NYC Sanitation Chief Will Double As Lead-Poisoning Czar

NEW YORK — The head of New York City's sanitation department will moonlight as its lead-poisoning czar. Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia will oversee efforts across several city agencies to reduce kids' exposure to the toxic metal as the new senior adviser for citywide lead prevention, Mayor Bill de Blasio's office announced Thursday.

Garcia will continue to lead the Department of Sanitation — the largest department of its kind in the world — while she takes on the new role, the mayor's office said.

Her appointment comes amid continued scrutiny of lead poisoning in public housing. Lead exposure among kids in the city has dropped by 90 percent since 2005, de Blasio said, but officials want to drive the rate down to zero through a "singe, citywide strategy."

"There is no better person to accomplish this than Commissioner Garcia," de Blasio said in a statement. "She has the tenacity and experience to tackle this challenge, and bring this city the last mile towards eradicating childhood exposure."

Among Garcia's first tasks will be developing a "lead reduction roadmap" in her first 90 days to guide planning by city agencies, the mayor's office said. She'll report directly to de Blasio and get support from the Mayor's Office of Operations, but will return to the Sanitation Department full-time during snowstorms and other sanitation emergencies, according to the mayor's office.

Before taking over the Sanitation Department in March 2014, Garcia was the chief operating officer at the Department of Environmental Protection, one of the agencies that will be involved in the city's efforts to tackle lead. The others include the New York City Housing Authority and the departments of Health, Education, Social Services, Parks and Housing Preservation and Development, the mayor's office said.

"Several city agencies have already put in place aggressive programs to reduce lead exposure," Garcia said in a statement. "By putting new performance management tools in place and improving interagency coordination, we can turn these programs into a unified strategy to achieve our goal of driving down the number of children with high lead levels to zero."

Concerns about childhood lead poisoning have loomed over NYCHA and the Department of Health for the past several months. The housing authority admitted to falsely saying it had performed mandated inspections for lead paint that weren't done for years in a settlement with federal prosecutors this June.

Later that month, the Health Department reportedly disclosed the fact that more than 800 children 5 years old or younger had tested positive for elevated blood-lead levels from 2012 through 2016, a number far higher than city officials had previously said. Lead exposure in children can cause brain damage, slowed development and problems with learning, behavior, hearing and speech, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

De Blasio, a Democrat, first hinted at a broader campaign to address lead in July, when he announced a plan to inspect all 130,000 NYCHA apartments where lead may still be present. "It's a Vision Zero approach," the mayor said Thursday, referring to his administration's effort to end traffic deaths and injuries.

"We want to end it once and for all," de Blasio said at a NYCHA-related news conference. "But that will involve working with not just public housing but even more so private housing. More of the problem is in private housing at this point."

(Lead image: Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia speaks at a press conference in February 2017. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)