New York City Wrote the Asbestos Rules. Then Its Own Crews Broke Them Tearing Down a Marvel Landmark.

New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection writes and enforces the rules for how asbestos must be handled when a building comes down. On June 12, 2026, a DEP inspector walked onto a city demolition site on Roosevelt Island and wrote up the people doing the work for breaking those very rules.

The site was the Roosevelt Island steam plant — an 87-year-old industrial relic under the Queensboro Bridge that movie and TV crews turned into a backdrop for Marvel’s The Punisher and Luke Cage. The demolition is being run by city agencies. According to the inspector’s own records, reported by the New York Post and amNewYork, the work “constituting an asbestos project” was being performed in violation of the New York City Air Pollution Control Code and the New York City Asbestos Rules — the DEP’s own regulations.

This page lays out what the records show, which rules were at issue, why residents say the “emergency” label let the city skip an environmental review it would demand of any private developer, and which administrations — Eric Adams’ and now Zohran Mamdani’s — were in charge along the way. A documented rule violation is not a proven crime; it is a citation. But when the government that writes the safety code is the one cited for breaking it, that is the story.

• June 12, 2026 — the date a DEP inspector found work 'constituting an asbestos project' underway at the steam plant in violation of city rules, triggering a stop-work order · Source: amNewYork; NY Post
• Up to $10,000/day — the penalty exposure for the cited asbestos-rule violation, per the reported stop-work order · Source: amNewYork
• July 8, 2024 — the date NYC's Department of Buildings issued the 'emergency' order on the deteriorating smokestacks — under Mayor Eric Adams (D) · Source: Roosevelt Islander; RIOC
• ~$8 million — the cost of the emergency demolition, contracted by NYC Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) to a private firm · Source: Hoodline; HPD
• 1939 → 2014 — the steam plant was built in 1939 and decommissioned around 2013–2014; its towers top 200 feet · Source: amNewYork; RIOC
• Records withheld — an HPD official said the agency need not release its environmental report until after the building is demolished — fueling the transparency fight · Source: AOL/NY Post; Gothamist

On June 12, 2026, a DEP inspector visited 5 East Main Street — the steam plant site beside the Roosevelt Island tram station — and issued a stop-work order. The inspector wrote that work “constituting an asbestos project is being performed at the premises” in violation of the New York City Air Pollution Control Code or the New York City Asbestos Rules, according to amNewYork, which reviewed the order. Reported penalty exposure for the violation runs as high as $10,000 per day.

It was the second time work at the site had been halted. In February 2026, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation had temporarily stopped excavation of roughly a dozen underground oil tanks over oil-spill contamination concerns, after on-site soil tested with what residents described as heavy traces of petroleum. The June stoppage was different: a city agency citing a city demolition for mishandling asbestos — the precise hazard the city’s asbestos rules exist to control.

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The Roosevelt Island steam plant opened in 1939 and once piped steam heat to the island’s hospitals before it was decommissioned around 2013 and 2014. Its two soot-streaked smokestacks, each over 200 feet, became one of the East River’s most recognizable industrial silhouettes — and a favorite of location scouts. The cavernous interior stood in for the underground fight club where Luke Cage is forced to brawl in Marvel’s Luke Cage, and for the hideout of the hacker “Micro” in The Punisher.

By 2026 the building was a ruin. Residents and preservationists with the Architectural Community Alliance of Roosevelt Island (ArchRI) had pushed to study adaptive reuse — a museum, a community space — and Manhattan’s Community Board 8 passed a unanimous resolution urging the city to pause and explore alternatives. The city instead pressed ahead with a wholesale teardown, contracted through HPD at a reported cost of nearly $8 million. ArchRI co-founder Kalin Kresnitchki and other residents argued the plant’s 1930s construction made it “statistically very likely” to contain asbestos, lead paint, mercury, and No. 6 fuel oil — toxins that demolition can throw into the air.

“It is statistically very likely that lead paint, asbestos, mercury and heavy fuel oil were used in its construction and would be released with demolition.”

Architectural Community Alliance of Roosevelt Island, paraphrasing residents' position, per the New York Post

Asbestos demolition in New York City sits inside a stack of overlapping rules. At the federal level, the EPA’s Asbestos NESHAP (the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, 40 CFR Part 61 Subpart M) requires that a building be inspected for asbestos before demolition and that any asbestos be removed and handled under strict containment. At the city level, the NYC Asbestos Rules— Title 15, Chapter 1 of the Rules of the City of New York, administered by the DEP — govern how a project is filed, inspected, and abated, alongside the city’s Air Pollution Control Code. New York State adds its own licensing regime through the Department of Labor.

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The point of all that paperwork is that the public can see, in advance, that a hazardous demolition is being done safely. That is exactly what residents say did not happen here. They contend the demolition began without the city publicly disclosing testing results or remediation plans for asbestos, lead, and other materials. According to the New York Post, an HPD official told a town hall that the agency does not have to release its environmental report until afterthe building has already been demolished — an answer that, to residents, defeats the entire purpose of disclosure.

The thread residents keep pulling is the word “emergency.” On July 8, 2024, the city’s Department of Buildings issued an emergency order citing cracked and deteriorating masonry on the plant’s 210-foot smokestacks, calling the structure at risk of collapse. That designation matters: an emergency demolition can bypass the public environmental review that an ordinary project — especially a private one — would have to clear.

Critics note a further wrinkle: the building did not decay overnight. Residents and the Roosevelt Islander community paper reported that routine maintenance of the plant lapsed years earlier, after which no documented stabilization was done — so the “emergency” the city later invoked was, in their telling, partly a problem of the city’s own neglect. Some residents also question whether the real driver is safety or the redevelopment value of waterfront land. The land sits under the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC), a New York State public-benefit corporation, even as city agencies — DOB, HPD, and DEP — run the demolition and its enforcement.

Accountability here spans two Democratic mayoralties. The neglect residents describe and the July 2024 emergency order both fall under Mayor Eric Adams (D), whose administration ran City Hall through the end of 2025. The active demolition, the February 2026 oil-tank excavation halt, and the June 2026 asbestos stop-work order all land in the term of Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), who took office in January 2026. Both administrations are Democratic; the agencies involved — DOB, HPD, and DEP — report to the mayor.

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Strip out the Marvel trivia and the dispute is simple: the agency that writes New York City’s asbestos rules issued a stop-work order against a city-run demolition for breaking those rules, and the city has so far declined to show residents the environmental records that would prove the job was done safely. The records show a violation; they do not prove a crime, and the city insists licensed contractors and independent monitors are on the job. But the double standard is the point — a private developer who skipped review and got cited for an asbestos violation would face the full weight of the same DEP. We will track the lifted or sustained stop-work order, any fines, and whether HPD finally releases the environmental report it says it can withhold until the building is already rubble.

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Last updated June 29, 2026