MTA’s East New York bus depot issued safety violation over asbestos pipe

A portion of the troublesome sprinkler pipe under the East New York Bus Depot has the MTA in hot water, as transit brass says they’re bringing in outside help to right the facility.

At least a portion of the 2,000-foot loop of compromised, subterranean pipe that feeds the depot’s non-functional sprinkler system is made from asbestos, according to a DOL violation notice obtained by the Daily News.

The depot, which is home to about 250 buses as well as maintenance, repair and tire shops, and MTA offices, has been without fire sprinkler protection for nearly two years as the transit agency struggles to repair the water line.

The DOL violation, issued last week, is based on repair work conducted in February 2023. At that time, DOL investigators say, workers tasked with replacing a damaged section of plumbing under a first-floor storeroom cut into an asbestos-reinforced cement pipe, believing it was made of metal.

Work was halted immediately, according to the report, and an outside firm was hired to properly remove the carcinogenic material.

In total, 3 feet of asbestos piping was found under the storeroom and removed, investigators wrote. The asbestos was ultimately determined not to have been a threat.

“[L]icensed environmental monitoring contractors sampled the air before and after the abatement and found that there was no ambient asbestos exposure at the location as a result of the disturbance to the pipe,” DOL investigators wrote.

Testing also showed the drinking water at the facility was safe.

But investigators last week said the MTA had violated federal occupational health and safety standards by not properly training work crews in asbestos awareness, and by failing to alert employees at the depot to the fact that asbestos had been found.

Rich Davey, president of New York City Transit, took issue with what he called the “alleged violations” Tuesday.

“What the DOL brought concerns about was making sure people’s training is up to date, and we’re handling that,” Davey told The News.

“The DOL provided us with an alleged violation a year after the incident,” he said. “We have the opportunity to respond [to the DOL] and we will.”

Davey said he doesn’t expect the possible presence of any more asbestos to further complicate the process of replacing the damaged pipe — but the process continues to drag on as the depot approaches two years without a functioning sprinkler system.

The 2,000-foot run of eight-inch diameter pipe is designed to provide pressurized water to the depot’s thousands of sprinkler heads in the event of a fire.

As previously reported by The News, the pipe has repeatedly burst and failed pressure tests.

Damage to the pipe first surfaced in the fall on 2021, when a portion of it ruptured under the floor of the facility’s bus wash, near the corner of Bushwick Ave. and Fanchon Place.

The pipe ruptured again in July 2022, eight feet beneath the same storeroom where the asbestos piping was found. The water line was dug up and patched, but it burst again under the storeroom a few months later, followed by another leak under the storeroom last year.

It’s unclear how much of the pipe contains asbestos — sources told The News that the first section to break in 2021 did not appear to contain any of the hazardous material.

But the continuing lack of fire sprinkler coverage in a facility that contains fuel and heavy equipment has become a budgetary boondoggle for the MTA, as it pays teams of employees overtime to conduct legally mandated fire patrols.

In a March 2023 memo — written in the weeks following the discovery of asbestos-reinforced plumbing under the storeroom — Frank Annicaro, the head of buses for NYC Transit, estimated that the fire watch was costing the agency some $400,000 a month, or $4.8 million a year.

As previously reported by The News, nearly all of that — $4.1 million — is money paid in excess of employees’ contractual limit on overtime payments, meaning a small group of roughly three dozen employees is raking in a bulk of the money.

The memo — a copy of which was reviewed by The News — was sent by Annicaro to the MTA’s construction and development wing, requesting money to build an above-ground replacement for the aging sprinkler feed.

“The existing fire loop is located underground and is over 70 years old and has reached its useful life,” the bus boss wrote.

An MTA spokesperson did not immediately respond when asked the status of Annicaro’s request for funding to bypass the damaged pipe.

Agency spokesman Mike Cortez told The News in February that money had indeed been set aside for an eventual total replacement of the sprinkler system.

Davey on Tuesday said that, earlier this month, he had started the process of hiring an outside contractor to assess the situation at the East New York depot.

“A couple of weeks ago I ordered a top to bottom review of the facility,” he said. “We’re going to bring in an external party, an outside contractor.”

“Rather than continue to address issues as they come up,” he said, “we’re going to have an independent party come in and take a look at it.”

Davey said he hoped a detailed review of the entire East New York depot would allow the agency to better plan for a full overhaul of the complex in the next capital plan. That plan, due out by year’s end, will set the MTA’s budget for large projects over the next five years.

As for the fire watch, Davey remained optimistic that it could be wrapped up well before that.

“We’ve been cautious,” he said. “We’re not going to rush this. At the same time, I am anxious to get the system up and running.”