Richmond’s water disaster: VCU delays move-ins, semester starts on time

A five-day water outage gripped Richmond last week after a snowstorm caused a pump failure at the water treatment plant. Photo by Anthony Duong.
Jack Glagola, News Editor
A momentary power outage at Richmond’s water treatment plant following the snowstorm on Jan. 5 caused a water quality catastrophe, leading the Department of Public Utilities to issue a boil notice and advise people to conserve water on Jan. 6.
Richmonders collected snow to flush the toilet and do laundry until Friday, Jan. 10 when water pressure was restored, according to The Associated Press. The boil notice was lifted the next day, according to the city’s website.
VCU, after closing on Jan. 6 for snow, operated virtually for the remainder of the week due to the water outage. VCU Health followed emergency protocols, according to a VCU Alert.
The water outage came right as the university was preparing for students to return after winter break. Freshman move-ins typically last three days, though first-year residence halls remained closed until Jan. 12, Residential Life and Housing shared on Instagram. Returning upperclass students were “strongly encouraged” to return to campus then as well.
Maya Wick, a third-year psychology and criminal justice student at VCU, said she had to drive all the way to Chester, 16 miles away, to buy bottled water after finding Henrico stores sold out.
“Luckily, my sister lives over there so she was able to get me some water,” Wick said.
Wick said she thought about leaving the city but decided not to for her cat’s sake.
“I didn’t want to have to move him and stress him out for no reason,” Wick said.
Necessary household activities like showering, laundry, cleaning and flushing the toilet became extremely difficult when water pressure was lost. Wick said it was “really frustrating” to lose water and it left her feeling like “filth.”
“I wasn’t prepared for the pressure to go out completely, so I had to travel to nearby restrooms in Henrico to use the bathroom if I wanted to, which is a little inconvenient,” Wick said.
Wick said the city could have done more in the past to prevent this from happening, but she said the city has been doing a good job keeping people updated.
“Hopefully moving forward they’re prepared, especially since I think there’s a little bit of fear with this new snow coming in that it could happen again,” Wick said.
About two inches more of snow fell on Friday evening. No additional outages were reported and the order was lifted the next day after the water passed quality checks, according to the city’s website.
Nawh Tamara, a fourth-year kinetic imaging student, said the outage was a “terrible” situation and disrupted his day-to-day life during the last week of break.
“It was really unfortunate to see Richmond, the capital of Virginia, have this issue,” Tamara said. “It’s a scandal, to say the least.”
Sharif Blount, a third-year exercise science student, said he thought the city handled the shortage well considering the circumstances.
“A lot of people didn’t have water in general,” Blount said. “They got it back up in, what, four days? I think it went okay.”
Ajani Evans, a third-year urban planning student, said he went to several Walmarts and dollar stores to stock up on bottled water.
“Lots of water bottle showers, lots of water bottle teeth brushes and dish cleanings,” Evans said. “I used 14 water bottles washing dishes one day, it’s crazy.”
Evans said the city could have been more proactive in fixing the plant, but expressed the outage could have been much worse.
“It’s not like people were dying because the water was out,” Evans said. “There was water, there were water bottles. I think people over-exaggerate a lot, I don’t think it was that crazy — it could have been a lot worse.”