An image of the Richmond water treatment plant included in the preliminary report.
The City of Richmond on Thursday released initial findings from an outside review of the water plant failure that caused a dayslong service outage across the region last month.
The preliminary report from HNTB Corp., a national firm the city hired to conduct the review, includes a timeline of events that led to the outage along with immediate and long-term recommendations. The report is based on staff interviews, a site visit and reviews of available records, data and publicly available information.
It follows similar reports released earlier this week by Henrico County and Hanover County, which are partly served by the Richmond plant and also experienced service disruptions. Supervisors for both counties are advocating for the creation of a regional water authority that would allow them more involvement in the plant’s management and maintenance.
The counties’ reports put the blame for their service outages on a lack of communication from city utilities officials, which prevented the county counterparts from knowing the severity of the failure. Hanover’s reports, conducted by engineering firm Dewberry and WaterPIO, state, “Delays in critical communication from Richmond impacted Hanover’s ability to respond as effectively as possible.”
According to HNTB’s preliminary report, one of the plant’s main power feeders lost power at 4:25 a.m. Jan. 6. A second feeder continued operating, but an equipment failure prevented power from transferring between the feeders. The plant completely lost power at 5:45 a.m., preventing operators from being able to close filter effluent valves or turn on related pumps.
As water continued to flow through the filters, the water level increased in both of the plant’s storage tanks and reached the basement, submerging electrical and other equipment. Diesel-fueled pumps were used to pump out the water but could not offset the amount of water coming in. As a result, the outage ended up lasting nearly 36 hours.
Boil water advisories remained in place for days before service was restored Jan. 11.
Richmond’s water treatment plant beside the James River. (Image courtesy City of Richmond)
HNTB’s recommendations include additional failure planning and response training for plant staff, additional staff and development of new standard operating procedures, and various equipment replacements and upgrades.
Longer term, the firm advises adding a float operator to each shift so that as many as four operators and at least three are on duty per shift, raising as many critical electrical systems above basement level as practical, and providing an automatic transfer system for the existing backup generator system.
The recommendations do not include cost estimates, which could come with HNTB’s final report. The city said the full report is “forthcoming.” Henrico supervisors at their meeting said the full report might be a month or more out.
The city’s news release included comments from Mayor Danny Avula and interim utilities director Scott Morris, who will be holding a news conference about the findings at City Hall Friday morning. Morris is leading the department following the resignation last month of director April Bingham.
“Since water service was restored, the City has made a series of changes to plant operations and equipment,” Avula said in the news release. “That includes millions of dollars in investments towards the recovery work, much of which has been spent on equipment upgrades and repairs – including new backup power systems.
“We have also made meaningful changes to plant procedures, consistent with several HNTB recommendations, as part of continuing efforts to make water treatment plant operations more resilient,” Avula said.
Morris added: “Many of the water plant process improvement recommendations in the HNTB report align with steps that have already been taken to more effectively deploy staff, prepare them for emergency response situations, strengthen system redundancy, and enhance preparedness protocols through training and practice exercises.”
The full preliminary report can be viewed here.
An image of the Richmond water treatment plant included in the preliminary report.
The City of Richmond on Thursday released initial findings from an outside review of the water plant failure that caused a dayslong service outage across the region last month.
The preliminary report from HNTB Corp., a national firm the city hired to conduct the review, includes a timeline of events that led to the outage along with immediate and long-term recommendations. The report is based on staff interviews, a site visit and reviews of available records, data and publicly available information.
It follows similar reports released earlier this week by Henrico County and Hanover County, which are partly served by the Richmond plant and also experienced service disruptions. Supervisors for both counties are advocating for the creation of a regional water authority that would allow them more involvement in the plant’s management and maintenance.
The counties’ reports put the blame for their service outages on a lack of communication from city utilities officials, which prevented the county counterparts from knowing the severity of the failure. Hanover’s reports, conducted by engineering firm Dewberry and WaterPIO, state, “Delays in critical communication from Richmond impacted Hanover’s ability to respond as effectively as possible.”
According to HNTB’s preliminary report, one of the plant’s main power feeders lost power at 4:25 a.m. Jan. 6. A second feeder continued operating, but an equipment failure prevented power from transferring between the feeders. The plant completely lost power at 5:45 a.m., preventing operators from being able to close filter effluent valves or turn on related pumps.
As water continued to flow through the filters, the water level increased in both of the plant’s storage tanks and reached the basement, submerging electrical and other equipment. Diesel-fueled pumps were used to pump out the water but could not offset the amount of water coming in. As a result, the outage ended up lasting nearly 36 hours.
Boil water advisories remained in place for days before service was restored Jan. 11.
Richmond’s water treatment plant beside the James River. (Image courtesy City of Richmond)
HNTB’s recommendations include additional failure planning and response training for plant staff, additional staff and development of new standard operating procedures, and various equipment replacements and upgrades.
Longer term, the firm advises adding a float operator to each shift so that as many as four operators and at least three are on duty per shift, raising as many critical electrical systems above basement level as practical, and providing an automatic transfer system for the existing backup generator system.
The recommendations do not include cost estimates, which could come with HNTB’s final report. The city said the full report is “forthcoming.” Henrico supervisors at their meeting said the full report might be a month or more out.
The city’s news release included comments from Mayor Danny Avula and interim utilities director Scott Morris, who will be holding a news conference about the findings at City Hall Friday morning. Morris is leading the department following the resignation last month of director April Bingham.
“Since water service was restored, the City has made a series of changes to plant operations and equipment,” Avula said in the news release. “That includes millions of dollars in investments towards the recovery work, much of which has been spent on equipment upgrades and repairs – including new backup power systems.
“We have also made meaningful changes to plant procedures, consistent with several HNTB recommendations, as part of continuing efforts to make water treatment plant operations more resilient,” Avula said.
Morris added: “Many of the water plant process improvement recommendations in the HNTB report align with steps that have already been taken to more effectively deploy staff, prepare them for emergency response situations, strengthen system redundancy, and enhance preparedness protocols through training and practice exercises.”
The full preliminary report can be viewed here.
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There was a lack of communication because the then customer service agent turned DPU head April Bingham was texting, yes, texting, Henrico’s DPU Director rather than calling….AND, this is the best part, she was texting his LAND LINE. I mean, really? Parts of the counties depend on the city for water and the chain of command is texting?? Here is a quote from the Instragram about this issue from a person that worked with April…..As a phone bank manager, she was a disaster and knew she was totally unqualified for the job. The salary and expense account and authority was… Read more »
How did she get the job? I’d like to know if Danny thinks a broader audit of city management positions and responsibilities is called for.
That has been done time and time again, the issue is no action is ever taken. No mayor seems brave enough to make the tough decision to put some people out on the street. The nepotism throughout the years is shameful.
Many managerial positions in the city administration have been filled for DECADES by unqualified individuals. Nepotism and hiring quotas coupled with mayors who didn’t know what they were doing destroyed effective management of the city. The last time the city was well managed was when Robert Bobb was City Manager.
Spot on! There is a systemic problem with city management and key department leadership.
Yes, agreed,also if you try to text a landline a message will appear telling you that the number doesn’t support text messages.
Hopefully the Mayor understands this one is not on him, but the next one will be.
Check your water bills carefully. My new bill says my waste water charge was 5 times water used which makes zero sense.
And let’s not forget that as a result of the water lines not being flushed in a timely manner, excessive amounts of dirt and sediment was stirred up and traveled to every valve in every home and building causing additional expense. Toilet fill valves becoming clogged and hanging open, boiler sight glasses and pressure release valves being occluded and clogged, aerators clogging with sediment and more. I would hope the City should consider their culpability in unusually high water bills as a result of their short-comings. We shall see…
That’s really unavoidable in the case of a system failure like this. The system failure was certainly avoidable. But when you turn the water off and on, you get sediment stirred up
Can we get DOGE into the city govt? That would fix ALOT of issues. And truly, what is being done on the federal level right now SHOULD be a model for the state and local levels.
Excellent comment, Kevin. It seems that AI has been a significant part of the DOGE audit methodology. Perhaps we will see this at the state and local level as well.
Given I have not seen any official report out on any DOGE audit or methodology, this would seem to be wild speculation. I would hope the state sticks to the AI regulations put into code by the current governor in how AI can be used.
The DOGE info is ALL public. They’re averaging a BILLION a DAY in savings, fraud, waste etc and they havent even gotten to the Treasury yet.
No, it’s not, and no, they haven’t.
How was this even designed to allow electrical equipment to flood in case of an overflow?
Well, North Anna was built on a known seismic fault line. Maybe the same engineering design group dd both projects.