Henrico Advances $304 Million East End Water Main to Cut Reliance on Richmond

HENRICO — Henrico County’s Department of Utilities plans to submit half of the design plans next week for a $304 million East End water transmission main that would finally let eastern neighborhoods draw from western Henrico plants instead of relying on the City of Richmond — a project supervisors say was unthinkable before the January 2025 Richmond plant failure left large stretches of the East End dry or underpressured for days.

The 13-mile line, built in 42-inch and 48-inch segments, is meant to unite the county under one water system. Henrico still buys about 12 million gallons a day from Richmond and remains contractually obligated to keep purchasing through July 1, 2040, but the new main would give eastern customers a county-controlled source when the city’s system stumbles again.

Whitman Requardt & Associates is designing the job. Utilities Director Bentley Chan’s timetable runs 50 percent design now, 90 percent in May 2027, 100 percent in December 2027, construction starting May 2028, and completion targeted for April 2031. The project is on budget so far, Chan told supervisors, with $50 million allocated each year.

Field and environmental surveys are done; pipe material selection is underway. Beginning this October and running through March 2027, crews will take soil samples and dig utility test holes near Lakeside and Chamberlayne and in East Highland Park and Montrose — visible reminders for residents that the line is moving from brochure maps into yards and rights-of-way.

Board Chair Roscoe Cooper of the Fairfield District used Tuesday’s meeting to mark the political arc. “Before January 6, had a conversation on the county level ever occurred to design a project like this? No,” Cooper said. “So this was a major problem, and here we are two years later and 50 percent of the design is ready. We analyzed it, we designed it, we found the money to pay for it, and by 2031, this will be done. I just don’t want to lose sight of that.”

Easement work starts in November. The alignment crosses about 7,000 feet of private property, 1,800 feet of Virginia Department of Transportation roadway, 20,400 feet of Dominion Energy right-of-way, and four acres of wetlands. The county has already mailed permission letters to roughly 45 private owners covering some 90 easements and notified other nearby owners who may feel construction impacts. Separate agreements with the Virginia Department of Transportation and Dominion Energy will be needed where the main crosses Interstate 64 and Interstate 95.

The pipeline is also a regional politics story. County Manager John Vithoulkas said Henrico keeps meeting Richmond, Hanover, and Chesterfield counterparts in a General Assembly-created regional water workgroup that must report by November on how to spend $32 million in state money for regional water infrastructure. Richmond knows Henrico’s East End main is advancing, Vithoulkas said; Varina District Supervisor Tyrone Nelson added that once the line is online, the localities will have to renegotiate what self-reliance means for the city-county water relationship — “but we’re not there yet.”

For East End households who boiled water or carted jugs in January 2025, the engineering percentages are not abstract. Pressure failures hit apartments, dialysis schedules, school kitchens, and small businesses that cannot wait for a city plant to recover. A county-owned western-to-eastern spine is insurance against a single-point Richmond failure, even while the purchase contract with the city continues for another decade-plus.

Property owners along the easement path will test whether Henrico’s outreach letters translate into fair appraisals and quick closings, or into a patchwork of holdouts that slow the 2028 construction start. Wetland crossings and interstate piercings add federal and state permit risk on top of local politics. Dominion’s long right-of-way corridor may simplify some segments while complicating others if electrical rebuilds share the same spine.

Budget hawks will watch whether the $50-million-a-year cadence survives competing capital demands — schools, public safety, and the same data-center-fueled expectations that dominate other Henrico debates. Cooper’s reminder that the county found the money after a crisis is both a victory lap and a warning: without the 2025 outage, the East End might still be waiting for a study.

All Virginia News will track the 50 percent design submittal, the November easement campaign, and the regional workgroup’s report to the General Assembly. For now, Henrico has turned a winter water emergency into a multi-year infrastructure program with a date certain — April 2031 — for eastern customers to drink from the county’s own western plants.

Email the Henrico County Board:
Dan Schmitt, brookland@henrico.gov,
Roscoe Cooper III, fairfield@henrico.gov,
Misty Roundtree, threechopt@henrico.gov,
Jody Rogish, tuckahoe@henrico.gov,
Tyrone Nelson, varina@henrico.gov,