In joint meeting, Henrico and Hanover supervisors urge regional collaboration, oversight as solution to water issues

In a joint meeting Wednesday that underscored the historical significance of the Richmond region’s water issues in recent months, members of the boards of supervisors of Henrico and Hanover counties agreed that short-term and long-term collaborative regional solutions are urgently necessary to ensure the safe and consistent provision of water to residents.

The five Henrico supervisors and seven Hanover supervisors directed Henrico County Manager John Vithoulkas and Hanover County Administrator John Budesky to involve Chesterfield County and the City of Richmond in all further discussions about the region’s water issues, with a goal of outlining initial solutions by the end of the year.

During the meeting at the Henrico Sports and Events Center in Glen Allen, all 12 elected officials expressed their support for the creation of a regional water authority or commission that would allow all four localities the opportunity to oversee, and potentially help fund, needed enhancements to Richmond’s water system, even as they acknowledged it’s not yet clear what form that body might take.

“There are a lot of questions we need to have answered,” Vithoulkas said. 

Said Budesky: “This is not something that we need to put on the back-burner, it has to be a priority. We see an urgency in this.”

A number of officials cited a variety of existing regional boards and commissions – such as the Capital Region Airport Commission and Central Virginia Transportation Authority – that successfully involve a number of localities as evidence that regional cooperation is alive and well. They suggested that addressing the water issue in a similar way would be logical.

The supervisors also directed Vithoulkas and Budesky to develop firm plans for the future water relationship between their two counties; Hanover currently purchases about 775,000 gallons of water a day from Henrico.

“I think you just heard from 12 of us that these things need to be pursued and they need to be pursued together,” Henrico Board of Supervisors Chair and Brookland District Supervisor Dan Schmitt told Vithoulkas and Budesky at the meeting’s conclusion. “They can be done concurrently.”

Henrico consultant Chris Pomeroy of AquaLaw, a firm that specializes in water-related issues, told supervisors Wednesday that a wide variety of potential solutions are available to them – from simple formal or informal mutual aid agreements, through which localities agree to help each other as needed during times of crisis, to a full-scale regional water authority, through which member localities could share the responsibilities, operation and funding of a water system.

“There is a lot of flexibility,” he said. “We have a lot of tools [under Virginia law].”

Flexibility also was the word used by Schmitt to describe a key goal of his: ensuring multiple options for the provision of water to Henrico, Hanover and the other local jurisdictions. That approach, Schmitt said, requires Henrico to upgrade its system.

“Our ability to move water form the west to the east is critically important to this process no matter where we go,” he said.

And Henrico officials already are planning system enhancements to meet that goal, spurred by January’s water crisis that left thousands of Eastern and Northern Henrico residents without water for several days, after a series of mishaps caused the Richmond water treatment facility – which supplies their water – to flood and shut down. 

In the budget they approved this spring that takes effect July 1, Henrico supervisors authorized $50 million in funding to begin the process of paying for a $350-million project that will install 13.2 miles of water transmission mains from the West End to Eastern Henrico and ultimately allow Henrico’s water treatment facility on Gaskins Road to send as many as 21 million gallons of water each day to Eastern and Northern Henrico, if needed. Currently, the system only can direct about 1.5 million gallons a day across the county, according to Henrico Public Utilities Director Bentley Chan, because the existing transmission lines are too narrow to carry more.

The board intends to continue funding the project at that amount each year moving forward until it is completed. Chan indicated Wednesday that although the entire project will take 5 to 7 years to complete, the county will bring pieces of it online as they are finished as a way to enhance capacity gradually.

For now, the project is designed merely to provide backup options, in the event of another catastrophic failure in Richmond. That’s because the county is contractually obligated to buy at least 12 million gallons of water daily from the city through July 1, 2040.

But the potential of a regional water authority could mean many options are on the table, including, potentially, the end of that contract. County officials want to be prepared for whatever might come.

“Long term, we need to do whatever we can to make sure that our residents in Henrico County don’t ever have to go without water again,” Varina District Supervisor Tyrone Nelson said. “There are people who are traumatized by what happened back in January. Nobody wants to go through that again.”

As part of the county’s expansion project, water flowing from the West End toward Eastern Henrico will intersection at three points along the Chamberlayne Avenue/Road corridor near the county-city line, allowing the potential for the county to implement interconnections there that could send some of that water north to Hanover as needed, and potentially even some south to portions of Richmond, Chan said.

That was of particular interest to officials from Hanover, who want to determine a solution for their short-term needs – particularly backup water supply options, in the event of future water issues in the region – and long-term needs. The county has hired a consultant to produce a report detailing some options, including the possibility of building a reservoir and water treatment facility to pull water from the Pamunkey River, Hanover Public Utilities Director Matt Longshore told both county boards Wednesday.

In addition to the water it purchases from Henrico, Hanover also contracts with Richmond for the provision of up to 20 million gallons of water daily and also can produce as many as 4 million gallons daily through its Doswell water treatment plant, Longshore said. On an average day, though Hanover uses only about 8.8 million gallons – but as officials plan for growth, they anticipate that by 2048, the demand in the county county exceed current supplies.

Henrico’s current daily water demand on average is about 35 million gallons per day, Chan said (roughly 8 to 10 million gallons in its eastern half and the rest in its western half), but it has the capacity to produce significantly more. Its water treatment facility could produce 80 million gallons a day now if needed and ultimately could produce about 130 million gallons daily, he said. 

And the county currently has permission to withdraw 127 million gallons daily from the James River (80 million gallons per day through its 1994 agreement with Richmond, and another 47 million gallons daily as the result of its construction of the Virgil R. Hazelett Reservoir at Cobbs Creek in Cumberland County, which upon final completion this fall will hold about 15 billion gallons of water).

Wednesday’s meeting may have been the only time the two supervisory boards had met jointly. No one in attendance was aware of another such occasion, and Vithoulkas even checked with his longtime predecessor, Virgil Hazelett, who said he couldn’t recall such a meeting, either.

“He said no, and then he went on to say ‘I wouldn’t advise it,’” Vithoulkas joked, eliciting laughter.

But the challenges felt by Henrico and Hanover in recent months as the result of ongoing failures at the Richmond water treatment facility have been no laughing matter to those involved. Both county leaders described their frustration with the reality that when they and their staffs are forced to address basic issues like water service, they aren’t able to perform their normal responsibilities.

And, officials said, it’s time to craft a regional solution to ensure the water supply is dependable for everyone.

“There has to be a partnership, collaboration with all of us and the city,” Fairfield District Supervisor Roscoe Cooper, III said. “The only way that they can help us to be confident and comfortable is to expand the relationship as far as our ability to be a part of the process.”