A series of bureaucratic blunders triggered the 2022 debacle over the ultimately debunked tests that claimed arsenic was in the water at the Jacob Riis Houses and resulted in nearly $500,000 in “unnecessary costs” to taxpayers, according to twin investigations by the New York City Housing Authority’s federal monitor and the city Department of Investigation.
It started with a low-level NYCHA manager’s failure to pay a vendor on time for fixing a water pump and progressed to a poorly coordinated effort by top management to order up tests for potential contaminants at Riis after tenants had been complaining for weeks about cloudy water coming out of their taps.
In a 51-page report released Thursday, DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber described an “inadequate ad hoc response” to the crisis and made 23 recommendations to tighten up NYCHA’s follow-up to tenant complaints about potentially contaminated drinking water.
“The report says pretty clearly in this instance there were a cascade of missteps,” Strauber told THE CITY. “Contaminated water concerns can’t be addressed in an ad hoc way. NYCHA does test water tanks. They didn’t have any procedures for what happens if there’s a water concern that happens in an unplanned way.”