City releases preliminary after-action report on water plant outage

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 Dewberry Engineers 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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