City acknowledges lack of communication to Southside residents who lost water on Wednesday night
Chief Administrative Officer Odie Donald II said the city’s internal communication protocols “were not fully followed” during a water outage on Richmond’s Southside late Wednesday.
Some residents of Stratford Hills were without water for about 18 hours as a result of the situation. DPU spokesperson Rhonda Johnson told The Richmonder that 100 customers were impacted.
Donald wrote an email Thursday afternoon to City Council, in part addressing the concerns of Councilor Sarah Abubaker (4th District), who represents the area.
“I was disappointed by the breakdown in communication from City administration — both to me as the elected representative for this district and more so, to residents,” Abubaker wrote in her weekly email to residents. “Timely, proactive communication during service disruptions is not optional. It is essential.”
The city’s first public communication about the outage came at noon on Thursday, four hours after Southampton Elementary School announced it would be closed for the day as a result of the situation.
That communication from the city attributed the issue to an “unplanned repair of a water valve in the late evening around 11 p.m. on Wednesday, February 18.”
Donald’s email said two valves were repaired in the area, the first without incident on Tuesday, and the second on Wednesday, which led to the issue.
After the 2025 Richmond water crisis, the city paid an estimated $400,000 to an outside consulting firm to examine how it communicated to residents during that time, and offer recommendations to the city moving forward.
In Donald’s email to Council on Thursday, he said that notification to the public was delayed because “internal communication protocols were not fully followed.”
“In this incident, service repairs have been completed, and corrective steps are being implemented to strengthen both operational and communication procedures moving forward,” Donald wrote.
This is a breaking news update. The story will be updated.
Contact Michael Phillips at mphillips@richmonder.org.
