Richmond’s boil water advisory lifted Saturday

The Virginia Department of Health lifted Richmond’s boil water advisory, Mayor Danny Avula announced Saturday morning, after two tests of the city’s water confirmed it was safe to drink.

Boil water advisories in neighboring counties Hanover, Henrico and Goochland were also lifted Saturday. The regional water crisis had been ongoing since Monday, January 6, when a winter storm disrupted operations at Richmond’s water plant, leading to major flooding and leaving residents without potable water for days.

The situation also delayed the start of the 2025 General Assembly session, which is set to resume on Monday.

By 3:30 p.m. Friday, Avula had shared that the first of two tests of the city’s water system was free from harmful contaminants.

Another round of water sampling and testing started Friday morning. By late Saturday morning, the second test was also negative of contaminants. With both tests showing clean results, VDH deemed the safe for drinking and the advisory was lifted.

“We have reached our goal,” Avula stated in a release about the lifted advisories. Avula thanked Richmonders for their patience during the ordeal and acknowledged the efforts of  “many dedicated public servants — as well as regional, state, and federal partners” who helped the city navigate the emergency.

Richmond’s water fully pressurized, boil advisory could be lifted Friday or Saturday

Ahead of Friday night’s snowfall, Avula had said in a Friday news conference that the plant was buffeted by additional staff or contractors on site — mechanics, engineers, information technology workers — and VDH staff. Avula added that a new battery backup to supply the plant’s computer systems in the event of a power disruption had been installed and additional repair parts for filters were on site. Supervisors performed inspections and staff had hourly status-checking. 

After teasing a planned “after-action report” throughout the week to suss out further details of what went wrong, Avula committed to an independent review during Friday’s press conference. 

“We are absolutely outsourcing this. We’re going to bring in a third party to do that investigation,” Avula said.

It’s unclear how long that could take but he hopes to have tapped a group to lead the investigation by next week.

For the second day in a row Department of Public Utilities director April Bingham was absent from the Friday press conference. Both times, Avula  noted that she was  at the plant. 

“That’s where I need her focused,” Avula said on Friday. “As we get through the storm, that’s when she will be available for questions next week.”

WTVR reported that an inspection performed by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2022 detailed “corroded pipes, bacterial contamination and a lack of attention to emergency preparedness.”

The Richmond Times-Dispatch also noted that a DPU engineer proposed improvements to outdated equipment at the plant to the city’s Planning Commission last summer. That proposal requested three new water pumps with claims that the old models were outdated and that their repair parts were no longer available from their original manufacturers.

This means that city officials have known about the potential for failures at the plant for some time. 

When Bingham was last present at a press conference, on Wednesday, she noted that the plant is 100 years old and said she had responded to the 2022 EPA citation. 

“I’m not going to combine the two, because I can’t, right today, say that they were connected,” she told reporters. 

On Thursday Avula confirmed that Bingham had sent a letter to the EPA the previous week highlighting the plant’s redundancy systems (which ultimately failed a few days later). 

As to the failure at the plant this week, at Friday’s conference Avula guided reporters through the current-known “cascade” of events that went wrong. 

Avula said that Dominion Energy Virginia, the state’s largest electricity provider, feeds two power sources at the plant. When one fails, the second one was supposed to automatically switch on, but that didn’t happen in this case. When the second power source failed to activate, an electrician arrived Monday morning and manually made the switch. Avula explained that the electrician made the call to not turn on generators, which are the backup in the instance that the battery backups fail. Then, IT systems that Avula called the “brains” of the plant did not reboot properly post-power outage, which caused water pump malfunction and flooding.

Still need drinking water? Here’s where you can get it in Richmond, Henrico and Hanover on Friday

As to area residents who have been unable to work this week, Avula said that Richmond will explore state and federal recovery funds that can be used for rental assistance. For instance, many restaurants in Richmond have been closed or had reduced operating hours amid the water boil advisory, leaving many of the area’s food industry workers unable to be paid. 

Avula also plans to postpone the next water bill’s due date and more details may be available later concerning rebates for people who lost water access. 

Editor’s note: This story was updated Saturday, Jan. 11 to reflect the lifted water advisories in Richmond and neighboring localities.