The VPM Daily Newscast contains all your Central Virginia news in just 5 to 10 minutes. Episodes are recorded the night before.
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Here’s a recap of the top stories on the morning of April 4, 2025:
Final report on Richmond water crisis details poor communication by city
Reported by VPM News’ Dean Mirshahi
Richmond’s lack of preparation and poor communication were among several factors that exacerbated the outage that led to the January water crisis, the firm hired to review the outage concluded in its final report.
HNTB — the engineering firm commissioned to conduct the investigation of the plant failure — came to the same conclusion in its final report as its draft report released in March.
The final report, published in City Council documents, does provide additional details about the water plant failure that kept the city from delivering drinkable water to residents and other counties for days.
This includes a timeline of the city’s internal communications over the outage and when Richmond’s Department of Public Utilities contacted regional partners that rely on the plant for water and the Virginia Department of Health.
HNTB found “several instances of either miscommunication or misinformation among DPU and City staff members” — including text messages incorrectly claiming that the plant’s backup generators started after it lost power.
Despite Richmond Mayor Danny Avula previously defending Richmond’s communications with nearby counties, the report said the city didn’t “adequately convey” the severity of the situation with Chesterfield and Henrico on the morning of Jan. 6. There were also delays in reporting the failure to Hanover County and VDH.
Dominion proposes 15% rate hike, citing fuel, construction and capacity costs
Reported by VPM News’ Patrick Larsen
Dominion Energy asked state regulators in filings this week to raise customer power bills by about 15% over the next two years — a product of fuel costs, new construction, infrastructure upgrades, and the cost of doing business on the grid.
For a typical residential customer, that looks like an average monthly increase of $8.51 starting January 1, 2026, with an additional $2.00 increase starting in 2027. Dominion is also requesting a $10.92 hike (based on that typical monthly bill), which would take effect this July, to cover fuel and capacity market costs. Altogether, that’s a climb from $140.65 monthly to $162.06 on average.
On top of all that, Dominion is requesting a brand new customer rate classification for the commonwealth’s biggest energy users that it says will protect smaller customers from bearing some of the costs of the state’s data center growth.
The filings set up a monthslong process of hearings, court filings, fact finding and public comment — that will result in new rates set by the State Corporation Commission over the next year.
News you might have missed from around the commonwealth
- Augusta County doesn't plan to change tax rate next year (The News Virginian)*
*This outlet utilizes a paywall.
