UPDATE: The city lifted the boil water advisory for affected areas as of approximately 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 29.
Richmond Mayor Danny Avula speaks during a May 27, 2025, press conference on a boil water advisory.
Clogged filters in Richmond’s water treatment plant on May 27 caused flashbacks to January’s water crisis for many residents.
The problems began soon after midnight as Department of Public Utilities workers addressed an issue of high turbidity, or cloudiness produced by high amounts of particles in the water. A press release issued later that morning said that, despite the filters clogging, enough water was still being produced to maintain safe system pressure levels. This, the city said, prevented the need for a boil water advisory.
Just before noon, Richmond officials reversed course and issued the advisory when the filters clogged again after the water system had run at full strength for over an hour. This time, service from the city’s Ginter Water Tank was impacted, causing residents from North Side to the James River to lose most or all water pressure. The boil water advisory, in effect for residents and businesses in Carytown, the Fan, Scott’s Addition, VCU’s Monroe Park campus and beyond, will stay active until two water tests, spaced 24 hours apart, can be conducted. Or, as Councilmember Kenya Gibson put it in an email: “We should plan on being under this boil advisory for at least the next 36 hours.”
The advisory expanded in the evening to include Cofer Road Tank, which serves South Side residents along Commerce Road and Richmond Highway, stretching from Manchester and Ancarrow's Landing in the north to the Richmond Marine Terminal in the south.
“In this event,” DPU Director Scott Morris said in a virtual press conference, “it looks like the raw water quality decreased, which caused us the need to have additional backwashing, or draining, of those filters. Filters normally have to be backwashed every so often to maintain their operability.” In this instance, he added, “very poor” water quality impacted most of the filters simultaneously, forcing the city to take the filters offline and restart the water system.
During the press conference, Mayor Danny Avula didn’t announce plans to provide bottled water to residents but said it could happen, noting that distribution in January was necessary after residents lost access to potable water. He also said that he had not heard about complaints that the city’s alert system did not reach some residents about the boil water advisory. In addition, only Albert Hill Middle School closed early on May 27, but 21 city schools in total have been impacted. Schools remained open May 28; the last day of the 2024-25 city school year is May 30.
The filter failure is another in a series of problems at the city’s water treatment plant this year. In January, a winter storm shut down production and caused problems in the city and outer counties as far as Goochland for numerous days. The incident led to the departure of DPU Director April Bingham and the hiring of Morris, a former state water official. In April, the installation of a new fluoride pump caused a five-hour increase in the tooth-protecting chemical.
Just days before this latest incident, water plant Superintendent Doug Towne was put on leave, replaced temporarily by longtime DPU leader Ricky Hatfield. The city also hired Tony Singh, a former state and federal water official, as deputy DPU director. The changes come as the city prepares to announce a new chief administrative officer on June 6 after the resignation of interim CAO Sabrina Joy-Hogg.
“Obviously, January's events raised lots of concerns and [led to] lots of new actions on our part to address staff issues, to create new standards and then to build up new protocols for communication,” Avula said during the press conference. “Some of those we saw put into action here. But obviously there's ongoing work that needs to be done. We don't know the acute cause of the increased sedimentation here, and so after we get out of this recovery phase, then our eyes will turn towards the prevention-focused work that we need to be doing to ensure that this doesn't happen.”
