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An after-action report will be delivered today at 10:00am that might provide more details of last month’s water crisis with a deeper look at what happened, what failed, how the response to provide water to those in need was carried out, and how effective were communications and outreach with residents, who were blindsided when their taps came up empty and they were told to boil water.
That presentation won’t be taking place at City Hall, however. It will take place at a special meeting (moved to this morning because of the impending snow) of the Henrico Board of Supervisors, one month after County Manager John Vithoulkas and the five Supervisors pledged on January 13th to have the report finished and made public within 30 days.
Henrico hired two firms on January 11, the same day the Boil Water Advisories (BWA) were lifted in the city, Henrico, and Hanover. One firm, Whitman Requardt & Associates, will deliver a technical analysis of the county’s water utility, infrastructure and the response to the water crisis (which affected Henrico a little differently than it did the city, more on that below). The second firm, Aqua Law, will focus on the county’s community response and communication efforts to residents (on their Youtube page, unlike the city where you can’t find anything current.) Aqua will also offer recommendations on Henrico’s contractual agreements with localities (read, Richmond) and how the county can make the water systems in the East End more resilient. That part of the county relies more on a contractual arrangement with the city for water and had more issues during the crisis than the rest of the county.
The city announced on Wednesday, January 22 that they hired the Kansas firm HNTB (with an Arlington, VA office) to conduct the city’s after action report that would take effect Monday, January 27. That scope of work includes a preliminary report to be delivered after 30 days (roughly February 25) and a finished report delivered within 60 days, (roughly March 27) but no later than April 1. (FYI, the budget is due to be delivered to City Council in late March).
Part of the Henrico after action report will detail the levels of outreach mentioned at the January 13th meeting after the crisis caught everyone off guard: the county mobilized from a small snow event to a major water crisis and fielded almost 8,000 calls about what was happening, distributed 153,000 cases of water, and provided 120,000 gallons of potable water through 20 tankers, and made deliveries at 48 day
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