Henrico floats possibility of purchasing Richmond water treatment facility; consultant outlines 6 options for Henrico water system enhancements

Henrico County officials are meeting today with counterparts from the City of Richmond to discuss options to serve the region's water customers – including the possibility that Henrico could purchase the city's beleaguered water treatment facility, help form a regional authority to operate it or even become the region's primary water supplier itself.

During a work session at which the county's board of supervisors heard five options from a consulting firm for upgrading its own water system, Henrico County Manager John Vithoulkas said that the time has come for those discussions, in light of last month's water crisis caused by a failure of the Richmond water treatment facility.

That failure led to a water outage for about 24,000 Eastern and Northern Henrico customers whose water comes from Richmond.

“Let's have the conversation, see where it goes,” Vithoulkas said. “At the end of the day, I’ve heard all of you say this [water crisis] can never happen again.”

Vithoulkas cautioned that any drastic change would be complicated and take time but said that the county would be entering the discussions from a position of strength as the city's largest water customer – and as one that experienced dozens of water main breaks after the water crisis, potentially caused by those pipes drying out from a lack of water from Richmond's system. He suggested that the county could have legal recourse to require the city to pay for the associated repair costs.

The city may not have the financial appetite to replace its water treatment facility (which could cost $300 million or so), Vithoulkas said, at a time when it already has enterprise fund debt of about $900 million and combined sewer overflow system costs of more than $600 million.

"All those numbers become very large, and so it may be a significant weight on the city," Vithoulkas said. "But is there a solution that makes sense to our rate-payers where collectively we come in and do something together? And that's the conversation we're having."

During the work session, Whitman, Requardt & Associates LLP Senior Vice President Dan Seli presented supervisors with two short-term, one mid-term and two long-term options – ranging between $20 million and about $1.3 billion – for upgrading the county's water system.

Vithoulkas told the board that he was likely to recommend in his budget proposal next month the mid-term plan – a $328-million option that would result in the installation of about 70,000 linear feet (about 13 miles) of 48-inch water transmission main pipe that could provide about 21 million gallons of water per day in the county's Greater Eubank zone, which serves Eastern Henrico. That plan would take about 5 to 7 years to implement but provide about three times as much water as that region currently uses each day.

Funding that plan, Vithoulkas told supervisors, would be possible using the increased revenue from planned water and sewer fee increases of 5% to 8% in the coming years.

Other options presented by WRA included:

• a long-term plan (6 to 8 years) that would cost about $583 million and require the county to install 70,000 linear feet of 48-inch water transmission main pipe and 37,000 linear feet of 42-inch transmission main pipe, as well as a 40-million gallon per day pump station and ground tank in order to provide as much as 40 million gallons of water per day to serve the Greater Eubank and Laburnum Azalea pressure zones in Eastern and Northern Henrico;

• a $1.3 billion long-term plan that would take more than a decade and would involve the construction of a new water treatment plant in Eastern Henrico – pulling water from a source other than the James River.

• a $20 million short-term plan (3 to 4 years) to rehabilitate and bring back online four county-owned well systems in Eastern Henrico that could provide about 4 million gallons of water per day in the case of an emergency. That process could provide at least some water pressure in Eastern Henrico as a backup option in emergency situations like the one that occurred last month. Those systems currently lack the proper permits that would be necessary for them to operate and would require approval from the Virginia Department of Health and Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

• a $117-million short-term (5 to 6 years) plan to install 54,000 linear feet (or about 10 miles) of a 30-inch transmission main pipe and upgrade the Len Avenue pump station, resulting in the availability of about 7 million gallons of water per day in the Greater Eubank zone;

Henrico's water treatment facility at Three Chopt and Gaksins roads (whose capacity is 80 million gallons per day) provides water service to customers in that area and parts of Northern Henrico, and the county also sells some water to Goochland and Hanover counties.

Per the terms of its 1994 contract with the City of Richmond, Henrico also is required to purchase a minimum of about 12 million gallons of water per day from the city through July 1, 2040. It spent about $12.9 million in Fiscal Year 2023 to do so.

But Henrico officials have expressed a desire to enhance the county's system so that it can serve all of its water customers – either as a backup in the event the Richmond facility again fails, or potentially in case the county is able to end its contract with the city before 2040.

Henrico Public Utilities Director Bentley Chan suggested to the Citizen last month that that process to upgrade Henrico's system to serve all county customers could be completed within 5 to 10 years and might cost less than the $280 million Henrico spent to build the Virgil R. Hazlett Reservoir at Cobbs Creek in Cumberland County, but Tuesday's consultant's report seemed to suggest otherwise.

Vithoulkas told supervisors that he had heard them "loud and clear" and understood their desire to make Henrico self-sufficient when it comes to the provision of water. And he suggested that January's water crisis could lead to new possibilities.

"Out of every crisis there may come an opportunity," he said. "This water crisis, I think, has changed a number of things. We have the ability now to provide water not just to our residents but to residents in other regions. We have the state’s largest reservoir now. I daresay there is an opportunity now for Henrico to provide water to the City of Richmond.

Henrico has had initial conversations with Charles City and New Kent counties to the east as well as Powhatan County to the west about potentially selling water to them, Vithoulkas said, and Hanover County (which buys a limited supply from Henrico) also could eventually be interested in purchasing more.

"You have a resource now in Cobbs Creek where you have the ability to sell water. It could be that this crisis has given us clarity as far as how valuable that resource is."

An internal report about the water crisis in Henrico is due in the coming weeks.