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Why Mamdani’s team botched the deadly Legionnaires’ outbreak

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Legionnaires’ disease has been hitting New York City for over a decade; preventing it is completely straightforward — yet somehow City Hall can’t get the job done.

And so Gotham this summer suffered seven deaths plus 72 hospitalizations.

This year’s mess isn’t entirely on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s team: Institutional incompetence explains much of the city’s bungling release of information, and of the failure to prevent the outbreak in the first place.

Legionella — the bacteria that causes the deadly flu-like respiratory illness — is now endemic in the urban Northeast. It can infect the cooling towers atop buildings with air-conditioning systems, so city rules require full cleaning of every tower at least twice a year, along with monthly testing.

State law requires all tower owners to register, maintain, sample and disinfect them; if a tower shows elevated levels of........

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