RICHMOND, Va. — An engineering firm hired by the state to assess the Richmond water crisis found DPU has operated for decades with significant vulnerabilities that increased the risk of a water crisis happening, and yet consultants and regulators, like VDH itself, never "raised red flags" about those issues.
Short Elliott Hendrickson (SEH) wrote in its assessment of the crisis that "gave DPU staff the false impression that problematic issues were not urgent to address.”
In her letter to Governor Glenn Youngkin and Mayor Danny Avula about the SEH assessment and the Virginia Department of Health’s Office of Drinking Water’s assessment, State Health Commissioner Dr. Karen Shelton said DPU allowed situations to exist that increased the risk of a water crisis.
She wrote that DPU has known for decades that flooding was a risk at the plant, yet the department did not take actions to properly maintain critical back up systems, like batteries, to prevent flooding.
Dwayne Roadcap, who heads up the Office of Drinking Water at the Virginia Department of Health, said his office does a deep dive inspection at the Water Treatment Plant every three years, but his inspectors did not know about previous flooding issues at the plant because DPU did not tell them about it.
“Our inspectors did not identify it, so unless we were there when the flooding was actually happening, or if perhaps our inspectors would have noticed the temporary pumps that were set up and asked a question about it, I can’t go back in time and say we should have caught something we didn’t know existed,” Roadcap said.
“You’re saying you would have had to see flooding to identify some of these problems, however, what about the winter mode operation they had going there, what about the lack of upkeep on their parts, what about the manual operation of the generator, or the fact that the electrical equipment was located in this basement area? Are those things that you feel like your folks should have identified when they went out and did these surveys and identified right away?” CBS6 investigative reporter Melissa Hipolit asked Roadcap.
“In hindsight, we are learning from this as well, and one of the things we are revisiting is how we do our inspections and the questions we ask,” Roadcap replied, “I think there was the possibility we were relying too much on the information being given, and we just need to do a better job of digging deeper when we get information from people."
In the event of a power outage at the Richmond Water Treatment Plant, batteries, called Uninterruptable Power Supples (UPS), were supposed to cut on and power the plant until full power restoration.
But, according to the assessment from SEH, on January 6th the batteries were beyond useful life and they failed immediately.
The authors of the report said DPU’s lack of testing and verification of that UPS system was the cause of the water crisis.
Roadcap addressed the findings of the analysis at a press conference on Thursday.
“Our best understanding based on our interviews is that the Department of Public Utilities, both the staff and management, just accepted that flooding as a normal condition from the older water treatment plant, and they didn’t have to accept it,” Roadcap said.
Operators reported to SEH that they knew the UPSs did not work yet DPU did not address it.
“What we learned and found was this complacent culture existed where people were reactive and not until the battery systems would cause a problem, would they react to it,” Roadcap said.
They also operated in winter mode as a cost saving measure, which meant the plant only used the overhead main power feed during the winter months, which created a single point of failure in the event of a power outage without adequate redundancy.
And, they overly relied on manual operation, instead of automatic operation.
For example, the back-up generators were useless in response to the power failure because they required a manual start.
“There needs to be more automation of that water treatment plant,” Roadcap said.
The flooding risk existed because of the way the Water Treatment Plant was designed as well as changes made since the 1980s.
Limitations and vulnerabilities at the plant existed for decades, according to SEH.
They found that the location of electrical equipment and pump motors in basement equipment rooms that were vulnerable to flooding may have been reasonable when the plant was originally constructed, but in 2025 their location is a persistent vulnerability.
SEH also found failures were largely a result of a managerial environment where plant staff works with known issues that increase risk of plant failures.
The environment fosters a general acceptance and normalization of critical unacceptable issues so the appropriate level of concern is not conveyed to leadership.
Staff accept substandard conditions as “normal” and normalized operations that needed to change.
VDH will place DPU on a Corrective Action Plan and monitor its adherance to that plan.
The city has already changed several key management and leadership positions and hired three employees from the state’s Department of Environmental Quality.
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