Governor weighs in on regional water service issues as localities agree to meet

Hanover and Henrico supervisors and staff discussed regional water service challenges in a joint meeting earlier this month. (BizSense file photo)

More voices are joining a growing conversation about how to address the region’s water service challenges, including the state’s top elected official.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin convened a meeting Tuesday morning with the board chairs and top administrators for the City of Richmond and Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties. The topic of the meeting, according to the governor’s daily schedule, was “to discuss water delivery issues.”

The meeting was held as Richmond Mayor Danny Avula is working to set up his own joint session of City Council and Henrico’s Board of Supervisors, while also inviting the three counties to join the city in forming a regional advisory group to discuss the future of water service in the region, following the dayslong outage and subsequent service disruptions that have plagued the localities since January.

Avula said Tuesday he appreciated Youngkin joining the conversation and holding the morning meeting, which was closed to reporters. Noting the January outage also disrupted this year’s General Assembly session, Avula said the state is just as interested in securing water service and preventing a similar outage from occurring in the future.

Danny Avula

In a prepared statement, Avula said: “We are heartened by the collaborative spirit among regional partners as we continue to work together to ensure safe, reliable drinking water for all our communities. Today’s joint meeting between the City of Richmond and Henrico, Hanover and Chesterfield Counties, along with Governor Youngkin, was another productive step forward.”

Avula added: “The localities look forward to our continued conversations and appreciate the Governor’s shared sense of urgency.”

Later Tuesday, Henrico supervisors met in an unscheduled closed session to consult with legal counsel concerning, according to their announcement convening the session, “intergovernmental relations and agreement.” It wasn’t clear whether water was the topic of the session, which lasted a half hour and ended with no action taken by the board.

Following the closed session, which was held at the board’s afternoon informal meeting, Chairman Dan Schmitt said he couldn’t discuss specifics about Youngkin’s earlier meeting but described the discussion as encouraging.

Two weeks earlier, Henrico had held a joint meeting with Hanover’s board to discuss potential solutions and encourage Richmond and Chesterfield to join the conversation in an open meeting format. The boards said they desired to take actions to help improve the city’s aging water treatment plant and their collective distribution systems, either through a regional water authority, commission or other approach that would give the counties more say in how water is provided.

Last Friday, Avula responded with his call for an advisory group and a joint meeting between City Council and Henrico. Avula said Tuesday that the joint meeting was being scheduled, while the advisory group is set to hold its first meeting June 30.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin

In remarks to reporters during a later event Monday, Youngkin said he called the meeting with the localities to receive what he asked to be the first in a series of progress reports on the issue.

“We all experienced the January water crisis together, and that was a tough time for the city and the whole region,” Youngkin said, adding that there had been additional disruptions since then.

“I have to say, the collaboration that was displayed in the meeting was very encouraging,” Youngkin said. “There’s a strong operational plan. They’ve changed management at the Richmond water purification facility. And they’re working together.

“I’ve asked them to periodically check in with me so that we can make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” Youngkin said, later adding: “We’re just going to make sure that we don’t have issues like we had before.

“We can’t have what happened in January happen again. And I think everyone’s committed to do the work necessary to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

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