As of Jan. 11, the boil advisories in Greater Richmond have been lifted. Click here for an explainer on flushing your pipes after a boil advisory.
A power outage at a Richmond water treatment facility resulted in a pump failure, forcing the city to issue a boil water advisory until further notice.
Richmonders should boil water before consuming or using it and take steps to conserve water, the city announced Monday.
Some residents have reported little to no water pressure in parts of the city, including the Fan, the Museum District and Scott’s Addition.
In a Monday press release, Mayor Danny Avula said, "Our top priority is the health and safety of our residents and neighbors. I am asking all Richmonders to limit their water usage as the team at the Department of Public Utilities works around the clock to get our water system back online. I’m also asking residents to consider their neighbors, and only use as much water as they need – all in this together.”
Residents who live in Chesterfield, Henrico and Hanover counties are not affected by this because those localities have transferred to other water supplies. Officials from those localities shifted their water sources earlier in the day to help the city try to conserve as much water as possible.
A timeline for when the pump might be fixed has not been established. Avula held a press conference Monday evening with April Bingham, director of the city’s Department of Public Utilities.
During the press conference, Avula said the situation is “the result of storm-related power outages.”
A Monday morning power outage impacted the water treatment plant, with the backup generators going into effect “almost immediately.” “What we did not realize until a little bit later is that there was a failure of a component that created some flooding at the water treatment plant, and that’s impeded our ability to produce more water,” Avula said. “We have eight filters that are up and running, and we expect by some time later this evening, that we will resume the ability to produce water and start feeding that reservoir again.”
Avula, a pediatrician and former public health official, also explained the medical reasoning behind boil water advisories.
“When the water pressure gets low in a system, it introduces the possibility of bacteria entering pipes and making that water unsafe to drink,” he said. “This is very unlikely to happen, but out of an abundance of caution, we issue a boiled water advisory when pressures get back up to the recommended range, which we expect to happen. Sometime this evening, we will start the process working with our partners at VDH to do water testing.”
City officials have encouraged residents to boil their water until the notice has been lifted. They expect to lift the advisory within the next 24 to 48 hours.
Officials have sent out an email that lists safe water usage guidelines per the Virginia Department of Health:
- Don’t drink tap water for any reason until the advisory is lifted.
- If you must use tap water (for flushing, cooking or cleaning), limit usage as much as possible — and don’t get it in open cuts/wounds or post-surgical incisions. VDH advises that showering people should “avoid getting water in the mouth or swallowing the water” and that infants and small children should be sponge bathed only.
- Don’t drink water from public parks or public or private buildings serviced by the city’s Department of Public Utilities.
- Don’t use ice made from water from today; discard the ice and sanitize the ice machine and its trays, as well as water and ice dispensed from a refrigerator.
City officials are also not aware of any neighborhood that has run out of water, but have been told anecdotally that some people are starting to lose water completely.
Residents in districts 2, 3, 5 and 6 “may start to experience some low water pressure,” according to officials.
Avula said “the reality is that people are going to experience this differently across the city” due to topographical challenges.
“We hope to [be] producing clean drinking water by the next couple of hours – by 10 pm tonight – but we’re continuing to watch the system,” April Bingham, DPU Director said.
Avula also said that city officials have been monitoring the city’s inclement weather shelters to make sure that they have water pressure. “We know it’s starting to be an issue there,” he said. “We have reached out to our state partners and put our points of dispensation plan into place for distributing water. We’re really focusing on vulnerable populations.”
Bingham said the last time there was a water boil advisory in the city was in 2003, after Hurricane Isabel.
Keyris Manzanares and Dean Mirshahi contributed reporting.
