PATRICK LARSEN: For five days in January, Richmonders lived without access to treated drinking water.

LANEY SULLIVAN: It was maddening to know that people couldnt meet their basic needs, water needs.

PATRICK LARSEN: Some Richmonders say there was a natural solution to the problem.

LANEY SULLIVAN: There was a spring across the street being diverted into the sewer that people could have been using the whole time.

PATRICK LARSEN: Laney Sullivan had a solution.

LANEY SULLIVAN: That's why I created the working group that we have on Facebook to organize around reopening the springs, and wrote the petition.

PATRICK LARSEN: Sullivan, a co-founder of Fonticello Food Forest and Richmond Springs Collective, started a Change.org petition that has over 1,800 signatures.

LANEY SULLIVAN: We're asking that the springs are reopened for non-potable use just so people have access to water in a time of a crisis again.

PATRICK LARSEN: The city stopped testing the spring water by the 1980s, and the spring at Fonticello Park closed in 2013.

Instead of flowing to the public, that water is now diverted into Richmonds sewer system.

CHRISTINA VIDA: Those springs have been freshwater springs, naturally filtered and available to the Indigenous populations, and certainly helped as settlement moved here in the 1600s through until today, PATRICK LARSEN: There are at least a dozen different natural spring locations across the city.

Christina Vida, a curator at the Valentine Museum, says the springs have been used as communal gathering spaces and for commercial ventures.

CHRISTINA VIDA: Now, the special thing about Beaufont springs is that they actually carbonated their water.

So it did have some of those natural benefits of mineral water.

But they added in that carbonation so it made it sparkling.

PATRICK LARSEN: While those businesses eventually ran dry and the city closed the springs, some Richmonders still do use the water at Wayside Spring.

JERIMONTE HIRALDO: But I've been coming here since I was a kid, ‘cause Ive been here my whole life.

PATRICK LARSEN: Jerimonte Hiraldo has been collecting spring water for the past year because bottled water has gotten too expensive.

Richmond Mayor Danny Avula has encouraged residents to use water that's been treated and tested, and Sullivan says her petition is about making the city's spring water accessible, not potable.

LANEY SULLIVAN: What we're asking is that the waters are just allowed to flow freely again in the daylight, instead of being hidden and diverted into the sewer.

PATRICK LARSEN: She says her next step is to present the petition to City Council.

Patrick Larsen, VPM News.