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Nearly $500,000 went down the drain after a costly NYCHA’s water-testing mishap in September 2022. The findings come from the Department of Investigation (DOI) and former federal monitor Bart Schwartz in a report released May 16. The probe traced how a lab error that incorrectly found arsenic in the drinking water supply of the Jacob Riis Houses in the East Village is tied directly to the public benefit corp’s loose oversight of one of its contracted vendors.
In reality, a broken house pump caused the tenants’ discolored-water complaints. But the false positive turned a routine repair into a multi-day crisis of “unquantifiable stress” for public housing residents informed that they likely ingested the toxic metal. NYCHA rescue plan architect Greg Russ stepped down as CEO in the ensuing months (he remained as chairman initially, before also departing from that role last year). Resident concerns about drinking water safety persist to this day.
DOI Commissioner Jocelyn E. Strauber told the Amsterdam News that a “series of missteps” and “instances of mismanagement” led to the blunder beyond just the false positive.
Between June and July, many residents reported “dirty or brown water” to NYCHA. Except, according to the DOI report, the water was actually cloudy, an important distinction when identifying the discoloration source—and a distinction that couldn’t be made in NYCHA’s service portal, according to DOI. Cloudy water is frequently the product of aeration—air circulation through liquids—and often used as an indicator of problems with the water distribution system.
RELATED: NYCHA residents stunned by secret water retesting after years of inspections by firm that retracted arsenic results
According to the DOI, the Riis Houses were operating without a superintendent or assistant superintendent during a portion of that summer. A new super was promoted on July 25, 2022. He previously serviced the Lower East Side Houses, a development without a water tank. When he moved to the Riis Houses, he did not receive relevant training on the new system according to the report. The DOI investigation points to the new superintendent’s inexperience with water tanks as why NYCHA did not initially identify the broken house pump’s role in clouding the water supply.
Low water levels caused by the broken pump would usually prompt an alert, but the alarm was also not working, according to the findings. When the hatch of a roof water tank was found to be “erroneously” left open, NYCHA officials suspected contamination may have caused the water discoloration and ordered testing for E. coli and coliforms. At the time, an arsenic test was not planned. But without specific procedures for what to test for, NYCHA set itself up for failure.
“Essentially the vendor was allowed to be the decision-maker as to what contaminants should be tested for here,” Strauber said in a phone interview. “There was not sufficient oversight by the NYCHA executives and senior management in terms of what was being tested for. There were certainly communications and information that we obtained that suggested that they did not initially plan to test for arsenic. And the testing for arsenic ultimately was not the appropriate testing to be done here.”
Basically, Strauber said, the wrong tool was used for the job. In a “good faith” attempt to address the resident complaints immediately, NYCHA scrambled to enlist a vendor without the specific contaminant expertise to perform the needed tests on Aug. 12, 2022. The buck was then passed to a subcontracted lab that was not state-certified to perform the broad-spectrum water testing for arsenic and other contaminants, unbeknownst to NYCHA at the time.
By Aug. 13, NYCHA suspected the house pump may have caused the discoloration. Two days later, the pump was fixed and water quality complaints “significantly” decreased, according to the report.
The testing error wasn’t a simple mistake; according to Strauber, multiple samples were tested and all came back falsely finding arsenic at levels of concern by state and federal safety standards. The report points to the subcontracted lab running the variable and the fixed solution at different dilutions as what caused “molecular interference indicating a false arsenic positive.”
NYCHA received the pair of erroneous testing results on Aug. 29 and Sept. 1 and informed both residents and officials. Subsequent water-sample tests soon disproved the findings and the lab then retracted its results. By Sept. 10, NYCHA informed residents they could safely drink the development’s water.
Last March, NYCHA calculated $352,810.78 in costs due to the error. By the time invoices were finalized last summer, it counted the expense up to $482,506.45, including 1,684 payments of $200 to residents.
A NYCHA spokesperson responded over email:
“The Department of Investigation’s report reaffirms that there is no—and never was any—arsenic in the water at Riis Houses and demonstrates that NYCHA acted in good faith to respond quickly to what we now know was a laboratory error. The process has been investigated and put through rigorous evaluation, with robust public transparency, and in the months since this incident, NYCHA has taken many steps including the establishment of the Office of Water Quality, to strengthen and improve its internal processes as we continue to move the Authority forward.”
When asked about NYCHA’s response, Strauber generally agreed with the assessment, specifically crediting how it notified residents as soon as the lab “confirmed” arsenic in the water supply. The residents were informed via robocall of the test results and the systems were flushed. Spanish and Chinese language interpreters were on site to notify non-English speaking residents. More than 380,000 water bottles and cans were distributed to residents. The DOI found NYCHA’s outreach following the false positive as not only compliant, but “above and beyond” to both federal and state enforceable standards.
“We did find that NYCHA acted in good faith and we say that in our report: there certainly was a lab error that caused false positive results,” she said. “But that’s not everything that the report concludes. We also conclude that there was a series of missteps or instances of mismanagement within NYCHA that resulted ultimately in the the decision to test the water for arsenic [and] in the use of a lab that was not state certified and that did make mistakes.”
Twenty-three recommendations were made to NYCHA following the contamination scare, ranging from procuring new contracts when seeking services not covered by current vendors and groundskeeping safeguards for when a development’s superintendent quits. The housing authority accepted almost all suggestions. But NYCHA rejected a recommendation for regular house pump inspections by its Heating Management Services Department and instead plans to deploy supers on a weekly basis, electricians monthly and plumbers quarterly for routine checks and maintenance.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
