Five individuals were seen climbing out of a manhole on the Upper East Side on Friday afternoon, leading police to open an investigation.
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the New York City Police Department responded to the scene.
The city’s sewer system stretches about 7,400 miles and is being upgraded at roughly 1% per year, a rate that would require about a century to complete. The Cloudburst Management plan directs stormwater through these sewers, and recent years have recorded several incidents of people entering the network.