Richmond knew by 10am that the water might run out, report reveals

Driving the news: The new finding is outlined in a 30-page draft report released Monday from HNTB, the third-party firm Richmond hired to investigate the crisis.

• The report slams the communication delays that the Virginia Department of Health, surrounding counties and residents have been condemning Richmond for in the months since hundreds of thousands of residents were left without running water for days.

What they're saying: Mayor Avula maintained in a Monday press conference that he wasn't fully briefed until 1pm that the water would likely run out around 6pm.

• "If we had gotten some flow of information, we probably could've made a public announcement a little bit earlier," Avula said.
• But the mayor defended the city's communications to the counties, as he did to reporters last month, and said Henrico was told the plant was down around 9am via email.
• "What I'm looking at shows a good faith attempt to say, 'Hey, we're down. We're working on it. We're trying to figure out what's going on," Avula told reporters. "I don't know how else to comment outside of that."

Between the lines: Henrico's report said the county didn't know the severity of the issues at the plant until around 2:30pm — neither did Chesterfield.

Zoom in: Here's a breakdown of the latest major findings.

Communication

Per the new report, Richmond did not contact Chesterfield, Henrico and Hanover fast enough regarding the issue, and if they had, it could have limited how widespread the water supply issues were.

VDH had to reach out to the city to find out what was happening. That wasn't until 3pm.

• VDH also couldn't get inside the plant until nearly 7pm, conflicting with the preliminary report which said VDH was on site at 12:30pm.

Water treatment plant (WTP) staff also said there were no conversations beforehand regarding storm preparation.

Regular flooding issue

WTP staff said basement flooding was a common occurrence but not enough to damage equipment.

• There was an unspecified past flooding event which led to at least six hours where plant production was paused.

Equipment

There's a 20-year delay of some projects to upgrade the WTP, indicating "substantial amounts of deferred replacement that leads to running equipment to failure," investigators say.

A suction hose that helps drain flooded areas also wasn't connected and actually froze, the report says.

• So it took even longer to begin dewatering the basement.

Staffing

Officials said in January that the plant was fully staffed with three people, but the new report says one went home early.

• Operations staff told investigators "they did not know what to do or how to help during the event."

What's next: There's still a final report on the way, and city officials said in a press release they're already adopting the report's recommendations regarding improving backup power systems, communications and staff training.

What we're watching: 3rd District Councilmember Kenya Gibson said in a statement that she's asked the city to release to HNTB all materials related to the water crisis previously sought through public records requests.

• An HNTB representative said Monday the city has "provided all the information that we've asked for."

Go deeper:

• VDH: Richmond's water crisis was "completely avoidable."
• Report: Poor communication from Richmond made the water crisis worse for Henrico

Editor's note: This story has been updated to add a comment from HNTB about information requested from the city.