Henrico weighing regional water authority, other options in wake of Richmond plant failure

Henrico supervisors received the reports on the county’s response to the water outage during a meeting Tuesday morning. (Screenshot)

Henrico officials publicly discussed on Tuesday several courses of action they’re considering to ensure a scenario like last month’s Richmond water plant failure won’t spill over into the county ever again.

Under consideration: creation of a regional water authority that would allow more involvement from Henrico and potentially other localities; a partnership with the city to repair or replace the aging facility; and using Henrico’s recently completed Cobbs Creek Reservoir to provide for the water needs of the county and the region.

Officials mulled those options in a meeting yesterday after receiving reports from two consultants that were hired to review the county’s response to the Jan. 8-11 outage, which impacted thousands of its water customers, primarily in eastern Henrico. The reports came 30 days after the outage ended and the Board of Supervisors hired the two firms, Richmond-based AquaLaw and Whitman, Requardt & Associates.

The AquaLaw report presented a timeline that showed a lack of communication as to the severity of the failure from city utilities officials to their Henrico counterparts, among other challenges that played out during the outage.

Richmond’s water treatment plant beside the James River. (Image courtesy City of Richmond)

The report found that while initial coordination occurred after a power failure at the plant the morning of Jan. 6, it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that the city’s utilities director at the time, April Bingham, informed Henrico’s director that the plant might not come back online that day. Bingham has since resigned from her post.

The outage, which occurred during a snowstorm, resulted in loss of water service to 24,000 customers in eastern and central Henrico, which are areas served by the city plant. Efforts were made to divert water from Henrico’s treatment plant at Gaskins and Three Chopt roads that serves the western part of the county, but were hampered by lower pressure and flow resulting from the outage and repair efforts over days.

To provide greater water supply and resiliency for the entire county in the future, the report from Whitman, Requardt & Associates presented several options that each would take years to complete. They range from infrastructure upgrades costing $20 million to $170 million, capacity upgrades ranging from $328 million to $583 million, and a new regional plant at a cost of over $1 billion.

County Manager John Vithoulkas said he favored the $328 million option, which he said could be covered with recent utility rate increases. That option would provide an additional 21 million gallons per day of capacity via infrastructure upgrades and extensions over five to seven years.

John Vithoulkas

But Vithoulkas said the county has other options it can pursue as well, including use of the Cobbs Creek Reservoir in Cumberland County, and regional approaches to supplying and managing water that he was set to discuss with Richmond Mayor Danny Avula and city administrators immediately following Tuesday’s meeting.

“Is there a solution that makes sense to our ratepayers where collectively we come in and do something together? That’s the conversation that we will have,” Vithoulkas told the board.

Noting a number of water main breaks that have occurred in the county and needed to be repaired as the water system has been restored, Vithoulkas added, “Is part of the conversation with the City of Richmond, ‘Look, as a customer, do you now pay us for all the effort to make the repairs that we’ve had to make?’

“I think you go into it with some sort of intent, but also understanding that you come from a position of strength as the largest customer of the City of Richmond who also, by the way, has capacity to do more with water,” he said.

Cobbs Creek Reservoir, officially named the Virgil R. Hazelett Reservoir at Cobbs Creek, is currently being filled. (Image courtesy Henrico County)

Cobbs Creek is a $280 million project that’s been years in the making and planned for decades. The reservoir, which was substantially completed late last year and is currently being filled, will provide nearly 15 billion gallons of water supply for the region that can be pumped into the James River to offset drought conditions.

Vithoulkas said the county could just as well use the reservoir to draw water out of the river that it could then sell to other localities, including the city.

As for a potential collaboration with the city or regional approach through a water authority, Supervisor Tyrone Nelson, whose Varina district was most impacted by the outage, said he was “all in” on pursuing a regional authority.

Tyrone Nelson

“I really want to look at exploring that,” Nelson said. “If we can have our people at that water treatment plant, I will feel so much better than I do right now. But if it doesn’t work, we have to make a decision now to go on our own.”

Noting the snow that was falling outside during Tuesday’s meeting, Nelson added: “I have a certain level of anxiety until it stops snowing, every time it snows, that this will happen again. And it can’t happen again.”

Vithoulkas said he would convey those points to Avula and city administrators in their call. Later Tuesday, Vithoulkas confirmed to BizSense that the call had occurred and said Avula agreed to have a series of meetings to discuss options, including the potential for a regional effort – potentially an authority – to run the Richmond plant. He said the effort would involve just Richmond and Henrico initially.

Reached after the meeting, Avula said he welcomed conversations with Henrico on how to ensure the region’s water needs.

“We’re both very open to pursuing a regional conversation, and so we want to take initial steps to really kick the tires on whether more of a regionally integrated water system works for everybody,” Avula said. “I think next steps are for us to bring more of the experts to the table, look at the financial realities and see if we can, through joint investment, make a more resilient water system that will serve the region.”

The city has retained national firm HNTB Corp. to conduct its own after-action review, which is underway. Avula said findings from that review are expected to be released Thursday.

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