Although it is contractually obligated to purchase an average of about 12 million gallons of water per day from the City of Richmond until midway through 2040, Henrico County should have the infrastructure in place to supply all county customers with water from its own treatment facility well before then, according to a top county official.
Even before last week’s water crisis, which began when the city’s water treatment facility suffered a power outage and then a flood that forced it offline for several days – cutting off water for about 24,000 of Henrico’s 104,000 water customers (mostly those in Eastern and Northern Henrico County whose water comes from the city) – county officials had started making upgrades to Henrico’s water system, Henrico Public Utilities Director Bentley Chan told the Citizen.
The goal of those enhancements and future ones, he said, always has been to give Henrico a countywide backup option in the event something like last week’s incident ever occurred…