In the days since the collapse of Richmond’s public drinking water utility, two separate documents have emerged that appear to indicate infrastructure problems at the city’s water treatment plant were well-known.

Operations at the plant broke down on Monday, cutting off city water and resulting in what looks to be a six-day boil water advisory for Richmond, as well as water pressure and quality issues in the neighboring counties of Hanover and Henrico.

The first record is an inspection performed by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2022 that detailed corroded pipes, bacterial contamination and a lack of attention to emergency preparedness protocols. That report was first revealed by news station WTVR on Wednesday afternoon .

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The Richmond Water Treatment Plant is seen from the air on Tuesday. Operations at the plant broke down on Monday, cutting off city water and resulting in what looks to be a six-day boil water advisory for Richmond, as well as water pressure and quality issues in the neighboring counties of Hanover and Henrico.

The second is a proposal heard in June by Richmond’s Planning Commission. In the proposal, an engineering manager with the Department of Public Utilities outlined changes “needed to improve the station [sic] overall reliability and redundancy.”

The proposal requested three new water pumps for the Byrd Park Pumping Station, saying that the old models were outdated, with repair parts that were no longer available from their original manufacturers.

“This results in the pumps having very low reliability and high maintenance costs,” reads the proposal, which also asked the city to replace electrical equipment at the pumping station.

Officials with the city outlined the chain of events leading to Richmond’s water system breakdown.

However, the city has said the plant's battery backup failed to keep the plant online during a winter power outage. In the days since, city workers struggled to get the plant's eight pumps back online, leading the city to rent high-power bypass pumps to help return water into the Byrd Park Reservoir .

The focus in the short term has been to restore running, potable water to Richmond homes and businesses. April Bingham, who directs the department that manages the city waterworks, said she would not blame faulty equipment.

“I can’t, right now, say they’re connected,” Bingham said on Wednesday morning.

Later that day, however, Dwayne Roadcap, the head of the state’s Office of Drinking Water, suggested that there was likely a connection between the EPA's findings and the city’s current water woes.

April Bingham, right, director of the Richmond Department of Public Utilities, seen speaking on Jan. 28, 2022, said Wednesday morning that she would not blame faulty equipment in connection with the city's water crisis. Later that day, however, Dwayne Roadcap, the head of the state’s Office of Drinking Water, suggested the water woes were likely related to the EPA's findings in a 2022 inspection.

Of note was a finding that "the plant does not perform tabletop emergency scenario planning exercises in the event of large-scale power failures, contamination events, or other occurrences that would impact production."

“You shouldn’t have this kind of problem,” Roadcap told WTVR.

Mayor Danny Avula, who has been in office for all of a week, has promised an after-action report to answer the public’s questions.

The inspection report conducted by the EPA in 2022 did not identify any issues with the plant’s back-up generator. It did, however, cite 44 instances in which the plant was out of compliance with federal law.

For example, five tests had returned positive for a bacteria called coliform. Coliform bacteria can be indicators of E. coli. Inspectors wrote that the system has “unexplained coliform positive samples recently, and there is no plan or procedure in place to respond to or investigate the cause.”

The inspectors found severe rust and corrosion on pumps and piping that move water through the facility. They found that DPU employees were not conducting routine check-ups on the system's water filters. Parts of the plant were flooded, and the facility’s emergency response protocol was out of date.

In a response sent to regulators on Jan. 3, three days before last weekend's winter storm, the department said it had fixed some issues while others would not be resolved until as late as 2027. One pump was in the process of being replaced, while two others would “follow accordingly,” the city told the EPA. It's unclear if those were the same pumps replaced this week.

Meanwhile, updating the waterworks’ emergency response protocol was a task projected for completion in early 2025, the inspection report reads.