Delegate Michael Jones stood outside a Southside Richmond water distribution site welcoming constituents with bad news.
“It’s the water, you know, I got people [I’m taking care of],” said a resident pulling up to the Hickory Hills Community Center, nestled inside Jones district which includes some of the city’s most economically challenged neighborhoods.
“Yeah, I know, it’s on the way. We’re trying to work some other stuff too,” the delegate responded, shaking his head.
The weekend winter storm blanketed Richmond in snow, but by Monday afternoon it also knocked out the city’s water system leaving hundreds of thousands or residents without a steady or safe flow to their homes.
Jones said such outages are a result of aging infrastructure not getting the support they need, a problem his localities and others face as time passes and climate change brings harsher weather.
The answer is funding, improvements and repairs, but Jones said the city’s residents can’t afford to bear these costs alone.
“It will take hundreds of million dollars to fix some of the things we need fixing, and we don’t have those moneys here locally,” he told Radio IQ as a chilly wind blew through the community center parking lot.
Among problems, he said, was the capitol and other state buildings that exist in the city limits offering payments in lieu of property taxes. But Jones, who's a former Richmond city council member, said the payments aren’t enough and it's leaving the city high and dry.
“We’re going to need assistance from the state now or in the future,” he said, before noting the 2025 legislative session starts Wednesday and most of the Commonwealth’s 140 elected officials were likely also without running water Tuesday morning.
“The great thing is, the entire legislature is here this week to notice this,” he said.
Jones said he meant no ill will, but that it’s time the legislature and Governor Glenn Youngkin help find a solution for aging systems in the city but also those across Virginia.
“I’d love to see the governor step up and help find a fix, and Not just Richmond, Richmond right now cause we’re in dire need, but all the other localities just like Richmond,” he added.
Delegate Rae Cousins, who grew up in Richmond and woke to realize she couldn’t bathe her young daughter because of water outages, agreed.
“We’ve always talked about and been aware of the aging water and sewer systems we have,” she said of her early years in the city. “I’m sure this is an issue across the Commonwealth, and I think the legislature and Youngkin play a huge part in providing safe, clean drinking water for the residents of Virginia.”
For her that includes helping with state funds. And while $50 million is set to be given to address the city’s aging water sewage system, she said, like Jones, it’s not enough.
“The city has long raised the issue with the state and it's time we start addressing those issues in a big way,” she added.
The city's sewage upgrades are still short $350 million, she noted.
Among those better positioned to address the issue is Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell. The powerful Democrat noted the water outage was keeping him and other elected officials from doing work ahead of the 2025 legislative session set to start Wednesday.
“We can’t get into the GAB because the city can’t provide us water; the fire marshal won't let us in because there’s not enough pressure in the fire suppression system,” he told Radio IQ. “So, it’s becoming our problem.”
He too admitted aging infrastructure problems aren’t new, and Jones wouldn’t be the first -or last- elected official to demand more state funding to address the problem.
“It’s clear there’s a lot of water systems in the state that have not made the capital investments they need to be making and they’re having trouble keeping up with maintenance,” Surovell said. “We need to be looking at solutions for that.”
Governor Glenn Youngkin said in a statement his administration was coordinating with city officials and state agencies to distribute water in the city. But water was two hours late getting to a distribution site in Southside Richmond Tuesday morning, and sites were running out of potable water as lines began to build.
In an email the Virginia National Guard said they’d not received any requests to provide water distribution support to Richmond. Youngkin did not respond to questions about why the National Guard had not yet been deployed in Richmond.
The governor's mansion itself is also on the capitol grounds. Questions about whether the governor was impacted by the water outage or if he moved himself or his family out of the mansion until the problem was fixed were not returned.
Youngkin is also scheduled to give his annual State of the Commonwealth address at the capitol Wednesday to kick off the 2025 session. In an email, House Clerk Paul Nardo said he was planning on that event taking place “as usual,” followed by several fingers crossed emojis.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
