City officials say thousands of properties are in danger of having their water service shut off because of persistent delinquencies in water bill payments.

The 2,400 properties — predominantly commercial ones such as hotels —  that the city is targeting owe about $102 million, officials said.

Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala of the city's Department of Environmental Protection, who joined "Mornings On 1" Thursday, said this is the first time in more than a decade that the city has threatened to shut off water.

"The last time that DEP undertook water shutoffs was actually 2009. And we just restarted them a year ago under Mayor Adams," he said. "In the intervening period, the main way that DEP went after people who weren't paying their bills was to put lien sales on their property. But our authorization to do lien sales has expired, and the City Council has not renewed it for several years. So, it left us in a position last year of having to start these other approaches."

Aggarwala said there had been a reluctance in resorting to shutoffs, but the debt has risen too high.

"The city's mission is to serve the public and our mission at the DEP is to provide great drinking water to people. So we don't like to shut the water off. We want to provide water. This is absolutely a last resort," he said. "But over the pandemic, our total accounts receivable — the money that is owed to us that people are late on — has doubled between now and before the pandemic. It's now actually a total of $1.3 billion that we are owed on unpaid water bills."

At a news conference Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams says that unpaid bills will force other New Yorkers to pick up the tab.

"When you don't pay your bill, low-income New Yorkers have to pick up the tab. That is why we don't want to increase water rates in the city. We want to keep it affordable. A penny a gallon. You can pay a penny a gallon. Pay your bill, if not, we will shut off your water," Adams said.

Water services will be restored upon payment of the entire owed amount or initiation of a payment agreement within the next 15 days, he said.