RICHMOND, Va. – Like many other Richmond restaurant owners, Katie Jarvis and Natalie McNamara were frustrated to learn Tuesday morning that Richmond was, once again, under a boil water advisory.
McNamara, managing partner at the Hofheimer Building, said she learned about the advisory from several of her staff members.
“Everybody I’ve talked to today is in absolute jaw-dropping awe that this has happened again, and it’s really frustrating,” McNamara said.
Jarvis, owner of Ripple Ray’s in Carytown, said she was alerted in a similar way.
“I had staff members kind of freaking out about it,” Jarvis said. “What are you going to do right now except close down and deal with it?”
Both expressed frustration with this situation not only being Richmond’s second boil water advisory in less than six months, but with how much the city communicated directly with businesses about the advisory.
“The restaurant group that I’m a part of, they’ve been advocating for better communication if something like this happens again,” McNamara said. “I guess they didn’t prioritize that, because they just assumed nothing like this would happen again. But here we are, and it’s happening again.”
In a Tuesday night press conference, Richmond Mayor Danny Avula addresses restaurant operations during the ongoing advisory.
“As I said on the last call, you know, there are guidelines for restaurants operating under a boil water advisory. We would encourage all restaurants to do that,” he said.
Jarvis and McNamara said they are following the guidelines, but remain disappointed to have to do it again following January’s water crisis.
“There’s no reason we should have that type of training to know how to recover from a water crisis in the city, especially, you know, it’s only been a couple of months since we last talked to you,” McNamara said.
They both said the boil water advisory impacts their revenue in a number of ways.
“We rely on being open and having our customers come in,” Jarvis said. “Not having clean water affects kind of everything, everything to the front of the house to the back of the house.”
Both hope the current administration does more after this advisory to prevent this from happening again.
“I believe the restaurant industry is probably the most affected of all businesses in the City of Richmond, and so I think there’s a lot of people that need to start listening to what restaurants need,” McNamara said.
CBS 6 reached out to the city to ask about some of the concerns business owners have told us they have, and we are still waiting on a response.
CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.
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