that they’re not disinfecting is another day that more and more people can get sick and potentially die of Legionnaires — and that’s totally and wholly unacceptable.”

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