Asheville action after the water crisis: Read the 37 recommendations - Citizen Times

Asheville action after the water crisis: Read the 37 recommendations

Asheville was given 37 recommendations to address the water crisis. What’s been done?
Sarah Honosky

ASHEVILLE - A slate of 37 recommendations addressing unprecedented water outages came to City Council in June. In it, its authors say, is the blueprint to prevent a disruption similar to the one that swept Asheville over the holidays — leaving thousands without water and calling into question city leadership, emergency response and the potential fallout of the area's next cold snap.

At an Aug. 22 work session, which preceded the evening's regular meeting, council reviewed the city's response to the report, which came courtesy of an independent review committee, appointed by council in January.

"Many of the items are already underway that were included in the IRC recommendations," said Assistant City Manager Ben Woody. Also underway are items in the city's internal after action report, which went public in April.

As part of its findings, the committee concluded the magnitude and duration of the event was "largely avoidable and preventable."

The report was wide-ranging, highlighting issues such as a mistakenly closed valve of some significance in the River Arts District, critiques of the mayor's response and other failures in citywide communication. In response to many of the findings regarding emergency response, Jeremy Knighton, division chief of Emergency Management with the Asheville Fire Department, said more training and exercise were the answer.

“Sitting in my seat, it was pretty confusing at the time,” Mayor Esther Manheimer said of the crisis response. She's often among the first calls from media outlets, the Governor's Office or others seeking answers. She said she initially learned about crisis from WLOS and went to City Hall to learn more from staff.

She spoke to the "tension" around how much an elected official should be involved in these incidents, and said it was important for future plans and training to address the separate and diverging roles of the county, state, nonprofits, faith-based organizations and others.

"We had a lot of people reach out," Manheimer said. "They have my phone number so they're calling me, and saying 'we want to help,' or 'we need to know,' or whatever the case may be."

Based on the recommendations of the committee, Woody said staff would develop and prioritize resource needs and capital projects through the annual budget process. He highlighted the update of the city's Emergency Operations Plan, which is already ongoing, a framework for the city and community to become more resilient in how it prepares for, responds and recovers from disaster.

The work being done is iterative, said City Manager Debra Campbell. But already, she felt the city was better positioned for emergencies to come.

“We are going to be much better prepared," Campbell said. "Will all things be defined? Probably not. But I do believe that the incident, the situational analysis, all of those tools that we have now, that we didn’t have six months ago, will help us.”

The 37 recommendations were broken into three categories: Water systems/operations (10), communications (11) and emergency response (16).

The committee's report can be found at https://bit.ly/47FTmWV.

A matrix of all IRC recommendations, the city response, status and department involved, which was made available at the Aug. 22 meeting, can be found at https://bit.ly/3sudDyA.

Water Systems/Operations. What are the recommendations?

In each category, city staff highlighted a handful of key recommendations. For operations those were:

- Begin regular large diameter valve assessment. Timeline: August 2023 contractor estimates, fall 2023 onboard new staff for dedicated valve crew.
- Expedite implementation of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure project. Timeline: The project, which began in May 2023 to replace approximately 63,000 water meters, is 5% complete and projected to be substantially complete by the end of 2025.
- Reevaluate the role of the Water Resources Department Engineering Division. Timeline: By fall 2023, the existing professional engineers more active in water production. In fiscal year 2025, there will be a budget request for another professional engineer position.
- Evaluate the East Asheville Booster Pump Station. Taken offline in 2010 and not available during the outage, the city supports the recommendation for a Preliminary Engineering Report of the pump station by a consulting engineer to assess the facility and potential benefits of returning it to service. Timeline: The city will select a firm and award a contract in the first quarter of 2024. The results will be provided in an update to council.

Council member Antanette Mosley pointed out that, among the highlighted recommendations, the Mills River Water Treatment Plant was not mentioned. Outages began with problems at the South Asheville plant, which started experiencing issues Dec. 24, largely caused by cold temperatures. A series of important, and often large, breaks across the system complicated matters further.

“What could be done, what is going to be done, to prevent the very thing that led to everything?” she asked, a question Manheimer reiterated.

According to the report, the main cause of the plant's failure was frozen chemical feed lines and other clogged lines. Once the plant was taken offline due to the issues, filter valve actuators were discovered to be frozen and air valves on those filters were also found to be non-functioning.

"All of these problems necessitated time-consuming corrections," said the report.

Campbell said as part of the city's internal report, much time was spent identifying concerns and issues at Mills River.

Bill Hart, water production division manager, reviewed work that has been done, such as cleaning the actuators and repacking them with grease and installing new seals. This work will be done again in November. Heat tape is also being utilized, and a Phase 2 plan upgrade will replace them entirely.

Chemical lines were also replaced, with redundancies in the form of flexible lines in the event of emergency. These will also be replaced again in November.

"We're making changes that hopefully will make us more resilient," Hart said. Another upcoming project will add "additional heat," replace tanks, switch gears and more.

Emergency response. What are the recommendations?

- Updating the Emergency Operations Plan/ As part of the fiscal year 2023 budget, the city prioritized and budgeted for the creation of a new citywide Emergency Operations Plan and Continuity of Operations Plan. The previous version of these plans were created in 2008.
- Integrated Preparedness Workshop/Plan. Every city department will participate in a workshop to create a citywide plan. The plan will document all of the city's preparedness priorities, activities and expectations related to training, which includes an elected officials guide and training.
- Development of a Complexity analysis. Staff developed a tool that is specific to Asheville and Western North Carolina. The assessment is intended to enhance the decision making process, evaluate the impact to the entire community, determine appropriate management structure and provide necessary and appropriate structure for response coordination.

Communications. What are recommendations?

- Hire a Public Information Officer for the Water Resources Department. The department is in the process of hiring a spokesperson, which will be integrated into the cross-departmental city communications team. Timeline: November 2023.
- Emergency Management Protocol for Communication. Timeline: The plan will be complete and in action by fall 2023.
- Training. This will be tracked through the city's Integrated Preparedness Plan. Timeline: All recommended trainings will be complete in fall 2023.
- Bolster media relations. The department will hold monthly meetings with area media organizations interested in attending. Timeline: The first event was held Aug. 2.

Politicians call for action: Rep. Chuck Edwards urges Asheville council to take action after water outage crisis

Learn more about council's 1st reaction: Asheville City Council, staff react to water outages report. What comes next?

Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com or message on Twitter at @slhonosky. Please support local, daily journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.