Timeline of the January 2025 Richmond water crisis

In January 2025, the city of Richmond, Virginia and its surrounding localities suffered water distribution outages due to a blizzard which impacted much of the United States. The issues started on the morning of Monday, January 6, and were mostly resolved by Saturday, January 11. The localities' water systems are interconnected, meaning that problems in Richmond City led to problems across the region. Richmond was the most impacted, followed by Henrico to the immediate north. Henrico is bordered on the north by Hanover County and on the east by Goochland County, which also faced some impacts. Chesterfield County, to the south of Richmond, was impacted very little, as they were able to effectively switch water sources and have very few customers who directly receive water from the city.

The event was preceded by multiple issues many years of flooding at the plant and followed by multiple issues, including an over-application of fluoride in April; another instance of low water pressure, this time due to raw water intake filters getting clogged, in May; and a major water main break that impacted service in Henrico County and lead to the declaration of a state of emergency.

During the crisis itself, boil-water advisories were issued for all of Richmond and Henrico, parts of Hanover and Goochland, and for 27 people in Chesterfield. These regional partners had to adapt by shutting off their own water supply from Richmond, which caused impacts there, particularly in Henrico County.

Communication issues between the city and Henrico County, and between the city and its water customers, contributed to response difficulties. Impacts were widely felt, with hospitals, schools, and sporting events being among those facing cancellations and service interruptions. Cooperation among localities and between localities and the private sector helped to mitigate some of the issues.

The event had political implications, because the Virginia General Assembly had to recess until Monday, January 13; they had originally been scheduled to start their session on Wednesday. Governor Glenn Youngkin activated the Virginia National Guard, which was made easier because of the state of emergency that had been declared earlier in the week. He called for an after-action review to more fully understand the crisis. Further, Jason Miyares, the Attorney General of Virginia, said that he would aggressively prosecute price gouging. The outage happened roughly a week into newly elected mayor Danny Avula's administration, and multiple commentators discussed his performance.

Full water service was returned by Thursday and Friday, January 9 and 10, but the boil-water advisory was not lifted until the afternoon of Saturday, January 11 due to testing requirements mandated by the Virginia Department of Health's (VDH) Office of Drinking Water (ODW). These were also required for Henrico County.

Multiple state regulators and outside reviewers pointed to a lack of speedy information-sharing as contributing to the crisis, and the crisis put the issue at the head of legislators' minds, although people had brought up the issue beforehand.

Multiple internal and external investigations were held to determine the causes of the crisis and the next steps for the affected localities, the region as a whole, and the state. Richmond's audit identified infrastructure, communication, and planning struggles as the main cause of the crisis. The reports of Hanover and Henrico focused on how communication failures from the city hampered their ability to respond.