New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is investigating whether the real problem during this week's blizzard wasn't snow, but sabotage by the crews meant to be cleaning it up.

With the Big Apple still reeling from officially the sixth biggest snow storm in its history, City Council member Dan Halloran says sanitation workers told him their department deliberately worked slowly in revenge for budget cuts.

In his bombshell revelations, Halloran told CNN on Friday that three municipal workers told him after Monday's blizzard that supervisors instructed them to take it easy in the midst of the crisis.

"'Don't worry if you miss a couple of streets,'" they said they were told. "'The city doesn't care about us, so don't worry about them.'"

Two other workers, assigned to clear secondary streets, say they were sent to their start points and told to wait for instructions which never came. "They told them, 'We'll get back to you,'" Halloran said. "Six or eight hours later they didn't."

Halloran said deliberate sabotage could help explain why the city was paralyzed for two days, when the previous big storm had been cleaned up in 24 hours.

Bloomberg, who took an unusual amount of flack over the city's response, said Thursday he was looking into the rumors.

"I don't think it took place, but we're going to do an investigation to make sure that it didn't. It would be an outrage if it took place," he said.

Halloran said the culprits were likely individual supervisors with a grudge. "I think you had 100 workers or supervisors who were about to be demoted… (and) wanted to send a message to the mayor."

earlier related report

Thousands in N.Ireland to start new year without water
Belfast (AFP) Dec 31, 2010 –

Up to 4,500 homes in Northern Ireland were going into the new year without running water but the shortages which have affected much of the British province improved on Friday.

Some 40,000 homes and businesses were deprived of water supplies at the height of a crisis sparked more than a week ago when a rapid thaw set in after a period of some of the coldest weather on record.

Engineers working around the clock have managed to repair many pipes which cracked in the thaw and re-connected many homes, but the row over who was to blame raged on.

The province's First Minister Peter Robinson has described the local water company's response to the crisis as "shambolic", adding that "there has to be an accountability… and people must assess their positions."

Some politicians have blamed the cracked pipes on a chronic lack of investment in a province which only emerged a decade ago from 30 years of killings and bombings known as The Troubles.

Environment Minister Edwin Poots said three billion pounds (3.5 billion euros, 4.7 billion dollars) had been invested in recent years but said the problem was a "historic issue".

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