Special edition: One year after the water crisis, have things improved?

With tomorrow marking one year since the water went out in Richmond, reporter Graham Moomaw looked into how the plant has changed since.

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

Richmond Mayor Danny Avula said that after what he went through at the plant a year ago, he felt “a little bit of PTSD” when he recently returned.

But what he saw on that site visit, the mayor said, was vastly different from what the facility looked like last Jan. 6.

The facility now has multiple switchgears in case one fails, The Richmonder saw on a recent tour of the plant. The diesel generators that offer a third backup source (but weren’t used in last year’s outage) are now set up to turn on automatically if both switchgears fail.

• The city now does regular testing of its systems, including cutting the power to the plant.

Regional impact: Early talk after the crisis was that Henrico and Hanover would build their own systems, or participate in a regional "water authority," but Avula said he doesn't see that happening now.

Read more, including thoughts from state regulators, here.

Richmond officials deny FOIA request for water bill projections

Officials are refusing to release a financial planning document that shows how much Richmonders’ monthly water bills could potentially increase in order to fund the $1.4 billion in water infrastructure upgrades the city hopes to complete over the next decade.

The document being kept confidential as mayoral working papers, the city told The Richmonder, is a single Excel file with “three worksheets of rate model outputs outlining various scenarios of funding for the city’s water infrastructure investments.” Read more here.

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