Anna Wilson fills jars and bottles from Wayside Spring in the Forest Hill neighborhood during a citywide water outage in Richmond, on Jan. 9, 2025. (Photo by Parker Michels-Boyce for the Virginia Mercury)
Richmond’s recent water crisis left residents scrambling for drinkable water for days after a winter storm knocked out power at the water treatment plant, triggering a backup system failure and major flooding.
But for some, fresh water was just a stroll to the park away.
“I had no idea beforehand that there was a natural spring like a half a mile away,” said James Jones, a Westover Hills resident referencing Wayside Spring, one of several natural springs dotted throughout the city. “It’s about a five minute walk from the park. It’s really right in the middle of a purely residential area.”
In previous decades, there were natural springs in Carter Jones Park (formerly known as Fonticello Park), Chimborazo Park, Byrd Park, and Powhatan Hill Community Center and Park. There was even one that ran underneath the Byrd Theatre.
Back then, “the city was testing them on a regular basis,” said Randall Morrissette, an engineer who started in what is now the Virginia Department of Health’s Office of Drinking Water in 1978. “In the 1980s they started seeing the coliform bacteria, and that’s when they shut down the springs.”
Wayside Spring is the only one that is still accessible, Morrissette said. “It’s a free flowing pipe, not something you have to turn on and off.”
Drinking water contaminated with coliform bacteria and other substances can make humans and animals sick. Still, the immediate need for water pushed some Richmonders to take a chance, and several of them, like Jones, filled up their own containers with Wayside’s spring water last week.
Risky water?
Jones first learned of Wayside months ago, finding it while walking his two dogs.
“I Googled it later when I got home because I was just curious about it,” he said. “I had read that some people go there under normal circumstances to get their drinking water. And they just prefer it.”
When the water crisis unfolded, he turned to Wayside Spring to get water for him, his wife and the dogs.
“Rather than boil a bunch of water or go get in line at the supermarket or line up to any of the distribution centers, we just kind of collected all the water bottles in the house and went over there and filled them up at the spring,” Jones said. “We are perhaps being a little risky. We’re just drinking it straight from the spring.”
Residents like Jones are indeed drinking the springs’ water at their own risk. The springs have been closed for years and are not being tested or treated by the city.
“I think the only one that is accessible is at Fonticello and that is at a trickle, if at all,” said Tamara Jenkins, Public Information Manager for the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation. “The rest have been capped off.”
Unless local wells or springs are routinely tested and treated, they could contain harmful contaminants. Some contaminants found in untreated water are microorganisms like Cryptosporidium, which comes from human and animal fecal waste and can cause diarrhea, vomiting, and cramps. Legionella bacteria can also multiply in water sources; it can cause Legionnaires Disease, which is a type of pneumonia, according to Environmental Protection Agency.
Though Richmond’s springs have been officially closed to the public for a while, a 2018 Richmond Times-Dispatch article reports that the city used to regularly test the water. The newspaper would publish an analysis of the water quality, starting as far back as 1921.
Jenkins said that as of Jan. 13, she is unaware of any plans to uncap the springs for public use.
A new push to reopen the springs
To Laney Sullivan, the water crisis made it clear that having access to fresh, natural spring water should be a no-brainer.
“It’s just frustrating to be in a water crisis and know that there is a water source that’s just flowing into the sewer right across the street that not more than 15 years ago was accessible to the public and part of people’s everyday lives,” said Sullivan, who lives near Carter Jones Park, formerly Fonticello Park. “But this spring has been closed ever since I’ve lived here.”
The capped natural springs spurred Sullivan to start an online petition calling on Richmond leaders to reopen them citywide.
“We started a private Facebook called the Richmond Springs Collective,” Sullivan said.
The group now has almost 300 members.
“Through that private Facebook work group, we put together a petition, addressing it to the mayor.”
As of Monday, that Change.org petition had racked up almost 1,300 verified signatures in support of the effort to reopen the springs “while honoring Richmond’s heritage.”
A letter writing campaign to Mayor Danny Avula and city council are the next steps, Sullivan said.
“So many people who were using the springs when they were children are my age now,” she said. “A lot of people who are older than me remember going to the springs.”
Sullivan acknowledged that should the springs be made publicly accessible again, the city would need to prioritize putting testing in place to protect people’s health.
Woodland Heights resident Kyle Levesque also understands the importance of testing the water. For 18 years he’s worked in alternative and renewable energy, and in conservation. He grew up on the French-Canadian border.
“Where I come from, it’s very common that springs are used as a source for drinking, some towns just have them flowing,” he said.
When Levesque moved to Richmond, his friends told him about Wayside Springs, which he found while out on a bike ride.
“I put my hand in the water; it was summertime at this point. I was like, ‘Oh, it’s much colder than ambient,’ which is usually a good indication that it’s more artesian than a surface well,” he said. “Not science, but a good indication.”
When he started asking around about it, Levesque learned that there were multiple people he knew who were pulling drinking water from the spring, using it as their main source. Later, one neighbor started testing the spring water, hoping to use it to brew beer.
“He tested his tap water for home brewing, and he tested the well water, and the well water came back better than his tap water,” said Levesque. “It had less metals and he was boiling it.”
But Levesque said the home brewer didn’t complete the contaminants tests.
“He didn’t do a test for E. Coli and for Coliforms,” he said.
This prompted him to ask his neighbors if they should start testing the water.
“Why don’t we all band together and just pay for the bacterial tests? Let’s do it. And I got no response six months ago. At that time, no one saw value in having a backup,” he said. “And fast forward to the beginning of (last) week, I was talking to a few friends, and they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re just going to Wayside Spring.’”
The tests typically range from as low as $6.50 on up to $184, depending on what results you’re looking for. Lower priced kits don’t scan for bacteria like E. Coli, but the higher end testers do. Kits are available at hardware stores, Walmart, Target and online by doing a quick search for Bacterial Water Test Kits. Sometimes, after major storms like the most recent storms that caused flooding in Southwest Virginia, the Virginia Department of Health will give out free test kits — but those were for private wells impacted by the flooding.
Because the Wayside Springs water hadn’t been recently tested, Levesque was a bit uneasy about using it before drinking it.
He began doing some tests on his own to search for E. Coli and higher counts of coliform bacteria. In the middle of this month’s water crisis, Levesque sent a test to a lab called Enthalpy, which is accredited with locations nationwide and in Richmond. They test for metals and mercury, among other elements.
“They did a rush order, paid about $160 for the rush,” Levesque said. “The biggest thing is it’s kind of like chasing after something you don’t know is there.”
The results came back over the weekend and the lab found less than one million parts per milliliter, “which is under the detectable amount,” said Levesque. He said to get more accurate results, testing would have to be done over a period of months.
“My intent was just to try to understand the data,” Levesque said, because “until we’ve actually gotten a snapshot and a place in time, we don’t know what the condition is. And that’s where we’re at,” he said.
Though he’s not an engineer or water expert, Levesque said his goal is to “make sure the data is available for everybody. I can’t tell people that it’s safe water. That’s not my space. But I want to make sure that the information is available.”
Next, Levesque hopes to put up signs with the latest results.
“Not to say, you know, ‘red light, green light.’ Just here’s the latest tests for this location.”
The water crisis prompted some outside of the Forest Hill neighborhood to seek out Wayside Springs. Sullivan said uncapping all natural springs in the city would provide “basic community resilience resources” that are already available to citizens should the water plant fail again, because clean water access is one of “our basic rights.”
“It’s just a matter of time before Richmond has a historic flood that destroys or compromises the water treatment facility. The event that happened to take it out was very small compared to a climate event,” Sullivan said.
She added that if city officials say they don’t have the capacity to test the water or maintain the springs, residents could step up.
“We already have Friends of Parks groups, which are community groups that help maintain parks and dog parks,” she said. “And I think that Friends of Parks groups could take over maintenance of these springs if the city needed extra support.”
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