Richmond Mayor Danny Avula addresses VDH report on water crisis and DPU customer issues
RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Richmond Mayor Danny Avula addressed a number of community concerns about the water crisis, including the timeline of communication between himself and the Department of Public Utilities (DPU) in an interview with 8News on Wednesday. According to Avula, he was notified about the emergency at the Richmond Water Treatment plant around 11 a.m. on Jan. 6. He said that shortly after that there was communication between the city and neighboring counties before they gathered for a 1 p.m. meeting to get fully briefed on what happened. This led to the decision to announce the boil water advisory. The mayor also addressed the Virginia Department of Health’s “Notice of Alleged Violation,” most notably that the city did not have proper emergency protocols in place. “I'm as motivated as anybody to really understand what could we have done to prevent this," Avula said. "What do we need to do to train up staff moving forward? And then what actual investments do we need to make.” In addition, he said his team is looking to make sufficient changes. “We are working with our state legislators to try to provide some funding to help us replace parts that were damaged,” Avula said. “What we have seen over the last three weeks now is that we've had good water production. We are reliant, we continue to be reliant on some backup and auxiliary pumps. It’s not a long-term solution but we still got some work to do.” Avula also addressed DPU customer concerns regarding estimated water billing at the end of January. He said there are a few approaches he’ll take to handle the issue. “[We need to] put more boots on the ground to actually do the water meter readings so that we're not as reliant on estimated billing,” Avula said. “We've done a lot of work over the last year and a half, to replace those water meters,” he added. “We should see the number of people who are actually receiving estimated bills continue to decrease because we have more ability to remotely only get the actual usage numbers.” DPU has had previous issues with billing customers improperly when they were audited for estimating a total of 131,106 bills for 28,044 service lines in the 2022 fiscal year. Avula said one of his commitments will be establishing a council that’s going to look at all major water, gas, bridge and roadway infrastructure. He also said he’ll be assessing all audits that have been conducted in recent years.
VENN
RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Richmond Mayor Danny Avula addressed a number of community concerns about the water crisis, including the timeline of communication between himself and the Department of Public Utilities (DPU) in an interview with 8News on Wednesday.
According to Avula, he was notified about the emergency at the Richmond Water Treatment plant around 11 a.m. on Jan. 6. He said that shortly after that there was communication between the city and neighboring counties before they gathered for a 1 p.m. meeting to get fully briefed on what happened. This led to the decision to announce the boil water advisory.
The mayor also addressed the Virginia Department of Health’s “Notice of Alleged Violation,” most notably that the city did not have proper emergency protocols in place.
“I'm as motivated as anybody to really understand what could we have done to prevent this," Avula said. "What do we need to do to train up staff moving forward? And then what actual investments do we need to make.”
In addition, he said his team is looking to make sufficient changes.
“We are working with our state legislators to try to provide some funding to help us replace parts that were damaged,” Avula said. “What we have seen over the last three weeks now is that we've had good water production. We are reliant, we continue to be reliant on some backup and auxiliary pumps. It’s not a long-term solution but we still got some work to do.”
Avula also addressed DPU customer concerns regarding estimated water billing at the end of January. He said there are a few approaches he’ll take to handle the issue.
“[We need to] put more boots on the ground to actually do the water meter readings so that we're not as reliant on estimated billing,” Avula said.
“We've done a lot of work over the last year and a half, to replace those water meters,” he added. “We should see the number of people who are actually receiving estimated bills continue to decrease because we have more ability to remotely only get the actual usage numbers.”
DPU has had previous issues with billing customers improperly when they were audited for estimating a total of 131,106 bills for 28,044 service lines in the 2022 fiscal year.
Avula said one of his commitments will be establishing a council that’s going to look at all major water, gas, bridge and roadway infrastructure. He also said he’ll be assessing all audits that have been conducted in recent years.
