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.
Richmond’s water boil advisory most likely won’t be lifted before Friday, as most city residents' approach 72 hours without water.
During a 9:45 a.m. press conference, Mayor Danny Avula said although some of the capital city's roughly 229,000 residents are experiencing the partial pressure return of water, it may not be what they are used to seeing.
“When there hasn't been water in the system, you'll see sediment that's picked up by the water. That water will look rusty, it may look dirty, it will look turbid, it'll look cloudy. That's all just natural,” Avula said.
Avula cautioned residents to boil their water before consuming it until the advisory is lifted. He added that, per state department of health protocol, two negative-result water tests must be met before the water advisory can be safely lifted.
“At this point, I think it is unlikely that we will lift the Boil Water Advisory before Friday,” he said.
On Monday, a winter storm-related power outage caused the city’s water reservoir system to fail, knocking out running water citywide. The restoration process timeline was later extended by an electrical panel failure Tuesday afternoon.
Rhonda Johnson, the Department of Public Utilities’ public information manager, told VPM News on Wednesday that various processing equipment was damaged during the outage: water filters toward the end of the treatment process and pumps that transfer filtered water to a finishing basin before it’s distributed.
Avula — a Church Hill resident whose water hasn’t been restored — said overnight the city made “significant progress” after bringing in two additional bypass pumps to route water and feed the reservoir.
In a social media post prior to the conference, the city said it needed 12 filters and four pumps running in order to restore Richmond’s full water capacity at 50 million gallons. By 9 a.m., the city reported having only six filters and one pump operating.
“Right now, we have over 45 million gallons a day, MGD, of water that is pumping out into distribution and that is actively filling up our reservoir,” Avula said.
According to Avula, the city’s reservoir typically runs with 18 feet of water. At the time of the update, it was at 7 feet.
“I know that as people have woken up this morning, have turned on showers, have turned off faucets, there's probably a sense of urgency to get out there and to take it or to get take a shower, to wash your dishes, to do the things that we all want to do,” Avula said. “And I would just ask that we continue to make wise and thoughtful decisions until our reservoir gets to where it needs to be again.”
According to the mayor, the 10-foot mark would be a good indicator for the city’s reservoir.
Avula said the city’s top priority remains restoring water to people in the Greater Richmond region. But when that’s done, the city plans to do a thorough action report to diagnose where the system failed, why it happened, what investments need to be made and what can be done to prevent this from happening in the future.
Avula said this situation undoubtedly highlighted ongoing concerns about the city’s aging infrastructure. The city’s oldest water plant just turned 100 years old last year. The Byrd Park reservoir went into operation in 1876 and is at half capacity for a roof replacement project.
After-action report already top of mind
Avula was unable to answer questions about whether the city was prepared for a crisis like this and if the DPU did everything it possibly could to prevent this crisis ahead of the storm.
“You know, day six on the job. I'm not sure that I can answer that in any detail,” the mayor responded.
Avula said examining when the city last tested its systems for a potential outage will be part of the after-action report.
“In this case, the battery backup, at least on the IT system, did kick in. It just didn't last long enough. We had a power outage that was a little bit over two hours,” Avula said.
When questioned about a 2022 federal audit citing the city for corroding pumps and faults with values and filters, DPU director April Bingham said she couldn’t say whether the audit and outage are connected.
“I think this incident here was simply caused by an outage at the plant, certainly, as the mayor has said, the plant is 100 years old. We have aging infrastructure, and we have to continue to focus on investments in this infrastructure,” Bingham said.
The mayor said he’s been regularly on the phone with Gov. Glenn Youngkin coordinating water relief efforts for hospitals. However, Avula added he hasn’t had a specific conversation as it relates to infrastructure investment or reached out to the General Assembly.
“I think the next phase is to really do a deeper assessment of where we need larger, broader-scale investment in the aging infrastructure. We've had a lot of those conversations over the last year, a couple of years at this point around stormwater overflow as an example,” Avula said. “I think that's just one example of aging infrastructure. I think our water treatment plant is another one.”
As the water outage continues, Avula said that large corporations — including Walmart, Niagara, Publix and Amazon — have sent water. The Virginia National Guard is also coming to Richmond with 2,000-gallon trailers and about 600,000 bottles of water for isolated locations.
