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Two stories in recent days reveal more about the water crisis that was a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off — and when it finally did, there was far too little urgency or concern from City Hall to address or resolve it.
Graham Moomaw reported at The Richmonder on Friday the astonishing story about text messages he uncovered showing an unexplainable lack of urgency about the failure of the city’s water treatment plant from the then-Director of Public Utilities April Bingham (who since resigned) to her boss (the city’s Chief Administrative Officer) and the mayor. Bingham should have been on top of it from the get-go, but she apparently not only failed to understand the gravity of the situation that day and respond appropriately, but it is also now clear that the department under her direction had ignored the warning signs that could have helped prevent the crisis last month (see second story).
Moomaw’s story is worth the read in its entirety, even though the city redacted many of the emails he received and declined outright to release 22 emails that were considered exempt from release because they are mayoral working papers of city attorney-client privilege (who is the “client” in this scenario?). Even so, the emails he did receive paint a picture of those in charge pretending they could handle or manage the situation without bothering the new Mayor or our county neighbors who rely on some of the water from the plant. We know the plant lost power just before 6:00am and the flooding and software failure occurred around 8:00am, but the Mayor did not even have a full briefing on the crisis until about 1:00pm.
The records the city provided show Avula and his communications team seemed unaware of the gravity of the situation until later in the day, carrying on with regular business as DPU officials were assessing the developing emergency at the water plant. Bingham raised the possibility of a “boil water alert” in a text message sent at 11:51 a.m., but said she was hoping it could be avoided if the city could restore water production and refill the Byrd Park reservoir. The boil water advisory didn’t go out until around 4:30 p.m.
What is also perplexing is that the city’s interim Chief Administrative Officer, Sabrina Joy-Hogg, who is supposed to be in charge of the day-to-day operations of the city, has not had much of a public facing role throughout the entire crisis and did not seem to have a major role the day the crisis began. According to Moomaw’s reporting, the interim CAO’s senior policy advisor Megan Field texted a suggestion to Director Bingham at 4:32 pm on Monday, January 6th — more than ten hours after the crisis began. Field wrote:
“Just in case you haven’t heard already, there are lots of rumors spreading about water issues, including that people need to boil water. It’s probably time to put on official information if you all aren’t already thinking about it.”
The water crisis should have necessitated the CAO’s office full attention all day long and had her in constant consultation with the Mayor on managing what had already gone wrong and how to fix it. Instead, the CAO sent a suggestion to the DPU Director that she might want to consider putting out an alert. By the time the plant failed early
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