Former DPU director April Bingham sues city for $1M, claiming she was smeared after water crisis

Former Richmond Department of Public Utilities director April Binghram filed a $1 million lawsuit this week against Mayor Danny Avula and the city, alleging she was unfairly blamed for the water crisis that led to her firing in early 2025.

The lawsuit — which accuses the city of both defamation and wrongful termination — claims Bingham was turned into a scapegoat for systemic problems that weren’t her fault.

Bingham wants to be reinstated to her old job with back pay, according to the suit, in addition to seeking $1 million in damages for allegedly false statements made about her.

The lawsuit, which was first reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, was filed in Richmond Circuit Court on Monday. It names the city, Avula, former interim chief administrative officer Sabrina Joy-Hogg and current DPU Director Scott Morris as defendants.

“The mayor misrepresented to local media and the public at large that plaintiff was not competent to continue in her role, publicly blamed her for the failures at the water treatment plant, wrongfully diminished public confidence in plaintiff, thereby setting up justification to force plaintiff out of city employment,” the lawsuit says.

The city declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Bingham, who had led DPU since 2021, came under scrutiny from the press and the public in the aftermath of the catastrophic failure of a water system her department was supposed to keep in good working condition. There was a particular focus on her qualifications for the job as a non-engineer with a background in business administration and utility billing. The Richmond crisis inspired state legislation that would’ve required local governments to have stricter hiring criteria for public utility directors, but that bill failed in the Virginia Senate. 

During the crisis, Avula mostly praised Bingham’s performance in public. When the mayor announced he was making a leadership change at DPU, he initially characterized it as an “amicable separation” with Bingham. Though Avula seemed to be putting an overly positive spin on the situation to protect Bingham’s reputation, Bingham is now accusing the mayor of misrepresenting the truth that she was forced out of her job.

“The truth is Bingham did not make the decision to step down, but rather the city made the decision to force her to resign and later terminated her employment,” the lawsuit says.

Avula’s decision to change DPU leadership and bring in a new team led by Morris has been praised by both state and city officials as a key part of the ongoing efforts to strengthen the water system and prevent a future crisis.

Bingham alleges Avula defamed her by making false statements about the communication timeline during the crisis and falsely characterizing the circumstances of her departure. She claims Morris defamed her by inaccurately telling the City Council she had declined an offer to participate in the city’s after-action review of the crisis. The city itself has committed defamation, Bingham claims, by allowing a “false narrative to stand” that she didn’t care about correcting problems at the water plant.

The city offered Bingham a separation agreement under which she would have received severance pay in exchange for commitments that presumably would have prevented her from suing or publicly criticizing the city. Bingham initially took the deal, then backed out a short while later. After she rejected the offer, the city terminated her employment on Jan, 23, 2025.

The lawsuit portrays Bingham as one person operating within a broader, flawed system, stressing that the water plant had other serious trouble with fluoride levels after she was fired. Morris was not fired after those subsequent issues, the suit notes, and is still running DPU.

Just prior to the Jan. 6 storm that knocked out power at the water plant in 2025, Bingham’s “entire chain of command retired from the city,” the suit says. That included former CAO Lincoln Saunders, who left office when former Mayor Levar Stoney’s term was up. Former deputy chief administrative officer of operations Bob Steidel, whose portfolio included DPU, also retired during the transition of power from Stoney to Avula.

The suit says Avula “refused” to offer an acting DCAO of operations role to Director of Public Works Bobby Vincent, leaving the operations portfolio “under the direct supervision of a non-engineer, CAO Sabrina Joy-Hogg.”

Bingham also claims she was not told about the 2022 inspection of the water plant by regulators from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that flagged several problems at the facility that seemed to contribute to the 2025 crisis. The suit says Bingham first became aware of the 2022 inspection in late 2024 when drinking water regulators from the Virginia Department of Health nudged the city to ask what was being done to fix the issues identified two years prior.

“The city refuses to correct the record on this matter, continuing to fuel the public narrative that Bingham was not competent for her role as senior director,” the lawsuit says.

The suit also raises a new allegation against Avula, claiming he cut corners during the water safety testing process the city needed to follow in 2025 in order to have a boil water advisory lifted and tell residents city water was once again safe to drink.

Under the water testing protocols, the city could only begin the tests once a particular level of water pressure had been restored in the system. Bingham’s lawsuit claims Avula “verbally directed staff” to begin the tests before those pressure levels had been fully achieved in response to “mounting pressure from the public.”

“Bingham expressed her disagreement with the mayor’s decision to shorten the length of time needed to certify the second set of test results from the Virginia Department of Health, which was needed to lift the boil water advisory,” the suit says. 

Bingham, who says she has also filed a pending discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal  Employment Opportunity Commission in the summer of 2025, claims her firing was a wrongful act of retaliation because she had challenged the mayor’s water testing plans.

The suit implies that, under state law, that made Bingham a protected government whistleblower.

Contact Reporter Graham Moomaw at gmoomaw@richmonder.org