Stuyvesant Town residents are getting conflicting information about what is turning the tap water brown on Tishman Speyer's troubled complex. A resident at 622 East 20th Street says both her hot and cold water have been brown and unusable for weeks. She stopped consuming the water when she started getting several 103 degree fevers. "I have H-Pylori which I suspect is a bacterial infection I picked up from dirty brown water here," she tells us. The water in her apartment is so bad that she uses bottled water to do dishes, rinse food, and drink. Unfortunately she has to bath in the murky water which leaves a suspicious looking residue in her tub.
She has called the Environmental Protection Agency and received conflicting information. "The EPA says there is no alert for my area. The EPA says there is work going on in the Catskills. The EPA says it is my landlord. The EPA keeps changing their story. The inspector came here and said it was the work going on in the complex. I have called and called. The dates for completion and the people responsible keep changing."ConEd has several construction projects taking place on the complex. Last week residents at 522, 524 and 526 East 20th Street were without gas for ten days, and 435, 445, 447, 449, 451, 453, 455, 505, 515 and 521 East 14th Street had their heat and hot water turned off over the weekend after only being notified hours before the outage.
Residents at 19 Stuyvesant Oval, 449 East 14th Street, and 447 East 14th Street are having the same problems. "It's disgusting. The water in our building has this awful, almost chemical smell to it. I'm a cancer survivor and I am very aware what I put into my body. There is nothing natural about the color or smell of our tap water," another tenant tells us.A resident at 19 Stuyvesant Oval says management is unsympathetic to his quality life issues. "I spoke with Donalda Habersham and not only was she unwilling to help me, she was incredibly rude to me on the phone. I felt like telling her, 'YOU shower in this filthy water and then tell me I am overreacting.' I don't know what my body is absorbing from the hot water!"
New York City offers a free Residential Drinking Water Testing Program through the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. Residents can call 311 to request a free test kit. The 2007 NYC water quality report can be found here.
"These pretzels are making me thirsty !"
Tishman Speyer has a fixed cost property management fee. The less employees they have on payroll, the bigger the amount they can line their pockets with. This does not address the fact they have no ability to manage a residential property, it only tells the story that they have less employees than two years ago, and the quality employees are gone.
Management does not care about your problems, they have their own financial mess to work out.... unfortunately, at your expense. The only thing they understand are lawsuits which the tenants association is to spineless to undertake.
SO..........,how do we unite
meet in the oval @ midnight
burn down the fountain?
let's organize!
IDEA'S?????????
.......every day it's a getting closer
Please read the whole post if you are serious about change.
One of the first things is for people to get their water tested with the free kits. You cannot complain about brown water without showing that it is a problem. Once enough people have results that show a problem, the NYC DEP needs to listen and do something about it. If they don't act and Dan Garodnick cannot help, then there are reporters from local press and TV stations who may be happy to jump on the case--think November sweeps. The problem needs to be documented by proving what is actually in that brown water.
Next step could be researching the noise ordinances and figuring out what they are doing that is against the law. I would think that middle of the night dumpster dumping is in violation of some law or regulation. Need to figure out what exactly it is to bring it to the attention of the requisite authorities. I am searching the net to try to figure it out and will get back to you because I truly believe that what they are doing has to violate some ordinance.
One of the problems is that there are so many egregious violations, but there is not one single entity in the city government designed to deal with all of them. Thus, a good strategy would be to document real problems that are not being addressed by individual agencies and to then make a big deal of the inability of the city [aka King Michael Bloombucks] to address the real problems of real people. Maybe our Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum could finally start earning the salary we provide her. Maybe not; she's not running again from what I hear, so she may not care at all.
Finally, it might be time for the LuxLiving correspondents to take over control of the Tenants Association from the current leadership. I don't know what their organization is like and whether they have regular meetings of their governors and membership or how their leaders are elected. I cannot be too critical of them because I am sure they have other things to do and are trying their best; however, it seems like they are content with the current situation as long as they get their dues, their contacts with the local officials and photos in the T&V, and now and again hold a mass meeting at Baruch for everyone to speak out in a forum where no one seems to be listening or following up. I give them credit for raising the issue of the pressure walls with the Buildings and Fire Departments; perhaps they could once again be effective if they tried and if we give them an agenda.
Another issue is contacting our local elected officials. We need to call their offices to tell them how concerned we are about what is happening here. I called Tom Duane's office and was assigned to Romeo who told me that Tom is talking with all sorts of other parties about the need to deal with tenants' issues such as indexing for inflation in the $2K rent cap, etc, but there was no guarantee that these talks would prove fruitful anytime soon. I have yet to call the office of our Assemblyperson Brian Kavanaugh but I think the response will be similar. More of you need to call them to express your concerns. Maybe that would help to define what their priorities are for the upcoming legislative session. They won't know what's on your mind unless you tell them! Call their offices and speak your mind! The landlords may make the campaign contributions, but we are the ones who vote.
So, there are things that you can do. Just do them!
I think Beulah can take us where we want to go. She would make a wonderful Stuy Town Tenants Association president [move over Al Doyle], or even a great City Council person when Dan G's term limit is up. I'm thinking about Beulah like Sarah Palin, reformer, moose [or squirrel] stew, crazy kids, and thrift store high fashion [or is that Edna Doodle?]. Who cares that she can't see Russia from the Oval or that she doesn't know that Africa is a continent. Hey, she can probably see the UN from her apartment. She knows what our problems are and won't be swayed by all those high fashion duds from WalMart that the Working Families party is trying to make her wear.
FREETEST, I couldn't agree with you more. I live above the D&D on First and 16th and called 311 when they were doing that cosmetic construction work on the exteriors late at night. Within a half hour they were shut down.
I'm also getting a free kit. I'm sick of hearing people complain and not do anything about. I think the Lux site does a much better job of keeping the crazy sh*t that goes on here in the public eye. The TA site is OK, but this site has photos and video of what goes on here and the entertainment value keeps people coming back to see what's going on. I can't imagine how frustrated the person with that filthy bathtub water must be. Nobody should have to live like that.
Hey Anonymous, I know that Africa is a continent. I'm not a total ignoramus like that Palin woman. I can't remember what the capital city of Africa is though, but that doesn't matter. I can see Petes-A-Place from my apartment so that makes me an expert on high class Italian cuisine. That's continental, right? But not African. Mm, now I'm confused. Have to go over to Beulette's trailer and see if she and Billy-Bob know what the capital city of Africa is. I guess if Italian is continental, then Rome must be the capital city of Africa. Or maybe Naples. Well, what the heck so long as I can get free duds from Walmart, I'm your gal!
That poor lady, I can't imagine living with water like that. Tishman Speyer should be ashamed of themselves. Luxury my ass.
Remember! Ladies and gentlemen don't drink brown around town!
Our tub looks like this too!