"No water for two months! Bed-Stuy tenants fill up jugs at hydrant as city waits for pipe fix,"

By Erin Durkin - New York Daily News

Residents at a Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment building are piping mad after nearly two months without any running water.

City officials shut off the water at the 274 Malcolm X Blvd. building after a pipe sprung a leak in July - and say it won't be turned back on until the owner makes repairs.
But tenants say the eight-unit building has been effectively abandoned since their landlord, Carl Plata, died last year.

"I'm pulling my hair out," said Connie Peters, 57. "We need water."

Residents have resorted to filling jugs of water from a fire hydrant that was broken open across the street.

"I have pride. I usually try to go out while it's still dark so nobody will see me," said Peters, who also stockpiles bottled water, and showers at friends' apartments.

"Everybody does what they have to do and that's the bottom line. You gotta take a bath, you gotta cook, you gotta drink."

Estella Taylor, 46, said she's been lugging jugs of water from the fire hydrant or the water fountain at a nearby park, and giving her four kids baths with buckets of water heated on the stove.

"I go by the park and I collect water and come back," Taylor said. "I have no choice."
"I have four children living with me," she said. "It's not acceptable to live under these conditions."

City Council candidate Mark Winston Griffith, the former director of the Drum Institute for Public Policy, plans to lead a protest at the building Monday.

"There is literally no excuse for what is happening there," he said. "The tenants are completely in the dark."

Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Mercedes Padilla said the water had to be shut off to prevent a broken pipe from causing leaks in the street and in a neighboring building.

"It creates dangerous conditions," she said. "The owner of the property has to make the necessary repairs."

DEP records still list Plata as the building owner. Padilla said someone at the building was served with a notice ordering the repairs before the water was shut off, but she couldn't say who.
"Everybody's passing the buck," Peters said.

Department of Housing Preservation and Development spokesman Eric Bederman said the agency would step in and repair the pipe. A contractor was hired yesterday and work will start as soon as they get a permit, he said.

"We are going to do what we can to help expedite that process," Bederman said.
The water outage is the latest in a series of problems that have plagued the building. Tenants said the electricity was shut off for a month last winter after illegal wiring was discovered.