Exclusive | More than half of 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.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 peop...