No algorithms. No content filters. No A.I. — Honest and insightful analysis from Richmond, VA.
The failure and inability to bring stability to the city’s water plant resulted in the second major crisis along with the second Boiled Water Advisory (BWA) in the last five months (and third incident overall when you count the fluoride flood incident). Four months ago, it was almost jovial to wonder if you should keep extra bottled water around following the January meltdown at the water plant, but now that the second BWA has been lifted, it no longer humorous to wonder, “How long until this happens again?”
It is a serious question that sadly has tagged the city with a reputation beyond our borders whether or not we can even do the basics correctly. And while the alert communication with our regional neighbors was swift this time (unlike the last two water incidents), the failure itself was another unforced and unnecessary error. City leaders have been talking about the list of things they have, will, or are implementing, but serious problems keep reoccurring, especially in Utilities and Finance. Trust takes time to rebuild, and it can’t be done if public promises to fix things keep coming up empty and keep resulting in major problems — especially with basic and life critical services like water.
The crisis began in the overnight hours on Tuesday morning when sediment filters (called plate settlers) became so clogged and led to a loss of pressure in the city water network and temporarily reduced finished water production. The city quickly notified our regional neighbors (and water customers) and put out a public release in the morning for residents that the pressure was down slightly in parts of the city but the water was safe to drink. A city statement early that morning noted, "Despite the reduction, the plant continued to produce enough water to maintain safe system pressure levels — above the threshold that would have required a boil water advisory." The city said the filters were clogged “Due to high turbidity in the system” with extra sediment from intake water from the river. Before lunch on Tuesday, however, the city issued a boiled water advisory (BWA) for most of the city north of the river and later extended it to include areas south of the river like Manchester, Blackwell, and the Richmond Highway corridor.
On Wednesday, Public Utilities (DPU) Director Scott Morris told the City Council Government Operations committee that he would conduct a “root cause analysis” over the next few weeks.
“If there's any particular maintenance items that we warrant, we would also implement basically a standard operating or preventative maintenance item to correct any deficiencies we note in the system," Morris said.
He also told the committee he is already developing a "plethora" of new standard operating procedures on top of the ones that the city has allegedly been developing since January. Of course, there is a difference between developing protocols and implementing them, and when you don’t do the latter, you end up with more boiled water advisories. When 3rd District Councilwoman Kenya Gibson asked Morris if water plant staff was performing regular maintenance, he said they were "doing that process on a routine basis" but in this particular instance, the "raw water source that had a high potential to cause reduced effectiveness in the filters."
Except that didn’t exactly turn out to be the case; filters are only effective when you clean them. Later on Wednesday afternoon, Tyler Layne broke a story about a requested but ignored work order dated May 12 that recommended cleaning the filters
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