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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Coming up next hour, we will talk about shortages in police departments all across the country as part of our Labor Day week series on shortages in all kinds of job categories. We will also give you whatever you want to know about the new Omicron-specific COVID boosters. We'll have an expert guest on that and take your call. That's all coming up, but right now, another matter important to public health.

The city of New York has told residents of the Jacob Riis Houses in the East Village not to drink the water. NYCHA managers learned that tap water at the public housing complex contained unsafe levels of arsenic, of course, a dangerously toxic heavy metal. Tenants found out Friday evening, story has been in the news since then, maybe you've heard it. There was some suggestion from the nonprofit news organization, The City, that these NYCHA managers learned of arsenic in the water two weeks before making that discovery public, though that's been unconfirmed. Joining me now with updates, Gwynne Hogan, reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. Hey, Gwynne, welcome back to the show.

Gwynne Hogan: Hey there, Brian. Good to be back.

Brian Lehrer: You want to start with any background about the Jacob Riis Houses? NYCHA buildings have suffered from years of all kinds of neglect and disinvestment, as probably most of our listeners know, if they're not even personally living through it. Has that been the story in this specific complex even before this?

Gwynne Hogan: Sure. Many similar issues that we hear about at other NYCHA complexes have occurred here, and this particular complex, which is rather large, it's about 1,100 apartments, it's in 13 buildings, was impacted very heavily during Hurricane Sandy. Tenants here suffered some of the worst impacts of that storm and were without power and elevators for days, and there's still repairs happening at that complex, and particularly, I talked to tenants who said as they're doing repairs, they'd had issues with the water getting shut off and on randomly over the past couple months. Certainly, this wasn't the first issue that they had faced.

Brian Lehrer: How did the city learn there was arsenic in the tap water?

Gwynne Hogan: We're still piecing together how this came out, but there were about a couple early August, a couple weeks ago, there were complaints that the water was cloudy in some of the buildings, and Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez had raised alarm bells about this, and there was local news reporting in PIX11 about the cloudy water, and that prompted NYCHA to begin additional testing. There's period water testing, but they ramped up testing in the week of that.

Again, we're piecing together the exact timeline on this, but according to background statements that I've gotten from the mayor's office just today, they're saying that as they were getting back these test results, they had questionable results that came in last Monday that led them to believe there could be arsenic in the water, but it wasn't confirmed, and then they were retesting that, and those results confirming arsenic

was in the water came back on Thursday.

Now, the city didn't confirm this publicly until the day later when the publication, The City, reported on this. I know there's a lot of confusion between NYCHA and city officials and the publication, The City. That confirmation finally came through last Friday. Since then, further addition to the timeline, they've retested. They took a bunch more samples, 140 more samples, and now last night, they said, all of those samples found there to be no arsenic or not detectable amount of arsenic. However, at this point, they are still urging residents to not drink or cook with the water as they run further analysis, but at this point, it seems like maybe the results that found arsenic were faulty, but again, this is evolving day by day, and we'll definitely have more information as we learn more.

Brian Lehrer: If we happen to have anybody from Jacob Riis listening right now, we certainly invite your calls. What have you been going through? How have you been getting drinkable water? What do you think about the information flow here or anything else you want to say or ask since Gwynne is on this story? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Anyone else with a comment or a question as well, 212-433-WNYC or tweet @BrianLehrer. What is an unsafe level for arsenic, and how much had been detected in the water in that original indication that raised questions at the Riis Houses?

Gwynne Hogan: I have asked the city several times and they haven't confirmed to me directly what the levels were. I've heard second and third-hand that they were anywhere between 12 and 14 parts per billion, but again, that's second-hand from people talking to city officials. The EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, considers anything above 10 parts per billion to be unsafe, and again, depending on how long you're exposed and in what quantity you're exposed, you could suffer any array of consequences from this; vomiting, nausea, diarrhea. In extreme cases, paralysis, blindness. In prolonged exposure to this, several types of cancers. This is a big deal if there is arsenic in the water, but again, we're still learning about the situation.

Brian Lehrer: Nobody is reported being made ill as far as you know?

Gwynne Hogan: Well, this is a good question. The second you hear that there's arsenic in the water, your routine stomach ache or your headaches, you wonder, "Is it because of this?" I talked to several tenants who had stomach aches in the past few days, or one woman told me that she had vomited spontaneously after like taking a vitamin that she takes every day, but the city officials on-site will say, "Go get tested for arsenic," and I talked to one woman who was trying to take her daughter with developmental disabilities, who had been sick for several days to get tested for arsenic, and she had gone to multiple doctors and couldn't find a test.

That's a whole other question about, well, if there's exposure, how are we going to know if residents are getting sick? I think, at this point, it seems to me like the city is focusing on figuring out of whether or not these results were accurate before they then pivot to like, "Okay, what is the damage here?"

Brian Lehrer: Do you know enough yet about the testing process to understand why

one test would indicate that there might be arsenic in the water and another test on a similar sample from the same water source might indicate that there might not be?

Gwynne Hogan: This is certain an issue that's going to come out. It seems the publication, The City, had reported that the city, NYCHA, had used a subcontractor to do these interim tests, and now we have the city doing the test, the Department of Environmental Protection, conducting the tests on the water itself. That's the agency that oversees the city's water.

There is a difference on who is doing the tests in this case, but no, I'm not an expert on what kind of test was being used versus what kind of test is being conducted now, but another indication from the publication, The City, was that there were relatively few samples conducted. I think it was like five or six, and now we're doing 140. The city is doing 140 through the DEP. That's another difference that we're looking at.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Hi. Good morning. My question is that, theoretically, the bulk of the water for New York City comes from upstate reservoirs. How would arsenic get into just one place and not another? I assume we all use the same pipes. The city was built with the same pipes all over. I'm just curious about how that's possible.

Gwynne Hogan: Yes, that's a really good question. The city officials are very clear to say there is no problem with the source of the water. New York City public tap drinking water remains some of the best tap water in the nation. There's no arsenic in our tap water. What may have happened, but again, we don't know because we're still trying to figure it out, but what is suggested happened at some point between the time that the water leaves the public pipes and goes through the pipes that connect to the NYCHA building, it's pumped up into a water tower at the top of these large complexes, and then it goes down through pipes into different apartments.

There was reporting that there was a broken pipe. It's not clear how exactly it might have entered if it did, but it's at some point throughout the building itself, not in the public water supply.

Brian Lehrer: We should say, for people just tuning in in the middle of this, or even if they've been seeing the coverage, the Jacob Riis Houses are the only NYCHA facility potentially affected by arsenic and the water. I don't want people at NYCHA buildings living in NYCHA buildings all over the city to think, "Oh, this is arsenic in all the NYCHA taps." This is the one housing complex that it may or may not be in is Jacob Riis, right?

Gwynne Hogan: That is correct. That is correct at this point.

Brian Lehrer: Just not to freak people out. When I first heard this story the other day, it came after the days and days of reporting, maybe you had this reaction too, Gwynne, about that horrible situation in Jackson, Mississippi, where the water became undrinkable, and they've been handing out bottled water and all this horribleness.

If people dismissed that as, "Oh, Mississippi, why that so and so state," the way it treats people in that mostly Black city and all of that and think, "Oh, Mississippi," and then here it was in New York City. Again, we don't really know, but even that, the question could be raised that was there something about neglect? Was there something about unequal treatment? Was there something about something that this could happen right here in blue New York?

Gwynne Hogan: Absolutely, but it's obviously not just in Mississippi. I also covered to some extent the water crisis in Newark several years ago, and that's blue New Jersey. Water is, we take it for granted. In New York City, we take it for granted. Many people take it for granted, but now, if you're talking to tenants at Jacob Riis and you can't cook, there's fears about whether it's safe to shower. Officials have said it's okay to shower, but the water was shut off and then you can't flush your toilet.

You're lugging bottles of water up to your apartment so that you can boil water for coffee or you're having to eat out. These are tenants who are middle or low-income. It's a real burden to not have safe drinking water. We would hope, as everyone says, "The greatest city in the world," that folks should be able to trust and rely on that, but that's obviously an open question right now.

Brian Lehrer: What are tenants going through right now, even today?

Gwynne Hogan: I haven't been over today. I was over there on Tuesday, although there are some officials that are going to rally with tenants out front to call for more answers. I talked to tenants on Tuesday, it was raining, the Tenants Association president was posted up outside in the rain, under a tent, giving out hot meals because it's really hard to cook without water.

She and other tenants are frustrated. They're making do. She says it's so stressful to come home from work or the first day of school and have this additional burden to try to figure out how you're going to feed your kids. How are you going to make sure there's enough water for people to drink? It's a logistical nightmare to try to make sure that you have enough water for your family.

Brian Lehrer: People are coming up with various theories about if this is arsenic at a level above what's allowed, somebody wrote, I wonder if it's caused by illegal dumping of paint thinner or other construction materials. James in Wayne has maybe an even more sinister idea. James, you are on WNYC. Hello.

James: Yes. I was just wondering, is there any industrial or commercial source of arsenic that may have inadvertently or may regularly dumped arsenic in and after discovering that arsenic had been found in the water had stopped that process? Is that a consideration at all?

Gwynne Hogan: I don't really know the answer. One thing that we haven't brought up yet is that NYCHA is overseen by a federal monitor due to a consent decree with the federal government a few years back. The federal monitor is looking into this. They have asked NYCHA to preserve all documents related to water testing of Jacob Riis.

We have this external layer of oversight that we might not normally have that we're certainly looking to try to get answers about the source of potential arsenic if there was arsenic or the quality of the water testing here in this case. Hopefully, that's a way where we would, if there is confirmed to be arsenic, would figure out what the source was. If not through the city, the city has said they're promising transparency, but it's been difficult to get basic information about this over the past few days, but if not from them, directly from this federal monitor.

Brian Lehrer: We're talking about if you're just joining us, the City of New York telling residents of the Jacob Riis Houses, public housing complex in the East Village, not to drink the water while they determine if there are unsafe levels of arsenic in the water. Our reporter, Gwynne Hogan from WNYC and Gothamist is on the story and reporting that one test seemed to indicate that there might be, and other tests seem to indicate that there's probably not, but in the meantime, people are being told not to drink the water. Amanda in the East Village, you're on WNYC. Hi, Amanda.

Amanda: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. My question is just I'm in an apartment complex that is close to the Jacob Riis Houses, and I'm just wondering if you've done any investigation as to how this might be affecting surrounding apartment complexes because I know you mentioned earlier it's not affecting other NYCHA buildings and apartment complexes, but I'm just wondering in the immediate surrounding areas, is it affecting our water?

Gwynne Hogan: The answer to that is-- [crosstalk] Oh, sorry.

Amanda: Sorry. I was just going to say I'll take my answer off the air to clear out the lines. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Sure. Amanda, thank you very much. Gwynne, go ahead.

Gwynne Hogan: Yes. City officials are saying that nobody outside of the housing complex is affected, because again, we talked about a little bit earlier is they're saying that if there was contamination, it occurred at some point within the building, within the water circulation of the building, from the water tower through to individual apartments or up from the street. At this point, they're saying it does not affect tenants outside.

I did see a pretty good useful article from City Limits about what to do if you want to get your water tested. You can request a test kit from the DEP. If you want to leave any other concerns that you might have, there's a way to get your own water tested through the city's DEP for free, I believe, but at this point, nobody outside the Jacob Riis Houses is being told to not drink the drinking water.

Brian Lehrer: Rocko in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rocko.

Rocko: Hey, Brian. Good morning. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: I'm okay. I see you worked for NYCHA for 20 years.

Rocko: Yes. I worked for NYCHA for 20 years, and I spent quite a few years doing roof tank replacements. A lot of these rooms are usually accessible by anyone. Most of the covers on the water tanks are broken down. There's a hatch to get into the tank, and that's broken. Anybody can get up there.

Brian Lehrer: When you say anybody can get up there, you're implying somebody might have purposely poisoned the water. Is that what--

Rocko: No. I'm just saying that it's easily accessible to those water tanks. They're in horrible shape, and there's so many of them that need to be replaced.

Brian Lehrer: How did it get like that if you have a view based on your experience?

Rocko: I was too low on the totem pole to answer that question, but I would imagine funding is the issue.

Brian Lehrer: Rocko, thank you very much. Well, that's a pretty interesting view from the ground or view from the roof, Gwynne. Somebody who worked there 20 years and says, "So many of them are in horrible condition." Boy, is that consistent with other things we've been hearing about NYCHA for years?

Gwynne Hogan: What he made me think about is this other piece of quasi-breaking news that came through last night about this issue, which is that in these additional tests that they've been running, the original additional tests, they've now said that they potentially identified Legionella bacteria in the Jacob Riis Houses. However, they say that they don't trust those results either, which is a whole other wrinkle in this story. It's very confusing.

Then again, they're cautioning people that you can't catch Legionnaires' disease from the drinking water. It sprays through aerosols or spread through aerosols, but that's a whole other issue that we've seen. Mostly, I remember there was a big outbreak in the South Bronx that wasn't a NYCHA building. I believe it was a hospital, but that's a whole other issue that has to do with the water towers and the HVAC systems. Excuse me.

Brian Lehrer: We'll be talking about some of the latest on that other disease that spreads through aerosols that we may have been obsessing on for the last two and a half years coming up after the news. To finish up on this, Gwynne, you well know, our listeners well know, NYCHA had already been under the oversight of a federal monitor after the Manhattan US Attorney's Office found it had attempted to cover up unsafe living conditions. You mentioned the federal monitor before. Will the city now have to answer to this federal monitor for this in any specific way?

Gwynne Hogan: Yes. There were reports over the weekend from the city and then the federal monitor has confirmed now that they're seeking documents about water testing at Jacob Riis Houses specifically. They put that statement out over the weekend. They're seeking documents to try to figure out exactly what the timeline is, was there an effort to keep this under wraps.

In terms of what we know about the timeline now, mayor Eric Adams added a very

promptly scheduled or a hastily scheduled event at the Jacob Riis Houses Friday night. This was a few hours after they had received a request for comment from The City, the publication, which was already working on a story about this, and tenants were not advised about the potential for arsenic in the water from the agency until the next day and late that night, which according to the timeline that we know now was at least a day after they had received these results. That's definitely something that the federal monitor is going to be looking into it. We've heard Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, elected officials, local and otherwise calling for an investigation or more clarity from the city in regards to what happened here.

Brian Lehrer: Let me squeeze one more call in here because Angela in Brooklyn is calling in who says her sister lives in Jacob Riis. Angela, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Angela: Oh, good morning. Wow, I can't believe I'm actually on the air. Yes, I just wanted to comment that recently, there's so many issues that come up with repairs and all, and whenever somebody comes, they don't have any more in-house NYCHA workers doing the work and the painting. The people are not even union workers. I just wonder how much it has to do with that, and it also makes you very suspicious that for years, they've been wanting to probably take over that property because it can be really luxurious waterfront, the land there.

Brian Lehrer: Your sister's perception or experience is that things are going even further downhill in the Jacob Riis Houses even after the federal monitor?

Angela: Oh, yes, absolutely. It's been for years, they take forever to make any repairs. If there's a leak or any flooding, it's really bad, it's gotten really bad. It used to be pretty decent housing at least for lower-income people and blue-collar people, but everything is outsourced. It's all outsourced now, a lot of the work, a lot of the repairs. I don't know how much has to do with that and people not being union and how much oversight they practice when work is being done.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Angela. Gwynne, a last thought on that aspect?

Gwynne Hogan: Yes. I think that is one of the questions here is, who was the subcontractor that the city has reported? I think it's Liquid Test, but I'm forgetting the exact name of the company. Was that a reputable water testing company? I think that's one of the questions is, why if it turns out there isn't arsenic in the water and this faulty test caused all kinds of concern and confusion and fear among tenants like what happened in that process, I think that's a big question.

What your caller was saying is something I've heard not specific to Jacob Riis Houses but in coverage of NYCHA complexes all over the city, like if mold is a persistent issue in many of these buildings, and we're often hearing the workers will come in, they'll paint over it, and then you have mold again in a week or two. That's ongoing issues for many tenants that they're struggling with.

Brian Lehrer: WNYC and Gothamist, Gwynne Hogan. Thanks as always for your reporting. Thanks for coming on, Gwynne.

Gwynne Hogan: Thanks, Brian.

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