Just in case you thought all the lies of the New York City Housing Authority had been revealed, a new City & State investigation last week exposed a coverup of pollution in projects’ water tanks.
The news site examined internal NYCHA inspection reports from 2015 to 2017, which indicate nauseating contamination in more than 600 tanks: “flying insects,” “deceased squirrels,” “dead birds.” In the worst cases, tank cleaners found homeless people using the large wooden barrels as shelters … and toilets.
But NYCHA filings with the city Health Department hid these details, even leaving them out entirely. Thus the official report for a Brooklyn building makes no mention that inspectors found “birds in drain”— even though the forms specifically order the listing of any contamination by birds, rodents or insects.
It’s likely that many more major violations have gone unreported, since tank-cleaning companies often don’t mention them to NYCHA, for fear of losing the contract. “We don’t write it, because nobody likes that,” an inspector who requested anonymity told City & State.
Meanwhile, public-housing residents continue to get sick from coffee-colored water and the bug-infested silt that pours out through their faucets. That’s on top of the poison threats from NYCHA’s rampant mold and lead-paint horrors, among all the other woes on the agency’s $32 billion list of needed repairs.
Hey, you don’t get to be New York’s largest slumlord without record neglect in a whole host of categories.
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