Richmond water crisis shuts down many restaurants, businesses

“Dry January” became all too literal in Richmond, where most city residents and businesses were struggling with a water outage that started Monday afternoon and was still leaving much of a city with a population of more than 225,000 people without running water as of mid-afternoon Wednesday.

Schools were closed, many businesses were shut down, and the Virginia General Assembly postponed the start of its session from Wednesday, Jan. 8, to Monday, Jan. 13. State government offices, which had closed Monday after a winter storm that ranged from the Midwest to the East Coast, remained closed Tuesday and Wednesday due to the city water outage.

While city workers are making improvements and getting the water system back up, a boil water advisory is still in effect and will be until Friday at the earliest, said the city’s new mayor, Dr. Danny Avula, who was faced with the crisis less than a week after taking office.

The city’s water treatment plant failure followed a brief power outage Monday morning, Jan. 6, during the snowstorm; the outage then caused flood damage that led to filters and pumps going offline. Local authorities expressed hope Monday afternoon that the problem would be resolved that evening, but after an electronic panel failed Tuesday, officials were less optimistic.

The outage impacted most city residents and some in eastern Henrico and Hanover counties, which reported loss of water pressure this week. On Wednesday, Henrico County Manager John Vithoulkas announced the whole county would be placed under a boil water advisory, effective immediately, after limiting an earlier advisory to the eastern part of the county.

At a Wednesday morning press conference, Avula said more pumps and filters are working or about to come online, and water is building in the reservoir, but he acknowledged that water will come back to some areas of the city before others. The National Guard, the American Red Cross and some private companies have come in to help people access bottled water in the meantime.

During an update delivered Wednesday afternoon, Avula said the reservoir’s levels have fluctuated during the day as more people get water flowing from their spigots. He said that conservation is key so water pressure becomes consistent, and only then can authorities start testing water before lifting the boil water advisory.

“Use it as sparingly as you can,” Avula said. “This is the issue that’s keeping businesses closed. This is the issue that’s keeping schools closed.”

The new mayor advised people to not use their dishwashers or take long showers for now, in the interest of conserving water, and said that the city is checking battery backups and other tools to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen during a snowstorm forecast for this weekend that could drop an additional one to three inches of snow on the region.

“This has lasted longer than anybody possibly imagined,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin said Wednesday afternoon of the Richmond water crisis during a news conference. Amazon and Walmart were among the corporations that donated water at the governor’s request, he said. The region’s local governments also helped make sure that fire departments had tankers of water for emergency use.

The governor also said he would be requesting an after-action report to look into the water system failure and said legislators should work to ensure the problems that happened in Richmond are fixed going forward.

Youngkin noted that he had already called a state of emergency for the winter storm, which allowed him to quickly mobilize water resources for citizens and institutions like hospitals. According to a gubernatorial spokesman, the state Department of Emergency Management and the Virginia Department of Health have coordinated with the city to provide water and technical support.

Corporate partners have assisted with IT fixes at the water pump station, the governor said.

“The City of Richmond has been working around the clock,” Youngkin said. “I know people are angry, they’re frustrated, and they’re tired. Everybody who’s been trying to restore full water service … understands this.”

Boiling point for new mayor

Avula was sworn in as mayor Jan. 1, and his formal swearing-in ceremony and associated events were set to take place in the city this weekend. However, planners called off the celebrations, which are expected to be rescheduled once Richmond emerges from the crisis.

Already, Richmonders were on social media and Reddit forums discussing what many viewed as a lack of communication from the city, which released an official announcement of the boil water advisory at about 4 p.m. Monday, Jan. 6, hours after some residents had already started losing water pressure. Avula, a pediatrician who was previously head of the Richmond and Henrico County health districts and became a familiar face to Virginians as the state’s COVID vaccine coordinator before being elected to his first public office, said the city would review what happened, including the communication plan.

Henrico’s Vithoulkas thanked Avula and city employees Wednesday, noting that the mayor was brand new to his job. “Collectively we came together, and I believe we have solved this issue for our residents and our region,” Vithoulkas said. 

While residents coped by buying bottled water in local stores or going to sites where the city is handing out water containers, many Richmond restaurants and other businesses were forced to close down or limit service, and even the General Assembly was forced to delay its session, which was supposed to start Wednesday.

That’s never happened in modern history, said G. Paul Nardo, clerk of the House of Delegates. “I’ve been here 30 years, and I cannot recall any time prior when we ‘skipped a few days’ like we are tomorrow and Friday. That said, we’ve never done it because we’ve never had or experienced the water supply issue that we are all grappling with right now.”

The Virginia Bankers Association-Virginia Chamber of Commerce 2025 Financial Forecast event scheduled for Thursday in Richmond, featuring a speech by Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin, was changed to a virtual event due to the water outage, organizers announced Wednesday.

“We weren’t exactly sure when this would be fully resolved, so that made it more difficult … to consider postponing the event,” said Bruce Whitehurst, president and CEO of the bankers association. “Thanks to the pandemic, we have a pretty good amount of experience using that word of 2020, ‘pivot.’ … We’ve got the know-how, and this made it a decision we could make today with certainty, as opposed to a decision we could not make today with certainty.”

Meanwhile, many city restaurants and other businesses were waiting to see when the water would come back on.

“We have zero water,” said Adam Musselman, owner of Cobra Burger, on North 27th Street in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood. “There’s dust coming out of the pipes at the restaurant.”

Cobra is closed for the foreseeable future, or at least until the restaurant has running water, he said. “Most of our stuff is to-go,” Musselman said, noting that his menu is made up mainly of burgers and fries, and he typically serves food with paper plates and disposable utensils.

“I reached out to the health department to get some advice on how to proceed,” he said. “We can easily meet the [boil water advisory] requirements,” but until employees can wash their hands and flush toilets, they’ll be closed.

Cindy McKelvy, a senior environmental health manager for the Richmond and Henrico health districts, said Wednesday that food inspectors in the city and the county have been reaching out to food service facilities to check in and answer questions about how restaurants can operate without water or under the boil water advisory once service resumes.

“Some of them have closed, and some of them are using alternative options to keep their businesses open,” she said. If a business doesn’t have running water, “it’ll go to carry-out only,” instead of dine-in. Also, no beverage machines or autofill coffee pots in operation, until restaurants can flush out any machine connected to the water system.

“We do want folks to know that the restaurants that are operating are doing it safely,” McKelvy said. The Virginia Department of Health released emergency guidelines for food service businesses in the area under the boil water advisory.

Jonathan Niemiec, owner of the British Embassy restaurant on East Main Street near the Capitol, said Wednesday that his restaurant “actually never lost water,” and that it was running with normal pressure — to his great surprise. “It blows my mind,” Niemiec said. “For us, it’s been like normal operations. The only thing we’re changing is boiling all the water and washing hands with that water.”

He also is not serving soda from a beverage machine, the ice machine’s turned off, and he’s “slightly reduced” the restaurant’s menu. Niemiec says he feels bad for other restaurants, as he knows well the tight financial margins in the business. “You’ve still got to pay all your bills.”

And that’s what Musselman was concerned about. “I think a lot of people assume that because we’re relatively popular, that we’re raking it in, and that’s not true,” he said. Four-year-old Cobra Burger has “razor-thin margins,” and his employees are also worried about missing multiple shifts and not getting paid.

He laid the blame at the city’s doorstep: “The city is at fault. A boil advisory is one thing, but no water is another.”

Restaurants weren’t the only businesses encountering problems. Family and Cosmetic Dentistry, a practice in the medical building next to Retreat Doctors’ Hospital, was closed for business Wednesday.

“We can’t operate without any water,” said Dr. Audra Jones, one of the dentistry practice’s owners. “Right now we’re taking phone calls and rescheduling patients. It’s been an experience. The last time we went through something like this was with Hurricane Isabel” in 2003.

She expects her office might be closed the rest of the week, although it can reopen once the building has water, even under the boiled water advisory. They can use distilled water for treatment and procedures, but they’ll still need to “flush the lines” of dental equipment, Jones said.

Downtown on Broad Street, the Quirk Hotel was still open, but some customers canceled reservations due to the water outage, said Drew Rainer, Quirk’s office supervisor. The hotel stopped service at its lobby bar and restaurant to conserve water supplies for hotel guests, but none had water for showers or flushing toilets as of midday Wednesday, Rainer said.

Fortunately, she noted, “usually we’re not super-busy” this time of year. “This is the quote-unquote down season.”

Virginia Business Associate Editors Beth JoJack and Katherine Schulte contributed to this report.