After years of frequent problems, the City of Austin called for an independent audit of Austin Water to figure out what was causing the issues and how future failures can be prevented.
On Wednesday at a joint meeting the City Council’s Audit and Finance Committee, Austin Water Oversight Committee, and Austin Water shared details about improvements that have been implemented or are underway to enhance resilience.
Most of the guidance that’s been given has already been put in place. The report was initially presented to the city council earlier this year in January, but Wednesday’s meeting highlighted the progress that’s being made.
In February 2022 District 10 Council Member Alison Alter says the city experienced its fifth water quality incident within just a few years after a city-wide boil water notice was issued.
“I authored a resolution to do an external review of Austin Water to try and make sure that this wouldn’t happen again,” she said.
For neutrality, the city hired the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Water and the Environment to have its auditor oversee the review.
The report looked at Austin Water’s ability to provide quality water and asked three questions which include:
- How does water quality produced by the watershed impact raw water quality entering the plant and create a risk to water treatment, considering both nominal and extreme (flood, fire, drought, storm, spills, etc.) conditions?
- From an engineering perspective, are the processes capable of handling this range of water quality?
- And lastly, from a staffing and organizational perspective, is AW positioned to operate the plant over the range of water quality conditions observed during normal and extreme events?
“It informed us that 99% of the time we are getting clean and safe water, but we need to do a better job of being ready for those extreme events that challenge our system. Interestingly, the answers that they gave focused on management operations and people more than they focused on large investments in infrastructure,” said Alter.
The review team’s analysis of organizational structure, management, staffing, and communications revealed a serious disconnect between upper management’s efforts to improve operations across Austin Water and the engagement of Ullrich WTP staff in these efforts.
Lynn Katz is a professor and director for the Center for Water and the Environment and the University of Texas at Austin. She helped conduct the study.
"It’s a tough climate to hire right now, we made 53 recommendations and a number of those recommendations dealt specifically with how to increase training, how to increase standard operating procedure access to the plant,” said Katz.
Alter says hiring changes for better recruitment and retention are already being made. She believes this will provide better flexibility in addressing the needs of the water utility.
“We need to rebuild trust in our water utility. I believe that this external review that was done independently of the city manager and now this implementation plan are important steps for rebuilding that trust. They allow us to be transparent and accountable as we move forward.”
Austin Water Director Shay Ralls Roalson said in a statement the utility appreciates the opportunity this review provided to rebuild community trust.
“We are more robust and resilient than we have ever been, but we are also facing threats that we’ve never seen in our history. Implementing the recommendations from this report will make Austin Water stronger and better positioned to face climate change and extreme weather events.”
69% percent of the recommendations have already been made. Alter says better communication and oversight practices are also happening to make improvements. If you would like to read the full audit, click here.
Other key findings from the review include:
- Treatment processes performed by Austin Water to serve its more than 1 million customers are appropriate.
- The Ullrich Water Treatment Plant infrastructure is adequately designed with sufficient capacity.
- Austin Water has taken steps to mitigate water quality risks and improve operational resiliency at its water treatment plants.
- Austin Water’s power resiliency and Emergency Preparedness Plan sufficiently address the hardening of electrical transmission and distribution, additional auxiliary power generation, adequate water storage, and implementation of emergency water demand rules.
- Austin Water’s emergency management structures are well thought out and suitably structured; the Incident Management Team and Department Operations Center align with FEMA standards.