by James A. Bacon
Evidence continues to emerge of warning signs that the City of Richmond’s water-treatment and distribution system suffered from a failure to properly maintain, repair and upgrade its physical plant. WTVR-CBS reported yesterday that a 2022 Environmental Protection Agency alerted the city to corroded pipes and bacterial contamination. Today the Richmond Times-Dispatch cites a planning department document in which a utility-department engineering manager requested replacements for three outdated water pumps at the Byrd Park Pumping Station for which repair parts were no longer available.
The Water-Gate fiasco presents Richmond’s new mayor Danny Avula with a challenge and opportunity. His immediate priority is to restore supplies of drinkable water to the city and neighboring counties, a task he has undertaken with energy and earnestness.
The obvious follow-up is to determine exactly what went wrong and ensure that it never happens again. But the work doesn’t stop there. Any inquiry into the causes of Water-Gate must examine the managerial and budgetary contributors to the breakdown.
Why were the warning signs ignored? Was it managerial incompetence in the department of public works? Was it managerial incompetence in the upper echelons of the city administration? Were maintenance projects delayed due to chronic underfunding? Was City Hall distracted by the bright shiny object of “equity”?
These questions are not easily answered. I join Paul Goldman, aide to former Governor L. Douglas Wilder and periodic candidate for city office, in calling for an independent investigation. The need for such an inquiry should be uncontroversial. What’s crucial is how the scope of the project is defined. Will the broader questions be addressed or will they be ruled out from the get-go?
A broad scope is needed. What worries me is that maintenance failures in the city water works are symptomatic of a larger corrosion — essentially a failure stemming from the budget priorities that short-changed infrastructure across the board.
Are Richmond’s wastewater treatment facilities suffering from similarly neglected maintenance?
How about the city gas utility?
Are bridges in a condition of good repair?
Are mechanical systems in city schools and buildings fully operative?
Avula has the advantage of starting with a clean slate. He has no record to protect. He demonstrated his competence as an administrator in his public-health role during the Northam administration as COVID vaccine czar. From my brief encounters with him, he seems like a straight shooter.
Yesterday I opined that Henrico citizens should oppose any scheme to “regionalize” the water system, which would shift god-only-knows how many millions of dollars of unfunded maintenance liabilities to a regional authority, the funding burden of which Henrico water customers would share. However, I’m acutely aware that Henrico won’t prosper unless the City of Richmond does, too. As a citizen of the county, I am rooting for Avula. And I am hopeful that he will take the broad view of what needs to be done.
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