Water-quality testing confirms county’s water is safe for consumption
Henrico County today lifted its boil water advisory after tests confirmed the county’s public water is clean and safe for human consumption and use. Officials will hold a briefing that will be livestreamed, beginning at noon. The city of Richmond and Hanover County also have lifted advisories for their communities.
Henrico’s advisory had been in effect countywide since Wednesday and was issued as a precaution and in coordination with the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) following a period of service outages that impacted communities in central and eastern Henrico.
The lifting of Henrico’s advisory and a VDH advisory for only eastern Henrico comes after a series of tests confirmed the county’s water system is free of bacteria, with chlorine levels within normal ranges, said Bentley P. Chan, director of the Department of Public Utilities.
“As a local government, the greatest responsibility we have is protecting the health, safety and welfare of our residents and community,” County Manager John A. Vithoulkas said. “Our boil water advisory was issued out of an abundance of caution, and it’s being lifted with relief as well as gratitude and appreciation for our entire community. I’d like to thank our residents for their patience and understanding as we’ve worked tirelessly to restore service. I’d also like to thank our staff and community partners for helping us to overcome every challenge we have faced along the way. As a county, we will be conducting a thorough review of all aspects of this episode. This will include a review along with the city as well as an independent review by third-party experts. Rest assured, we will be making our water system and our management of it stronger and more resilient.”
Henrico’s water service outages began late Monday and early Tuesday, after last weekend’s winter storm resulted in a loss of power and flooding in Richmond’s water treatment plant. The city’s facility and Henrico’s Water Treatment Facility serve the county’s 100,000 water customers. More than 24,000 customers were without service at the outage’s peak early Tuesday.
Henrico immediately disconnected from the city’s portion of the system and began planning to route water from the county’s treatment facility, in far western Henrico, into the impacted areas of central and eastern Henrico. Those attempts to redirect flows through a careful and methodical adjustment of valves across the county proved more challenging than expected and were insufficient in restoring service. A water main break in Sandston provided another setback. Henrico declared a state of local emergency to accelerate its access to resources and began providing bottled and potable water for impacted residents.
On Wednesday, VDH issued its boil water advisory for eastern Henrico as the city’s pumps began to repressurize the system. Henrico officials concluded that a countywide advisory was also necessary given the systems’ connections and the possibility that untreated water could reach customers outside the eastern area.
By late Thursday, water service had returned to Henrico’s impacted communities and pressure was strong enough throughout the system to begin the bacteriological tests to determine whether the boil water advisory could be lifted. The last of those test results arrived late this morning and confirmed no presence of bacteria.
VDH has guidance for what residents users should do after a boil water advisory, which includes flushing faucets to remove trapped air and particles; discarding any leftover ice and cleaning the ice-maker container; and replacing water treatment filter cartridges.
Henrico’s call center established during the service outage is being deactivated. More information is available from Public Utilities and by calling (804) 501-4275 (normal weekday hours) or (804) 501-5025 (after-hours emergencies).
