RICHMOND, Va. — While water service seems to be getting restored in and around Richmond, experts are concerned about the economic impacts this will have had on both people and businesses, not only during the outage, but in the days, weeks and months to come.
CBS 6 spoke with experts who said the economic impact will require support from the government and nonprofits to get them through and investments to prevent it from occurring again.
"I really worry about low income households. January is a hard month for many low income households," said Colleen Heflin, a professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Administration at Syracuse University.
Heflin says the factors that already made it that way include the cold weather driving up heating costs, which last weekend's storm likely made worse, and extra costs from the holidays.
"Adding another critical expense like water in there strikes me, it's really going to stretch some household budgets to the breaking point," she explained.
Heflin, who studies poverty and economic well-being, says the outages will have indirect costs like lost wages because their jobs shutdown or they had to stay home to look after their kids.
Direct costs include having to buy water and potentially eating out more.
"That cost is going to push off other essential expenses. Some households are going to be forced to choose between buying or getting transportation to get to water and food or medical care," she said.
She says low income-households will need a month or more to recover financially and that will lead to more issues and needs.
"I would suspect to see increased need for food from food banks. Most likely going to have more utilities going unpaid. I bet February rent is going to be an issue for households," Heflin said.
Helfin says she hopes utilities and landlords will show some leniency when that time comes -- while local governments and neighbors need to checking in on their most vulnerable residents and neighbors.
"All medical providers are really going to have to be, hopefully, screening for food insecurity and access to prescription drugs," Heflin said.
Similar concerns about the current and future impacts on the business community.
Mae Stevens is CEO of the American Business Water Coalition who advocate for more federal funding in water infrastructure.
Last September, they were involved in a report that looked at the potential costs of a prolonged water outage in the D.C. region.
"I've been following very closely. And unfortunately, it's both devastating and completely preventable," Stevens said. "The local economy loses about $150 million per day. That amount, that number, goes up every day that the crisis goes on. So you can see similar, similar effects on the Richmond economy as well."
Stevens says their study found small businesses and the ones most reliant on water that start feeling it first.
"Because they don't have the ability to be closed for a couple days if you're a local coffee shop, then you really need to be open every day to keep having customers come in," Stevens said.
Stevens says they want Congress to allocate more to the issue, adding $1 trillion is needed just to keep things in a state of good repair.
"We are spending about $3 billion per year. That's all that the federal government is investing in water infrastructure across the entire country, and of that, Virginia gets about $23 million," Stevens said.
CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.
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