The Wednesday Wetness

The Richmonder, A year after water crisis, Richmond officials express confidence in revamped treatment plant

Over the course of a year, said Chief Administrative Officer Odie Donald II, Richmond has gone from a snow-induced water crisis that had the city “upside down on its ear” to a facility that withstood unusually early snow without even making the newspaper. “That’s a good thing,” Donald said as he recapped his first impressions of the city government Mayor Danny Avula hired him to run. “That’s learning from our mistakes and being prepared. While those things mostly go unnoticed, they haven’t by me.”

One year after a catastrophic power failure at Richmond’s water plant that left residents without drinkable tap water for nearly a week, city leaders are cautiously confident they’ve made many of the necessary changes to make a repeat crisis far less likely.

In an interview at City Hall, Avula said that after what he went through at the plant a year ago just a few days after becoming mayor, he felt “a little bit of PTSD” when he recently went back. But what he saw on that site visit, the mayor said, was vastly different from what the facility looked like last Jan. 6, when a power interruption led to major flooding that knocked out critical equipment needed to keep clean water flowing.

Running a city means you have to get some small things right, all the time. Water supply is one of them.