RICHMOND, Va. — During a question-and-answer session with reporters on Wednesday, Richmond Mayor Danny Avula addressed questions surrounding the state's notice of alleged violation pertaining to the recent water crisis and transparency concerns surrounding the production of records about the water treatment plant.
Six days ago, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH), which regulates public drinking water systems, put Mayor Avula on notice that the city may have violated state law and regulations by failing to prevent the water crisis that occurred earlier this month.
Based upon VDH's initial observations, the agency believes the city did not sufficiently staff the water treatment plant, lacked emergency preparedness and planning, and did not adequately respond to the Jan. 6 power outage at the plant which triggered a series of equipment failures and halted water production. Multiple backup and fail-safe systems that should've kept the plant operating did not work.
VDH asserted, "the water crisis should never have happened and was completely avoidable."
Those findings were presented to the city on Jan. 23. In an interview with CBS 6 on Jan. 15, Avula said he did not know whether the crisis was preventable.
Now that he's received the state's initial findings, we asked Avula whether his position had changed.
"I know when I interviewed you a couple weeks ago, you said you didn't know whether the crisis was preventable. The state is obviously very clear in that it was, and that the city did not effectively prepare for a potential outage. Are you ready to say yet whether you believe this was preventable, or do you still maybe disagree with the state?" reporter Tyler Layne asked.
"As we gather more information and respond to that notice of alleged violation, my guess is that there will be some things that are substantiated and some things that are not, because, again, they were provided by the observations of [VDH's] team who came in after the fact. So I feel like, from the beginning, I've been pretty straightforward about the fact that this was clearly initiated by a power outage and a machine failure-- that switch failure. But I imagine there are elements of our response that we really need to look at, and that probably contributed to us not being able to intervene in time," Avula responded.
He maintained the third-party investigation by HNTB will get to the bottom of it.
Meanwhile, as CBS 6 continues investigating the water crisis ourselves, we've submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records in an effort to get a better understanding of the operations at the water treatment plant, maintenance, who knew what and when, what problems were or were not addressed leading up to the water failure. Requested records include past inspections, assessments, internal DPU reports and records, communications among leaders, etc.
Megan Field, a policy advisor for the city's Interim Chief Administrative Officer Sabrina Joy-Fogg, said the city would have to charge CBS 6 over $4,400 for the effort it would take to provide the requested information. Field said the city would require a $1,440 deposit to fulfill a FOIA submitted by reporter Tyler Layne and a $2,975 deposit to fulfill a FOIA request submitted by reporter Melissa Hipolit.
When asked about these cost estimates Wednesday, Avula said he was not aware of them until now.
"I understand that we are asking for large amounts of records here, but you probably also have to give these materials to the investigators and city council members who are also requesting these records. You did campaign on transparency reform. Do you think it's fair or appropriate to charge thousands of dollars to get critical information like this?" Layne asked Avula.
“That’s the first I’m hearing that. I'm happy to look into it. I will say, just even in responding to FOIA responses myself, like having to go through my texts probably took about three hours of time, right? And you think about the iterative impact on multiple FOIA requests, and so I think there is an incurred cost and that needs to be supported. Now, does that need to be charged to everybody? Probably not. And I think in our conversations about how we make information available— doing a FOIA library-- we want to make steps in that direction, and I think we'll get there," Avula said.
Field noted that even if CBS 6 paid for the requested records, "much of the information about the water treatment plant's infrastructure and operations" would be exempt from mandatory disclosure under a FOIA exclusion that protects critical infrastructure information about public buildings.
CBS 6 asked Field what the city's hourly rate is for fulfilling FOIA requests and how many hours the city estimates needing to fulfill our requests. We are still waiting to hear back.
CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.
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