Anthony “Scott” Morris, head of the city’s Department of Public Utilities, shared findings from a draft “after-action report” detailing January’s water crisis with a City Council committee on Monday.
Morris and a representative from HNTB — the engineering firm commissioned to conduct the investigation — answered questions from councilors about the review’s scope, past budget decisions and potential costs to help address ongoing issues.
During the meeting, councilor Kenya Gibson said the public is “hungry” for details on systemic issues within DPU and wondered whether the after-action review would give them the “full picture.”
Earlier in the day, she issued a press release calling for an explanation of “at least one discrepancy” between the draft after-action report and preliminary findings issued in February.
Gibson said she’s asked the administration of Mayor Danny Avula to give HNTB unredacted documents that have been requested through Freedom of Information Act requests. She also said the list of documents HNTB has reviewed “is somewhat vague.”
Robert Page, HNTB’s vice president and water services group director, told the committee the city has been transparent during the investigation.
“From our perspective, the city's been very, very open to working with us, they provided all the information that we asked for, and to my knowledge, nothing has been redacted,” Page told reporters during Monday’s press conference.
During the committee meeting, councilor Sarah Abubaker noted: “What we are seeing is 15 to 20 years of systemic decisions and budgetary trade-offs made that did lead up to Jan. 6.”
Releasing the draft after-action report
The city of Richmond released a draft of the after-action report early Monday.
City spokesperson Ross Catrow sent an email with a link to the document at about 7 a.m. It reiterated some already public details, including that the “plant was operating in ‘Winter Mode’” at the time of the outage.
The “root cause” of Richmond’s water plant issues was a mechanical failure that kept the facility from automatically transferring to a second power source, HNTB’s draft investigative report concluded. Initial investigative findings indicated there were no set safety protocols at the water plant during the January water outage.
Several operational issues and decisions made by city officials and employees exacerbated the plant failure, the report stated — including a lack of preparation and poor communication by DPU.
Despite Richmond Mayor Danny Avula previously calling the city’s communications with surrounding localities “appropriate,” the draft report released Monday said the city didn’t “adequately convey” the severity of the situation with Chesterfield and Henrico on the morning of Jan. 6.
Those two counties weren’t told about the plant failure until more than an hour after it happened, according to the report; Hanover wasn’t notified until more than eight hours after the outage.
All three counties should have been alerted “much sooner,” so they would have been able to properly respond, HNTB’s draft report found: “Earlier notification about a WTP outage would allow the utilities to reduce their demands on the DPU’s system and notify their large users to also reduce their demands. Doing so will limit widespread water supply issues ... .”
In a virtual press conference Monday, Avula twice declined to directly respond to questions about his perception of city communications and what was noted in the reports.
When asked for a third time, he said: “Every communication can always be better. What does that actually mean for our protocols and processes? I think that's what we've got to work out for [standard operating procedures] and in emergencies moving forward.”
One detail in the draft report not included in the preliminary findings: The plant’s superintendent told former DPU Director April Bingham and her deputy director there could be a water service interruption and to start considering a potential boil water advisory at 10 a.m. Jan. 6.
The city issued the boil water advisory at 4:26 p.m. that day.
Avula said Monday that he was told at 1 p.m. Jan. 6 about the city’s water potentially running out. He told reporters the city likely would have notified the public earlier, if he had the information sooner.
In the report, staff members at the water plant also noted a “lack of leadership and little direction.” That included no storm preparation discussions, despite the state and city declaring emergencies ahead of the January weather event.
Employees also said they didn’t have handheld radios while moving throughout the plant, which HNTB’s report called not only an “efficiency concern” but a “safety hazard.”
Last week, DPU chief Morris told a city council committee that his predecessor, Bingham, declined to be interviewed for the report — a point reiterated in the HNTB document issued Monday. Bingham disputed the assertion at the time in an email to VPM News.
She did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
A final comprehensive report on the incident is expected this spring.
