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.
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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This kind of sounds like a top dollar solution to what was the City of Richmond was not doing which basic repairs to the water system in the first place.
It wasn’t limited to basic repairs alone, unfortunately. There wasn’t any attention paid to replacement of aged equipment, staff training, staff recruitment, emergency planning, or engineering design. That’s because City of Richmond has been a totally dysfunctional enterprise for decades. The same situation also applies to other city functions and departments, like sewers, taxation and accounting, roads, schools, public works, building permits, on and on. The water fiasco is really just a symptom of many diseases that have infected City government and administration for many years. I’d like to think Avula can right the ship. But the logical part of… Read more »
What was Bingham’s salary and what were her qualifications?
Let’s start there and one can easily see that during Stoney’s entire tenure there was zero focus on making improvements to the water facilities. There are quotes for upgrades going back years.
But as usual, lack of qualified or just basic common sense governance is going to cost the taxpayer more money.
Given the amount of potable water MCV had to truck in to keep operating, I’m surprise a simple resignation was all that happened.
An lo and behold, the Tyler Lane article that came out just now on WTVR reports to this very thing. This entire problem could have been avoided in 2013 had the city simply done basic maintenance.
Yet they spend money on god knows what for the next 12 years and now because of their mismanagement (possibly criminal negligence) the surrounding taxpayers have to float forming a water authority to prevent this from happening again. I guess we all know a little bit on how those in LA feel who lost their houses last month.
Fred, you and I both know this mismanagement problem will manifest itself again soon, but in some different form. The problems are too pervasive to vanish, just because a new administration comes in. The best thing the City could do would be to cede portions of itself to surrounding counties. Cease to exist. However, I doubt the counties would want any of their geography, given the problems that exist. Known and yet-to-be-known.
As a city resident, a regional authority sounds good. Frankly, Henrico has a much much better run government than the city and having them involved to keep the city honest sounds like a great idea.
There’s an expression though about a Bad Apple among the bunch….
Adding Henrico’s good management and workers to a City of Richmond system which is inept and unresponsive won’t necessarily yield a good system.
Whether the counties like it or not, ultimately we all benefit and fail together. It seems likely Hanover, Henrico, Chesterfield and Goochland would all need to be part of the regional authority since all of them use city water either directly or indirectly. The counties didn’t want to pay for a regional approach in the 90s and now is the time for all parties to work together and pay for shared infrastructure.
What no mention of the report’s name on the crisis that report was given by the consultant for Henrico….That is the BEST part. Richmond WTF Report….sure it is for water treatment facility.
could someone translate?
I’ll try: “The BEST part was what the consultant for Henrico named the report, which was not mentioned in the article. That name is ‘Richmond WTF Report.’ Does WTF really stand for ‘water treatment facility?’ lol” Just a guess.
Counties come from Viking living in fiords in 600 AD separated by cliffs but is obsolete today in Virginia and many of the functions should be assumed by Servic Districts.
The not-so-soft bigotry of no expectations.
Good idea on Henrico’s part. The Commonwealth is held back by its independent city vs county structure, one of only four states that uses it. In the other 46, cities are within counties (ala The Town of Ashland within Hanover County) and they avoid duplicate services like sewer and water service, schools, police and social services, and other administrative needs. They are able to better spread costs and plan growth regionally. Our system in Virginia handicaps us. I know better than to think that I’ll ever see the radical change we need from our state government in my lifetime to… Read more »
Bruce, see my reply to Fred Squire (above). I wonder if this idea could ever gain critical mass?
We’re on the same page basically. As a political entity the city can continue to exist in a different form. Raleigh is within Wake County (mostly, at least, I think) but it’s still Raleigh.
Anybody heard from Levar Stoney?Any statement?
A correction is needed. The Cobb Creek Reservoir doesn’t pump the water into the James River. That water is gravity fed, during summer droughts. Water is, however, pumped into the reservoir during spring runoff or when the water level is high in the James River, as it is right now.