Has The NYC DOHMH Received Reports Of Legionellosis Cases Occurring In Tenants From Your Building?
Is there now a concern that a tenant(s) may have been exposed to water containing Legionella organisms from the building’s potable (drinking) water distribution system. The following information presented here is intended to help you understand and fulfill the requirements from the Order Of the Commissioner.
What Does the Order Of the Commissioner Letter Mean?
The letter confirms that a resident(s) has reported that they have contracted legionella from your building’s drinking water system.
The letter goes on to outline what the law requires you to do next according to a specified timeline.
PLEASE NOTE: The NYC DOHMH is required by law to conduct an investigation to determine the source and cause of the infection – which makes good sense – and to discover if it is anywhere else, to prevent others from getting sick or dying.
What Should I Do Next?
You are not alone in this next process and our team of consultants can help navigate you and your team throughout this very sensitive time. Call our office (718) 700-5204 .
Here is where our expertise comes in. Our experienced, certified and licensed team at NYC-CTIS (NYC Cooling Tower Inspections & Services) will become your mediators and take over all communication with the NYC DOHMH. Additionally, we will develop the required Legionella Sampling Plan (a document specified within the Order Of The Commissioner) and we will also conduct all of the associated legionella sampling for your building. Moreover, all on-going communication with DOHMH will be mediated or handled by our consultants. We work hand in hand with your building once we are made part of your legionella management team every step of the way.
More specifically, within 12 days of receipt of this order your building will need to submit a legionella sampling plan. Additionally, your team will need to hire a qualified environmental consultant to assist in this process.
That is us! Our staff consists of qualified environmental consultants and certified water technologists. The NYC-CTIS’s team develops the most comprehensive Legionella sampling plans in NYC. Our process begins with an assessment of your building’s entire domestic water piping system (drinking water systems).
Your building staff will provide us with the building contact and we’ll get the process underway. We will visit your facility to assist your building staff in the development of a Legionella sampling plan, which will include:
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A description of what each domestic water system is heated through, such as hot water heaters/boilers, and where the water is stored, such as within storage tanks within their respective mechanical rooms
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A description of the physical structure, including number of floors, number of rooms per floor, number and location of sinks, showers and potable water fixtures. We will identify and locate occupied and unoccupied areas of the building.
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We will provide the most detailed FLOW DIAGRAM for your main mechanical rooms.This will be a much needed document for the NYC DOHMH.
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Once the Legionella sampling plan is approved, our team will conduct a cross sectional sampling for every floor, with a sampling focus on specified areas of interest.
If there are positive Legionella after our legionella sampling, your building staff will then be required to develop an Acute Remediation Treatment Plan (ARTP); this plan describes methods and corrective actions for controlling the risks of legionellosis from the building’s water system. Moreover, at this juncture, your building staff will also be required to hire a 3rd party auditor to review this ARTP.
IMPORTANT: Our experts will develop the Acute Remediation Treatment Plan in conjunction with a trusted water treatment vendor; a vendor that is licensed in NY State to apply chemicals into a potable water system. Additionally, we will help to introduce your building staff to a number of trusted third party auditors to help with this next process associated to the Order Of The Commissioner.
Once This ARTP has been approved by the NYC DOHMH and implemented accordingly, the ideal result of all of this is for the next round of legionella sampling to come back all negative. Negative Legionella results typically may then lead to the NYC DOHMH closing out this case for your building. However, if the legionella results come back positive after this remediation, then the above noted process will need to be reviewed, once again, and remediations of the domestic water system will continue until future legionella sampling results come back all negative.
Let us help your team. Call our offices today (718) 799-5204 and we can get started to assisting your building.
