Water, Water, Everywhere

"Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink." — Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The City of Richardson's Holly Water Tower lost all pressure on Thursday, triggering an alert on the City's website, on social media, and elsewhere (we'll come back to that) to boil water before usage. City staff and volunteers quickly moved into action acquiring truckloads of bottled water for distribution to affected residents. All well and good. Triage before post-mortem, you know. There'll be time enough for questions later. First things first. The City is testing water and hopes to have results back Friday, November 8. When it's deemed safe to drink again, the City will spread the word...somehow.

When that day comes, there are some questions that I'd like the City to publish answers for.

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They start with the City's explanation of what happened (emphasis added).

What Happened

Earlier today, the City's Holly Water Tower (located between Mimosa Drive and Dogwood Drive) lost all water pressure. The loss of pressure was due to a malfunction of telemetry equipment that failed to notify operators of the drop in water level of the tower. The tower was at zero pressure for approximately five minutes before teams identified the issue and restarted the pumps.

While telemetry equipment monitors the water level in the tower, the City also has Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) personnel staffed around the clock to monitor the system and respond when issues arise. The staff on-duty at the time did not recognize the technology malfunction, which, when combined with the equipment failure, allowed the water levels in the tower to drop.

Source: City of Richardson.

"The staff on-duty at the time did not recognize the technology malfunction." Was this a training lapse, a performance lapse, or something else that could have, should have, been prevented from happening? Besides equipment and human failure, what management failures were involved? What best practices do other cities employ to prevent such mishaps, best practices that Richardson does not employ?

In any case, the mishap occurred. I saw the announcement on Facebook. What other communication methods did the City use? The City has an opt-in emergency notification system that alerts residents to important information via text, email and phone. Was that deployed? On Facebook, Councilmember Barrios said residents in the affected area were sent text messages via the City's reverse 9-1-1 system. Is that the same system the City calls its "emergency notification system"? Two people responded saying they never got notified. The City needs to investigate. Was an alert sent? The City has various email lists. Were any of them used? What can the City do to ensure its own emergency notification systems are more universal? How often are they tested and measured for reach? What best practices do other cities employ?

Here's how the City said it tried to reach the hard-to-reach people.

Please share this information with all the other people who drink this water, especially those who may not have received this notice directly (for example, people in apartments, nursing homes, schools, and businesses). You can do this by posting this notice in a public place or distributing copies by hand or mail.

Source: City of Richardson.

The City asks people to share the information manually, maybe by posting paper flyers in public places. Did the City consider including City staff in such an effort? How about a door-knocking relay tree? In any case, has the City considered establishing such systems *before* the need arises? It's too late to wait for a crisis, then think about how to reach hard-to-reach people. We have monthly tests of the emergency notification sirens in the City. Why not a yearly test of a boil water emergency notification system?

And why the concern about "people in apartments" "who may not have received this notice directly"? Everyone should be receiving emergency notifications? Why differentiate between people who live in apartments from people who live in owner-occupied, single-family homes? What can the City do to avoid discrimination in who receives emergency alerts?

I don't have the answers. But like I said, I do have questions. When the immediate problem is resolved, hopefully maybe even before you are reading this, there are still questions to be answered. This was at best an inconvenience for a lot of people and at worst a risk to their health. The City needs to study what happened and then fully and transparently tell Richardson residents what happened, what's being done to keep it from happening again, and how the City will better respond the next time an emergency occurs.

P.S. This is the second major operational failure by the City of Richardson in recent months. The first was a cyberattack on City servers on September 25. The City announced on October 16 that service was fully restored. City Manager Don Magner bragged, "I cannot emphasize enough how well our team was prepared for, and able to respond to, this incident." Good for them. I would feel more comfortable if Magner could give a fuller explanation for why a system that the City was well prepared for was taken out and required three weeks to recover from. I would feel reassured if Magner explained what steps are being taken to ensure that similar attacks could not occur again. Are there best practices other Cities have deployed that have prevented any downtime?

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"Water tower low,
Thirsty City waits and boils.
Hope arrives by truck."
—h/t ChatGPT