Is the Water Crisis Over?

Rich Meagher:

Welcome to RVAs. Got Issues, the show that brings you the people and ideas that are reshaping Greater Richmond. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. In early January, equipment failures at the city of Richmond’s water plant led to empty pipes, boil advisories, and a city that suddenly couldn’t count on its most basic need. We’ve suffered further blows to our water supply since like a spike in fluoride in April, another boil advisory in May. When can we trust our water supply? And our city government today we’re joined by Scott Morris. He became director of the City’s Department of Public Utilities right after the crisis in January, and he’s the guy now responsible for the city’s water supply. Scott, welcome.

Scott Morris:

Cool. Thanks.

Rich Meagher:

So Scott, let’s start here. Why is our water system failing?

Scott Morris:

It is an old water system built in the 1920s, 1950s. Um, and, you know, its infrastructure was designed based off the, the best engineering practices at the time. Those standards have changed over the time. Um, equipment needs to be repaired and resurfaced every few years, um, to make sure that stays operational and functional. And we’re at a point where, um, we need to catch up on some of those maintenance items that may have been pushed back, um, either due to budgetary constraints or planning or, um, difficulty in the procurement actions.

Rich Meagher:

And so I think people aren’t really quite up to the scope of this water system. Like, what are we talking about? Right? I think people know there’s this plant and there were problems at the plant, but when we talk about Richmond’s water system, what are we actually talking about?

Scott Morris:

Yeah. So it’s just not like turning on your tap and it magically appears

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Morris:

into your home. Um, there’s about a thousand miles of, of transmission mains that are in the, the city that transports that water to your home, um, from the water treatment plant. And there’s about 12 facilities that are the pump stations, uh, storage tanks that are in the system that adds that pressure to send the water to your home. And you also have, uh, the most probably prevalent asset is the Bird Park Reservoir. Everybody knows what that is. They can probably see it. That’s the biggest storage tank we have. It’s about 55 million gallons.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm 

Scott Morris:

Um, and we’re actually doing a, uh, construction project for that right now where we took half of it outta service. Um, so half that capacity is gone while we rehabilitate that storage.

Rich Meagher:

And so how many customers are we talking about here? How many people use this water?

Scott Morris:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a lot of customers.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Morris:

Um, you know, a water accounts, you’re probably floating right around, uh, like 70,000 accounts. And then it all depends on how many customers are pulling from that account.

Rich Meagher:

So as far as the facilities you’ve talked about, you know, you’ve talked about we need to invest and, and maintain. You’ve laid out this 10 year plan at a recent city council meeting. You say that’s kind of the timeframe that you’re working with. You warned that it’s an uphill battle. So you mentioned that you’re working on the reservoir right now. What else is being fixed like right now that needs to be done?

Scott Morris:

Yeah, so there’s a lot of things that are, uh, underway already. Um, we’ve gone through and done several condition assessments. Some of those are in like h and TV report or um, VDHs report where the, you see like, um, just a general review of the system,

Rich Meagher:

Right? These are the reports that came out of the water crisis,

Scott Morris:

Right? There’s the reports that came outta the water crisis. Um, and they’re all available on our website. You can go to the water crisis website and just pull it up and, and read those reports. And, and that’s a little bit, that’s like a window into the condition assessments. There’s also a thing called a master plan. And a master plans are usually done on like a five year rotation. Um, the last time we did a master plan for the water system, uh, or the water tree implant was back in the early two thousands. So we, we’ve missed a couple. Um, we gotta get caught back on that. There’s things where we have obsolete equipment, some program control logic that needs to be upgraded. SCADA system needs to be improved. That’s like the brain of the water treat implant and the water distribution system,

Rich Meagher:

Like the IT system that makes all the

Scott Morris:

Yep.

Rich Meagher:

The things open and the valves open and all that stuff.

Scott Morris:

And all that has to be automated together. And so when you start like piecemealing some of these items, you have to fix one before you can fix the other, depending on the complexity of the system you’re talking about, that can take anywhere between like six months to 12 months, two years, and then some really complex scenarios, three years depending if you wanna do an expansion or just a straight replacement. And so when you put all those things together, it’s a really long timeframe to get even the smallest change to occur.

Rich Meagher:

So it, I think people are probably thinking like, well, no, if my toilet breaks, I just go in there and I pull the valve out and I put a new one in. You’re saying that all of these fixes, everything’s much more complicated than that.

Scott Morris:

Correct. And it, but that could be true. Let’s say I have a, a, a piece of equipment that just fails and I wanna do a direct replacement. I have some of those parts on hand. Mm-hmm. I can go to the warehouse, I can do a direct replacement of that, but that’s a bandaid. And so in that instance, I’m replacing in kind, I’m replacing the same pump with the same pump, same valve with the same valve. And if you wanna look to the future and see how can I prevent the same item from occurring? How can I improve the system? You have to be forward looking, do that extra level of effort, look at how you can redesign the system. And if you do that, that’s what you add timeframes associated with it.

Rich Meagher:

So the, the stakes are pretty high for this, right? Obviously water’s important, but, but also I think Mayor Avula was elected with this kind of mandate. Uh, I’m supposed to fix some of the things that are broken in the city, but if we don’t have water, none of that matters. You are the guy who’s kind of stepping up to fix this, right? So I think richmonders wanna know, can you do this?

Scott Morris:

I think the answer is yes. Um, and so I stepped in right after the water crisis. I immediately jumped into looking at, you know, what is working well, what’s working poorly identified a couple things just from a structural perspective of DPU. Um, and we’ve changed the organizational structure. I brought in a bunch of engineers, senior engineers into our, our operation. One of those individuals, our senior deputy director over operations of water, he actually sits right at the water treatment plant. So every day he reports to the water treatment plant. Um, he has eyes and ears on, on the ground, um, and he feeds back information on how the daily operations are working and how we’re functioning. Um, we’ve added several operator positions to add into the capacity of the water treatment plant. And then we’re also working at, you know, adding process engineers, those individuals that understand the day-to-day operations, but can feed that information to our project managers to more successfully implement new projects.

Rich Meagher:

You know, I asked you, uh, can you do this? And you’re kinda listing all of these other people who are doing it with you, I guess. Is that how you approach it?

Scott Morris:

No single person can do this. That let’s, to be clear on that, um, I, I do respect Mayor Avula’s. Trust in me, in, in bringing me on to lead this team. Um, but I think this is a team effort. Um, it’s gonna be impactful for the entirety of not only the city of Richmond, but the community that utilizes the city of Richmond’s water. And so, you know, we, we can all bring our part to this. I have my engineering group that’s gonna help me with that. I, man, water operations group and my wire distribution group. All those individuals are helping to make this happen.

Rich Meagher:

So all that sounds great. And, um, wonderful. Right? But just a couple of weeks ago, right, in early June, uh, the editor of the Richmond or Michael Phillips said he got a text that there would be another boil advisory coming. The computer system was down. Now you all fixed that. So we didn’t need the other boiler advisory, but it gives a sense, right? Are are we on the edge of another crisis? Is something coming?

Scott Morris:

So that goes back to my discussion before about more effectively planning and trying to get some of these aged infrastructure out of place. There’s never going to be a point where something doesn’t go wrong, like pumps fail. If you’re driving a car, you sometimes you get stranded on the side of the road, you get a flat tire. But you have to have a plan in place to fix that. And so, in this instance, when you have a loss of communication for a SCADA system, um, you have to have plan in place. If it’s a pump station, and you can man that pump station, do it, do it 24 7, make sure it’s fully functional, get it back and going, put spare parts in your warehouse so that quintessential components can be replaced timely within several hours or a day. But you have to have a plan in place to address those issues.

Rich Meagher:

Right. So, I mean, I guess that’s the question is, is, is that plan in place and is it enough?

Scott Morris:

The plan is enough, in my opinion. I think what we’re doing right now is setting up the stage for making sure that we have an effective utility. Um, one that it can be trusted. It’s gonna take a little bit of time, a little bit of blood, sweat and tears per se.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Morris:

But you still have to train the operators to operate the system when that fails. And that’s what you have to set up, that’s what you have to train against. That’s what you have to go and drill against. And that’s what we’re setting up today. So that when we do have an outage or when we do have an interruptions, it’s seamless. The, the customer base doesn’t see it at all.

Rich Meagher:

So just looking backwards a little bit, right? The, the latest crisis at the end of May, the boil advisory was this problem was these filters weren’t being cleaned. That’s the maintenance part of it. And then there’s the people part of it, right? And I know you can’t just fire everybody, uh, right. Although I think there are some richmonders who would’ve wanted that, right? People do want accountability. Will there be accountability for mistakes made in the past?

Scott Morris:

We’re working on a highly accountable, um, type of organization now. Um, that’s something that the mayor has expressed. That’s something I express. We are in the process right now of developing about 58 standard operating procedures, training, um, opportunities, drill opportunities for our staff, reinforcing what needs to be done and how to do it. And then, um, once we get that acknowledgement that everybody is familiar enough with those practices, then we’ll take that opportunity to do performance management, which may be, you know, you didn’t do what you needed to do. Um, there’s repercussions for that. Maybe additional training. Maybe that’s separation from the city. But I feel it’s unwarranted to the employees if, if we haven’t given ’em the opportunity, that structure that they need to learn and to be held accountable to, we can’t immediately go in and, and start cutting heads.

Rich Meagher:

So, switching gears, uh, another issue I think in these, uh, last few months has been communication, right? For example, there was this fluoride spike in April. It happened like Wednesday. You didn’t know about it for a few days. The mayor learned from Henrico who learned it from VDH. Like, that’s not how it should work, right? So how have you worked to fix these kind of internal communications?

Scott Morris:

So we were actually, uh, in the process of doing that, during that actual event mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, we had developed a communication plan, hadn’t been finalized at that point, but that communication plan actually sets up different escalation points mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so when you start looking at those escalation points and saying, Hey, when pH gets to this level, when turbity gets to this level, when fluoride levels get to this level, you need to notify this person. Those have been very structured. Um, we’ve rolled that out May 30th, I think is the actual date it was signed off on. And, um, it, it worked, it, it engaged the administration, the leadership levels much more earlier on in the process. So you can start working on, um, notifications to the public, notifications to the regulatory authorities and start doing that kind of planning exercise. One of the things that occurred after the most recent boil water advisory was, you can see this back and forth communication from city leadership and DPU and where they’re trying to discuss, is it appropriate to go to a boil water advisory right now?

Rich Meagher:

Right.

Scott Morris:

Um, and, and actually that, that pause, that discussion helped. ’cause if you had immediately gone to the boil Water advisory, all pressure zones in the city would’ve been pulled into the boil water advisory and just pausing to see if the system would recover enough. What ended up happening was only two pressure zones got pulled in. And so you had a much quicker recovery, less impact for the community. Now, the catch to this is you’re gonna have this kind of back and forth discussion, and it, it seems like the communication is a little bit staggered, maybe off-centered. Um, but realistically it’s just in time response. So you’re trying to figure out, can I recover who’s impacted? How can I get this notification out in a succinct manner so that the least amount of people are impacted?

Rich Meagher:

So you’re basically saying like the internal stuff that happens ahead of what we communicate to the public is us sorting out what our best message is. Now, I, I think as far as the communication with the public, there’s still a, a disconnect. There are some folks, you know, friends who said like, I don’t get texts from the city. I don’t know how to do that. Like, how are you reaching out to the public to make sure that they’re on top of the things that you need to tell them about?

Scott Morris:

So I would like to promote Richmond ready and Civic Ready. Um, those are two platforms that you actually get notifications on. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. If you sign up for Civic Ready is DPU’s platform that they use for allergy notifications, service interruptions. So, um, let’s say an incident happens where, uh, a water line, uh, gets interrupted or a sewer line gets interrupted.

Rich Meagher:

There’s like water main break downtown,

Scott Morris:

there’s a water main break and you’re an impacted community. Well, what we do is we go through, we create a, uh, push notification

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm

Scott Morris:

And that push notification says, Hey, you know, this is an interruption in service. We expect it’s gonna be four to six hours to restore it. And then staff are gonna get on, on site. They’re gonna assess it. If it’s four to six hours they’ll leave it, if it’s changing to be six to 10, they’ll send an additional notification saying the new expected, um, time period is, is 10 hours. And then when they finalize the repair, you get another push notification saying service restored. That is a much different communication style than we have in the past. But it is an opt-in and there’s several media that you can use. You can use phone, uh, uh, email, text.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Morris:

Um, and so I encourage anybody that’s listening use civic ready, get signed up. It, it adds to the notification on outages. And then also, um, Richmond ready, we’re gonna be trying to migrate the two systems together. So eventually it’s all one comprehensive system that we utilize, but get those notifications.

Rich Meagher:

So continuing on this idea of, of reaching out to the people, customer, citizens, um, I think there’s a lot of frustration about billing. We reached out on Reddit and, and that’s a lot of what we got back with stories about, you know, $20,000 bills. Uh, how does this stuff happen, these problems in billing.

Scott Morris:

So we are talking about deferred maintenance and working through, uh, antiquated systems. What you have is a meter that sits in the community,

Rich Meagher:

Right?

Scott Morris:

And then you have a, a, a truck that drives by with a, a receiver that picks up those, those correspond Rates.

Rich Meagher:

Right? It’s not someone wandering to your backyard either.

Scott Morris:

No.

So a lot, we, a lot of comments we get is somebody saying, I’ve never seen a meter reader read my reader. Well, if that’s because it’s a drive-by unit. Um, and so, you know, there’s two things that are predicated off that. One is the, the battery in that transmitter, and then you have the, uh, receiver that’s in the mobile unit. Technology usually has like a three to five year timeframe where it needs to be replaced. Both the unit and the truck and the unit and the field, they’ve all gone near the end of their use of life.

Rich Meagher:

Mm.

Scott Morris:

So they’re not effectively communicating with another. You get misreads, you get skipped reads. Um, and so then when that happens, um, the system estimates the read because it didn’t get an actual read and it predicates the estimate read off of historical values. Now, historical values change over time.

And then once you get a true read, um, it trues itself back up. Yeah. And so that’s when you get these high consumption bills. ’cause the system’s trying to true itself back up. Let’s say you go six months, um, and then it trues itself back up. You get a really high bill because it’s truing itself back. You’re getting several, like 20 or 30 ccs added to your bill that you normally didn’t see, and you’ve acclimated to a normal bill of three or four. And so it seems like a high bill. And so that’s system performance issues. We’re truing that up by replacing the meters in the system and upgrading the transmitters and the the trucks. Um, and also updating handhelds when we have to go out and read those. So those all are being done probably within the next, um, several months. You’ll get some of the field units, the trucks upgraded, the meters are gonna take a little bit more time. It’s, it’s usually like a 12 to 18 month period of time to replace those. Um, and that’ll true that up. So that’ll remove one layer of, of factoring in the other one is the escalation process, um, for billing.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm.

Scott Morris:

Like you call in. And a lot of complaints that I’ve gotten, um, is just the length of time it takes to correct something.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Morris:

Um, that should not occur. Um, we’re going through right now and looking at, uh, the standard processes that we have in place, how we do those escalations, how we review that material, and trying to make it more succinctly.

Rich Meagher:

So I think the, this water crisis, you know, obviously happening in the first week of the mayor’s administration, he got some grace on that. But I do think he got some criticism about being overly optimistic during it. And I do think there’s this kind of tension between wanting to reassure the public and put a, a good face forward with being truthful and transparent. Right. So where’s the line between trying to reassure the public about all the problems that might be happening and making sure that you’re being very clear about what’s happening? Where do you draw that line?

Scott Morris:

I attempted to do that, drawing the line with the memo I sent city council and kind of highlighting my 10 year plan. I’m a very honest person, very ethical. I’m gonna tell you the, the true state of the system. It is an uphill battle.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm

Scott Morris:

There are very, uh, large items that we need to fix in the system. Um, we’re planning against that. I, we’ve done several condition assessments. I mentioned the master plan that we’re developing. So I’m trying to be forthcoming in that open and transparent to the public also with the regulators. Um, we have very candid discussions on, you know, what’s consistent with what we need to do and what, what’s practical in nature. A lot of things we’re working with is predicated off of, uh, what we have in place right now. So I can only do certain things because I can only deal with the hand that has been dealt with me. Right.

Rich Meagher:

Right, Right.

Scott Morris:

Um, and so being frank in that discussion is what matters. So I’m gonna tell you what it is. I’m gonna set forth a plan. I’m, I’m gonna present that plan to city council, present that plan to the mayor, and ultimately we’re gonna have to decide, is this something we wanna move forward with? And these are the pros and cons with doing this plan. I, I may be able to push something back, but there’s inherent risks with pushing stuff back. And that just needs to be put out into both the city council and the public. Um, and we’re gonna be producing an annual report, um, that the public can view and see how we’re performing. We’re gonna be doing our, our due diligence, making sure things are done, but that report is gonna hold us accountable to our actions. If you see something drifting down as a performance measure, that means we’re probably not doing as well in that, that area. Yeah. And we need to fix it. And what’s the plan to fix it? That’s the question you should be asking. And I’m always happy to have those engaging conversations with both the public city council, mayor, or anybody that wants to talk about it.

Rich Meagher:

We’ll have more about Richmond’s Water Supply from DPU Director Scott Morris, when we come back on RVAs Got issues.

This is RVAs got issues. We’re talking with Richmond’s DPU director Scott Morris about the city’s water. Scott, uh, at our recent city council meeting, you laid out this 10 year plan. What are the broad priorities for this plan?

Scott Morris:

Um, so the first year of that plan is more engaged to trying to correct the, the immediate concerns. Yeah. Um, that’s looking at compliance, um, issues that we may have from VDH and looking at our, our, our preventative maintenance, making sure that we’re doing the right thing and, and immediate infrastructure replacements. Like we talked earlier a little bit about equipment replacements. Yeah. Stuff that’s near the end of it. Usual life that you might have a direct replacement for getting those quintessential items in to make sure the wheels stay on the bus. Right. And so that’s year one. Year two looks at, you know, additional power redundancies, looking at additional improvements to the SCADA system. Um, things you can do that enhance the operability of the system. And then building on that critical infrastructure replacement. Um, there’s quintessential distribution means that need to be replaced. Like I mentioned earlier, we have like a thousand miles of, of distribution mains.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Morris:

Um, and so that means that, you know, in order to get a useful life outta that, we have to be replacing at least 10 to 15 miles a year to make sure that they get near the, the useful life of the, so

Rich Meagher:

You’re not waiting around for water main breaks all the time.

Scott Morris:

Right. Right. So you don’t wanna be doing a corrective action when you can do preventative action plan it before you actually need to do it. Um, so it minimizes service interruptions. And then the the third phase you’re looking at more quintessential long-term planning items. So, um, how can you enhance the system? More design options, more critical repairs you need to do that aren’t emergent, but long-term planning. Um, and then when you get into the latter years, it’s, it’s more akin to full modernization, smart meter reading. A lot of customers have mentioned that, you know, uh, dominion, they give you, uh, energy, you can see your energy use on real time. Um, well we can do that too with water. So we just have to raise the system up to meet those performance.

Rich Meagher:

So 10 years is a long time, you know, mayoral terms are only four. What if richmonders run out of patience?

Scott Morris:

Patience is is a virtue.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. Um, that’s so we say.

Scott Morris:

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but that, that is something that we need to do. So that’s why I put the most important items in years one and two. We’re gonna be doing a new rate model coming up. Those new emergent items are highly important to keep the, the, the system functioning. We’re also looking at moving up from a five year planning horizon to a 10 year planning horizon so that you already know what needs to be done. And so even if mayoral term changes can see council changes, that plan is already put in place to do the repairs, um, and do the effective strategic planning to build out the system. Um, so there’s less concerns about transitioning and more concerns on looking at what is most appropriate at the time of when you do the right model. So, uh, patience is a virtue, but, uh, I think if we do what we need to do immediately, years one and two, um, we’ll be on track to be successful and not have to worry about those things.

Rich Meagher:

Now, of course, doing what we need to do, costs money. The VDH report seemed to suggest we might need more than twice what we have budgeted currently. You know, we’ve had loss of federal funds, uh, recently for water who pays, right. How can we afford all this? Uh, are rates gonna go up?

Scott Morris:

Right. Um, there’s always concern with rates going up. Right. Um, so I do foresee us needing some additional rate increase to accommodate some of these additional projects. If I start increasing rates in year one for a project that’s in year 10, um, I can do a much smaller rate increase to get to that end point. Right. And I do see the need of us going through and getting grants from like VDH, um, low interest loans from VDH, um, and then looking at those funding opportunities to try to offset some of those costs to the citizens. ’cause you know, we don’t wanna bear this cost. Um, and we’re also having regional discussions on yeah, is there an opportunity for us to do a project where it benefits both us and one of our regional partners? And then we do some level of cost sharing associated with that. Um, and we can also have general discussions with, uh, the, the state and seeing if there’s additional funding opportunities that can offset some of these costs because we are a regional water supply and we, and we do support, um, both the, uh, state government and, uh, other entities in this region.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. Let me ask about that. Uh, ’cause I think there’s an excitement about regional approaches that this might be an opportunity to bring the city and the counties together at Henrico and Hanover just had a, a kind of separate meeting about water. Uh, mayor Avula just published an op-ed that gestures towards this kind of regionalism. To what degree does a regional approach help address some of the problems Richmond has had?

Scott Morris:

Yeah, so I’m more of a practical guy.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Morris:

And so I look at what, what opportunities and tools I have in my tool set. Um, and I, I think we have existing tools to accommodate some of these requests, some of these collaborations. Um, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t another opportunity though, to be looked at. Um, I think the, the regional discussions, the mayor’s proposing, it’s just looking at what options are available to us. Like, do we need to have a a level of an advisory group or do we have to have an authority? Do we have to have, uh, a work group bringing in experts, elected officials, you know, administrators for, for the local governments? And having that discussion to make sure that everybody’s benefiting, um, from this regional water supply. Those are all the discussions that need to be had. Um, and then ultimately whatever decision is put forth, you know, city council’s gonna have to vote on it, or, um, state government is gonna have to vote on depending on what avenue you Take.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Scott Morris:

Um, but those are all open discussions and I don’t think there’s anything that you’re gonna turn or shut the door against. Um, if there’s an improvement that can be made to the benefit of both the region and the cities of Richmond’s, I think that’s an opportunity to look at it.

Rich Meagher:

So let’s say a resident grabs you gently, I hope, uh, grabs you and says, Scott, I am pretty pissed about this whole water thing.

Scott Morris:

Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

Right, what do you tell them? What do you, what do you say as the head of DPU now who are now representing the city in this regard?

Scott Morris:

I, I’ve actually had some of those discussions. I routinely get calls about bill escalations, where customers wanna talk about stuff. Um, if those get pushed to me and I have those candid conversations, I talk to ’em about, you know, the improvements we made, what we’re trying to do, what we’re trying to accomplish. Usually at the end of the conversation, there’s an understanding, uh, about the, the complexity of the system and the difficulty associated with making incremental repairs or changing the destination. Right. So a big ship can only turn a little bit at a time,

Rich Meagher:

An oil tanker, as we’ve said with uh, mayor Avula.

Scott Morris:

Right? Right. And so it’s, it’s very challenging discussion, but generally at the end of the conversation, there’s a little bit of an agreement that you, you have put practices into place. I’ll wait and see type of approach. Like, I, I trust what you’re telling me. Um, but I, I’ll, I’ll wait to see if it actually matriculates and if it does, I, I think I, I gained a little bit of trust with that citizen. Um, and I think just our day-to-day actions reaffirming that, being timely in our response, that’s something that we can improve on, especially with Bill escalations. Um, I think if you can get somebody a response within a day or a week, um, that usually is, is better, um, than, you know, months. Um, or in some instances I’ve heard about years. Um, so vastly different approach to how we communicate with customers. And I think that, you know, holistically, um, just a general understanding works out.

Rich Meagher:

So I think you mentioned that city council, uh, that if people are having trouble, they could call you, right? That you get these, these calls. Is, is that the last resort currently? Like if you’re in a bind and you’ve got this $20,000 bill, do we call Scott Morris?

Scott Morris:

Yeah. Um, I would like you to go through the escalation protocols and I’ve, I’ve been having those conversations with our managers and they’re empowered to make those decisions, to make those corrective actions. But in the event that it’s taking several months or in instances even the highest monetary value of a bill that needs to be escalated. And unless I know about it, I can’t do anything about it. And so in those instances, I, I’m confident that you can reach out to me. Um, we’ll address the issue. That being said, don’t call me about the first instance ’cause there’s no way that I can handle, uh, thousands of calls ’cause I just won’t be responsive.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Morris:

So allow my staff the opportunity to address the issue. And if they’re not being responsive to you, by all means gimme a call. We’ll address the issue. We’ll make sure you get the response you need.

Rich Meagher:

Scott Morris is Director of Public Utilities for the City of Richmond. Thanks Scott.

Scott Morris:

Thank you.

Rich Meagher:

That’s our show. Thanks to our guest, Scott Morris. RVA’s got issues will be taking a little break over the summer. We’ll be back in the early fall with more stories about all the important issues in rva. Until then, you can find all of our episodes on our website. RVAsGotIssues.vpm.org. Remember to tell your friends about us, share a social media post or leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform. RVAs Got Issues is produced by Max Wasserman and Rachel Dwyer. Script editing by Rachel Dwyer. Audio mix by Steve Lack. Our intern is Cate McKenzie. Special thanks to Nick Walker, Gabriel Aref and Trustin Murrah. Our theme music was composed by Alexander Hitchens. Meg Lindholm is our executive producer. Steve Humble is VP’s Chief Content Officer. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. Thanks for listening.