All right, we're good.

All right, thank you.

I'll call this special meeting to order.

Roll call, please, Pam.

Mayor Reed?

Present.

City Manager Banks.

Here.

City Attorney Brown.

Here.

Vice Mayor Fleming?

Here.

Council Member Alistair is absent.

Councilmember Dent.

Here.

Councilmember Robinson.

Here.

Interim Chief Pollard.

And Chief Tobia.

Here.

Thank you.

Let me state that it is May 16, 2025.

I will now turn the meeting over to our city manager, Andy Banks.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members.

Thank you for your availability and your time this afternoon on this special meeting that is being called because of the continuing challenges we are facing in treating our raw water supply at our water treatment plant.

To that end, I'd ask our public utilities director, Mr.

Collins, to come up and give a brief update to City Council.

Thank you, Andy.

Members of Council.

As you know, we've had heavy rains over the last several days in Harrisonburg and the surrounding areas.

And we've had a as a result, it's resulted in high turbidity in our raw water supply at Dry River and at North River.

And turbidity refers to amounts of particles in sediment, materials like silk clay, organics, inorganics, materials that are present uh in our water.

And these particles need to be removed from the raw water as part of our treatment plant in order to make it safe for our customers.

The chemical uh water treatment plant techniques that we this uh treating turbidity is not something that's uncommon to us.

We're familiar with that, but the chemical treatment processes that are typical to us have uh that were commonly used to eliminate these high turbidities have been less than effective on uh many of the batches that have uh that we've received into the water treatment plant since the morning of May 14th.

Um to retain our safe drinking water uh status, uh we've had to either interrupt or reduce the output from the water treatment plant beginning May 15th.

Um it continues to be uh unresponsive to the treatment to the level that we would uh prefer to be and reach, and uh therefore it continues to limit our ability to put water out of the treatment facility.

As of the morning of May 16th, the city's water supply, the city's supply of water and storage in the city has been uh uh has been greatly reduced, even though we've taken many steps to mitigate those efforts uh over the last few days.

Historically, we would expect um this source to return to a treatable status uh in in in short order.

However, uh in the event that it does not, because of our reduced storage, we're taking some extra precautionary actions until until we can recover.

And that's kind of a little summary.

Thank you.

So questions or I think we're good.

We've been briefed already, so thank you.

Um Madam Mayor, to that end, uh city staff has prepared a resolution at this point in consultation with our coordinator of emergency management, who is our fire chief, and our office of emergency management with Mr.

Helmuth, um, I would like to propose a resolution that would take move the city into a low a declaration of local emergency.

Um and to this end, to be clear, this simply opens up um additional resources uh and reduces public procurement requirements if necessary.

We don't feel that these measures are necessary at this time.

We are not changing our messaging to our residents.

We are still in mandatory water restrictions, but this simply takes an action so that we can have access to additional resources if the time and um situation calls for it.

So to that end, city staff has prepared the following resolution.

A resolution consenting to the declaration by the Harrisonburg City Manager of a local emergency due to recent and potential severe weather effects on the Harrisonburg water treatment plan.

Whereas Virginia Code 44-146.21 provides that a local director of emergency management may declare the existence of a local emergency with the consent of the local governing body in accordance with the provisions of such code section and whereas excuse me, heavy rains over the last several days in Harrisonburg and the surrounding area have resulted in high turbidity in the city's raw water supply.

And whereas heavy rains over the last several days in Harrisonburg and the surrounding area have resulted in high turbidity in the city's raw water supply.

Turbidity refers to the amount of particles or sediment like materials such as silt, clay, and other inorganic or organic material present in the water.

Such particles must be removed from the raw water at the city's water treatment plant before the water is safe to consume or use.

Removal is also necessary to prevent blockage of the filtration system with debris.

The chemical water treatment techniques commonly utilized to eliminate high turbidity have been ineffective on many batches of water entering the water treatment plant since the morning of May 14.

This triggered a complete plant shutdown and no production of new potable water for 24 hours, and a need to rely on the city's potable water storage and Rocky Am County's potable water.

Water production at the water treatment plant was part partially restored beginning May 15 by using different treatment techniques.