A citywide records review found 568 Manhattan cooling towers out of compliance with the monthly testing rules the city put in place this spring — including five Upper East Side sites now on the health department's positive-test list, none of which had ever submitted a sample.

Five of the buildings whose cooling towers tested positive for Legionella during the Upper East Side outbreak had never submitted a single required water sample to the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene — a compliance failure embedded in a wider gap: more than 500 cooling towers across Manhattan have not filed the mandatory monthly tests the city enacted just this spring.

A review of DOHMH records by The City Reporter found 568 Manhattan cooling towers out of compliance with the new rules, of which 393 had no record of ever submitting any test at all. The City Council tightened the reporting interval last fall — from every 90 days to every 31 days, with results self-reported directly to the health department — following a deadly Legionnaires' outbreak in Harlem. Those stricter rules took effect in May.

The five buildings among the 76 that have tested positive and had no prior filing on record are 1750 York Ave., part of the Asphalt Green sports complex (owner of record: Asphalt Green Inc.); the apartment building at 1660 2nd Ave. (Yorkshire Towers Company Success); 333 E 91st St.; 145 E 84th St.; and 1511 3rd Ave., the former Yorkville Bank Building, where Cushman & Wakefield Inc. is listed as owner of record in city filings. All five are in ZIP codes 10028, 10075, and 10128 — the three-ZIP investigation zone where the current outbreak has sickened 60 New Yorkers, with 15 still hospitalized as of Tuesday. Health officials updated the positive-test list Tuesday, expanding it from 31 to 76 addresses.

Inside the investigation zone, the compliance record is similarly thin: of 183 towers the city tested, 28 had no prior test on file at all, and another 10 had last submitted results sometime in 2025, before the monthly requirement took effect.

Council Speaker Julie Menin, whose district covers the outbreak area, wrote to Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin last week urging him to order preemptive draining and disinfection of all cooling towers in the three ZIP codes. Martin declined at a press call Tuesday. "This is by far the most aggressive we've ever been," he said. "I don't think you can get more aggressive than this." The department has ordered full remediation of all 76 buildings on the positive list.

The compliance picture reflects a system built on owner self-reporting: when nobody files, nobody tests, and no agency catches the gap until an outbreak is already running.