Water, water anywhere?

 

Residents of eastern Goochland who get their water from the Tuckahoe Creek Service District and various other arrangements with Henrico County were under a “boil water advisory” for several days last week.  A catastrophic malfunction in the City of Richmond waterworks left people in the city as well as parts of Henrico and Hanover County without water for days and caused everyone else in the region served by public utilities to boil water or use bottled water.

Goochland, like its neighbors, distributed bottled water to those affected by the situation.

When the “all clear” was given on Saturday afternoon, seems like everyone in eastern Goochland turned on their taps full bore for the recommended ten minutes and soon had little or no water. After Goochland County asked utility customers to refrain from using water for a bit, pressure normalized, and all is well.

The water and sewer service in central Goochland is supplied though partnerships with Department of Corrections facilities and was not involved in the crisis.

Hopefully, Goochland and neighboring jurisdictions are doing after action reviews to prevent a recurrence, and, perhaps more importantly, find better ways to let residents know what’s going on in a timely manner.

The best way to receive important emergency information from Goochland County is the “Code Red” system that sends text and phone messages to participants. If you have not done so, please sign up at https://public.coderedweb.com/CNE/en-US/1380BACA5A57  to receive alerts and updates.

Reporting on the Richmond water crisis concentrated on what went wrong with the water works and in its utilities department. Little or no mention was made of the impact of the crisis on regional fire hydrants. Given the horrific fires in California whose devastation was exacerbated by waterless fire hydrants, it seems odd that no mention of fire hydrants was included in reporting on the water crisis. Happily, there were no reports of fires during the crisis.

Water supplies to eastern Goochland, parts of which is served by fire hydrants, were good until community wide flushing reduced pressure. The good news is that, because most of the county does not have hydrants, Goochland Fire-Rescue folk have the skill, equipment, and experience to transport water to extinguish fires wherever they may occur.

May 2025 be less weird going forward.