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Water outage report: City botched communications, mayor exerted “extreme” pressure on staff members

This is a developing story and will be updated. The City of Asheville has released its long-awaited Independent Review Committee report on the devastating holiday season water outage, and it highlights the city’s ineptness in what it called “murky” communications, providing accurate information and even identifying who was actually in charge. The report also said Mayor Esther Manheimer, according to city employees, exerted “significant,” “major” and “extreme” pressure on staff members regarding estimated timelines for restored water services. “These people told the report’s authors ‘that if a public message was not immediately developed giving an estimate, the strong insinuation from…