Clock starts on lifting boil water advisory; midday Thursday would be the earliest
Successful water production on Tuesday night has set the timetable for when Richmond's boil water advisory could be lifted.
Virginia policies require two samples, taken 16 hours apart. Each sample then takes 24 hours to analyze. If water pressure levels hold, the second sample could be taken at about noon on Wednesday, based on an 8:30 p.m. press conference Tuesday night where Mayor Danny Avula announced that the initial round of samples had been collected.
That means the boil water advisory could be lifted early in the afternoon on Thursday, if all goes according to plan.
In the meantime, Avula emphasized that the situation is different than January's water crisis because water is available to residents for laundry, bathing and flushing, it just can't be consumed.
Avula said some water will be distributed to congregate care settings where people can't boil water for themselves, but others are encouraged to boil their own water.
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A change in status
During his Tuesday evening press conference, Avula was asked about a press release sent out by the city on Tuesday morning announcing that there had been issues at the plant overnight, but they had been fixed, and there was no need for a boil water advisory.
He said the filters at the plant reclogged shortly after that release was issued.
"When you have a dynamic situation, we want to just make sure that we are consistently providing people with the information as we know it, and then as we have an update, we're going to we're going to have to provide people with updated information," the mayor said. "I know that at times that's going to frustrate people, because these situations are dynamic and the information is going to change.
"All we can do is do our best to keep people abreast of the of the most up-to-date information and what our next steps are going to be."
DPU Director Scott Morris said things worked as planned on the communication front, including notifying Henrico and Chesterfield counties so they could disconnect from the supply and avoid issues.
"That's one positive from the event is that we were able to execute and get communications out to our regional partners, and reduce the severity of the event," he said.
Root causes
Morris declined to speculate on what caused the additional "turbidity," or particles, that led to the filters being clogged.
Irina Calos, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, said the state agency wasn’t aware of any large sediment releases upriver from the Douglasdale Road facility. However, she noted that “higher turbidity is often associated with higher flows, and the river gage just upstream of the plant nearly reached moderate flood stage on May 15.”
That date marks the gage's second-highest recording over the past 12 months, surpassed only between Feb. 17 and 19, when it rose to 17 feet. On May 15, the level was just shy of 15 feet.
Morris said when demand is reduced overnight, the water plant will backwash, or clean, the filters again to ensure continued operation.
Contact Michael Phillips at mphillips@richmonder.org. Reporter Sarah Vogelsong contributed to this report.
Read our other water coverage:
Graham Moomaw
Richmonder Staff
Graham Moomaw
Richmonder Staff
