Mayor's office: Lab says test results detecting arsenic in water at Jacob Riis Houses were incorrect
NEW YORK -- The city says there's no arsenic in the water at an East Village NYCHA complex and bad testing is to blame for false results by the testing company.
As CBS2's Thalia Perez reports, it was standing room only at a public meeting for tenants of the Jacob Riis Houses.
"You need to value us," one person said.
Tempers flared and emotions ran high as tenants expressed their anxiety. Some say they waited to get inside the meeting at P.S. 34 on East 12th Street.
"There was a long line. It looked like a concert. At one point, they said they reached the capacity. I left and I came back," one person said.
Shortly before midnight on Sept. 2, results from the first round of testing were released, revealing traces of arsenic. Residents were told not to drink or cook with their tap water.
But since then, the city says it received an explanation from the lab saying the initial test results were incorrect.
"Now we must apologize to you for the past eight days," NYCHA chair and CEO Gregory Russ said.
Russ also said NYCHA is working to determine how to compensate residents for the error.
"We thought these tests were not on point, but you know what? We have not done well with our residents and the community in speaking to issues about NYCHA," he said.
"We are awaiting a final battery of tests that we did this week to make absolute sure. We hope to release those test results tomorrow," chief housing officer Jessica Katz said.
As of now, residents are still being told not to drink or cook with their tap water as a precaution, pending the newest round of test results.
Officials say they are going to spend a lot of energy over the coming weeks to try to determine what happened and why test results came back faulty.
The following is the full statement released by the mayor's office:
"Today, Environmental Monitoring and Technologies — the original lab that provided the initial test results claiming there was arsenic in the water at Riis Houses issued a full retraction and released revised results, calling their initial results 'incorrect.' Worse yet, the company has now admitted to being the ones that introduced arsenic into the samples, leading to the false results.
"Environmental Monitoring and Technologies also today released results of a retest they initiated of the original samples and found the results to be negative for arsenic. This matches the separate retest we conducted through a different vendor, LiRo Environmental. We have now tested more than 140 points — both at the source and at the point of delivery — and we can confidently say the water at Riis Houses is and has been free of any discernable amount of arsenic since the initial tests were initiated in August. Needless to say, neither NYCHA nor any other city agency will test water through Environmental Monitoring and Technologies any longer, and the city intends to pursue all available legal options on behalf of the residents of Riis Houses.
"Above all else, the health and safety of residents remain our top priorities and we continue to approach the situation with an extreme level of care, which is why, earlier this week, we initiated a number of additional tests through LiRo Environmental for other contaminants. Initial results for typical contaminants have now come back negative. We expect to have additional results for non-typical contaminants tomorrow. In the meantime, out of an abundance of caution, we are continuing to ask Riis Houses residents not to drink or cook with the water in their buildings until these final test results are returned and analyzed. We continue to provide clean water for anyone who needs it.
"We have and will continue to be transparent about the information we receive. As such, we will be releasing the initial arsenic reports from Environmental Monitoring and Technologies that we now know to be inaccurate and the revised reports from the company provided to us today, as well as the negative results we received from LiRo Environmental earlier this week. We will continue to provide updates as we get them."
To read Environmental Monitoring and Technologies' statement, click here.
