RICHMOND, Va. — When Richmond's water treatment plant went under last week, leaving thousands of city residents and businesses without any kind of running water in their homes, it impacted more than just the city.
Surrounding counties, including Hanover County and Henrico County, which rely on the city's water treatment plant and distribution system found themselves in a crisis of their own.
At one point, Henrico reported around 24,000 residents were without running water.
WATCH: Mayor says power transfer failure led to 'cascade' of events at Richmond water plant
According to a 2018 copy of Richmond's Water Supply Plan, about 30% of the water generated goes toward the city, 27% goes to Henrico, 24% goes to Chesterfield, and 15% goes to Hanover. There is about 4% of the plant's water that is considered "extra," per the plan.
Henrico is in an agreement with the City of Richmond to pull water from its supply until 2040. Chesterfield's agreement lasts until 2045 and Hanover's lasts until 2035.
Henrico County said as soon as Department of Public Utilities officials were notified that an alternative power source that would keep Richmond's plant afloat would not be enough, the county decided to remove itself from the shared water source.
WATCH: Henrico County officials give update after lifting boil advisory
However, the county's plan to move water from a treatment facility in the west end of the county to the east end proved difficult, and an early morning water main break in Sandston left thousands of residents without water.
“As a county, we must do better and we will do better," said County Manager John Vithoulkas at a press conference Saturday, the same day the Henrico, Hanover and Richmond City announced a boil water advisory was lifted.
Vithoulkas said starting Monday, a third-party would evaluate the handling of the crisis, from the moment utility crews knew to shut off access to the Richmond plant to the eventual lifting of the boil water advisory.
Henrico DPU Director Bentley Chan said the county is already on its way to being a new regional water source with the newly completed Cobbs Creek Reservoir, a $280 million project that would generate 75 million gallons of raw water per day that could be taken from the James River to supply drinking water.
“The county has recently finished the Cobbs Creek Reservoir Project, that will allow for more water to be pulled out of the James River, and with that we can produce more, which means we can serve more customers, not only in Henrico but regionally," Chan said. “We know that Richmond is a big provider but what happens when Richmond can’t provide that service? Can Henrico step in with the new infrastructure we’ve built with Cobbs Creek Reservoir and our increased capacity, move water from Henrico into the City to help them? We’ve already seen that water can go there, go in that direction, so now it’s building the infrastructure to move it all around and get it there.”
WATCH: Hanover County administrator announces lifting of boil advisory
Hanover County officials said it would conduct its own after-action review within the next 30 days and look for alternative water sources.
"We’re committed with working with the regional, after-action initiatives and identify regional solutions to make sure an event of this nature never reoccurs, and we develop resiliencies in our systems. Additionally, we will also be looking at our long-term water supply planning to assure redundancy and resilience of the Hanover County systems," said John Budesky, Hanover County Manager.
WATCH: Mayor says experts in place to help if Richmond’s water plant has another outage
Chesterfield County's water remained safe during the outage.
"Because we are fortunate to have multiple water sources, the disruption Monday that led to so many impacts in our region has not affected Chesterfield Utilities customers or our system," a Facebook post by Chesterfield County Government read. "We continue to see consistent water quality and water pressure and have no concerns about continuing to provide our customers safe and reliable water service."
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