COMMENTARY: ‘Safe Yield’ from City's Water Reservoir Won’t Meet Future Demands
Water rates will likely increase due to over-reliance on backup sources and neglected infrastructure
As the summer of 2024 heated up and rain disappeared for what seemed like months, the resiliency of the local water supply became an issue of concern. Specifically, whether the available supply – already strained by drought and development – would be sufficient to meet future needs. Taking into account the growth ambitions of the City, the College of William and Mary and Colonial Williamsburg, the answer is clearly no.
Last year, the drought-like conditions, on top of ever-increasing demand, regularly pushed our water system past State-dictated safety limits. Unfortunately, the City leadership has mostly failed for years to consider the impact of growth and drought on water supplies.
After I made several inquiries with the City, the water system came up at a City Council Meeting in June 2024. Incredibly, it became evident at the meeting that $12.5M owed to Newport News in 2024 for providing a backup water supply was never budgeted. The oversight forced Williamsburg to scramble to ask the neighboring city for a year extension on the payment due date. Newport News happily agreed, probably because the delay triggered an escalation clause in the contract. The new amount Williamsburg owes will actually exceed $18M in 2025.
The City’s Director of Public Works and Utilities reported at the time that an engineering firm already working on the utility master plan was also tasked to investigate and report on the water system’s issues. Now, six months after that Council meeting, there’s little more to tell you in terms of what the city has officially done to correct a litany of issues surrounding our water supply. But based on the data I compiled and presented to them months ago, I predict that any solutions will be costly, extend over many years, and result in sizable increases in the City’s water rates.
Background on Williamsburg’s water sources
The City’s principal source of water, Waller Mill Reservoir, covers 350 acres and holds 1.5 billion gallons of water. Built by the US Government in 1941 by damming Queens Creek, the reservoir originally provided water for Camp Perry. In 1944, the City of Williamsburg acquired the reservoir and constructed a water filtration plant in 1945.
In June 1963, the earthen dam suffered a catastrophic failure that emptied the reservoir. At the time, emergency water lines were run from Newport News up the Route 143 corridor in order to provide water for the City. This relationship persists to this day as Williamsburg maintains an agreement to purchase water when necessary, from Newport News Water Works (NNWW).
The last significant upgrades to the Williamsburg water treatment plant occurred in 1978 when a 2-story building and 2 sedimentation basins were added and in 1998 when a new control room and offices were added.
Drought conditions + development already strain water system
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request that I filed, the City provided me with a copy of an extensive report written in 2007 titled “Waller Mill Reservoir Safe Yield Evaluation Final Report.” A reservoir’s Safe Yield is the “maximum withdrawal rate available to withstand the worst drought of record in Virginia since 1930,” according to the document.
The engineers who performed the study concluded that the estimated Safe Yield of the Waller Mill reservoir equals 2.67 million gallons per day (mgd). To supplement the reservoir capacity, the City previously built a well which discharges into the reservoir at a pumping rate of 0.67 mgd. The two sources together should allow the City to generate a combined Safe Yield of 3.29 mgd, but the well is not active or permitted so not actually available.
A review of City data indicates that average daily demand for water over the past two years exceeded 2.8 mgd, above the estimated Safe Yield available from City owned sources. Unfortunately, the reality is even less positive as the demand situation in the summer of 2024 proved significantly higher than average.
During the period May 1 to September 30, demand averaged 3.23 mgd. Some periods saw even higher consumption. For example, in June, the average daily withdrawal was 3.439 mgd, with a peak of 3.989 mgd on June 26th, usage well in excess of the City’s determined Safe Yield. Only significant rainfall during the last half of July kept the City from needing to buy water from Newport News in order to satisfy demand. The City’s water supply is at risk if the area experiences a significant drought.
Well, well, well, what have we here?
Over the last decade, major changes in how water is viewed on the Peninsula developed when the State realized that the aquifers on which localities were withdrawing water were being dangerously depleted. Around that time, water withdrawal permits were restricted and reduced, prompting neighboring localities to quickly develop and implement new water strategies.
On the other hand, the City appears to have paid little attention to maintaining integral parts of the water supply. As a result, their claims about available water may not prove accurate. For example, Williamsburg failed to keep their backup water well properly permitted with the State. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VA DEQ) confirmed in an email to me in June 2024 that the ground water withdrawal permit for Williamsburg’s auxiliary well expired way back in 2005 and was not renewed.
According to the State’s administrative code, withdrawals from unpermitted wells are limited to just 10,000 gallons on average per day. This means the City can’t count on the well for 500,000 gallons of water every day coming from to supplement Waller Mill Reservoir like they claim . Further, according to VA DEQ, no withdrawals from the well have been reported to the department by Williamsburg since 2009. If there’s problems with the well, the City has not disclosed them. And even if the well is still in good working order, securing a new permit in the current climate is not guaranteed.
If the well hasn’t been used since 2009 to supplement the reservoir, it's a good bet that water consumption has been in excess of the reservoir's Safe Yield more often than previously understood. This is not the only apparent issue involving oversight of the City’s water administration. In July 2024, the VA DEQ advised me in an email that the City had not reported its water withdrawals to the State as required, for the past two years. It just so happens that Virginia Waterworks Regulations require a remedial plan be submitted when water withdrawals exceed 80% of capacity, which would seem to be the case in Williamsburg at least some of the time. On top of that, a March 2024 report from an independent engineering firm obtained from the City recommends over $600,000 in urgently needed repairs to City’s Water Filtration Plant.
City lacks water self-sufficiency, dependent on neighbor
As far back as 2009, Williamsburg’s leadership recognized the amount of water the City could produce from the Waller Mill Reservoir and the supplemental well wasn’t going to be enough over the long-term. According to a document provided by the City, an agreement was made at that time with Newport News to get water from the proposed, but never built, King William Reservoir. Williamsburg agreed to purchase a 10-percent share (2mgd) of the new reservoir’s Safe Yield.
As described in the City’s Utility Fund Water & Sewer Analysis FY22-26, “The 2009 agreement is a 50-year contract with 25-year renewals thereafter. Williamsburg has contracted for 2 million gallons of water per day (mgd). The purchase cost is based on $12.5 million per 1 mgd of water thus making our total commitment $25 million for 2 mgd. The City paid $12.5 million initially and the remaining $12.5 million is due in June 2024. However, the City can opt out of the second $12.5 million payment at which time our allotment would drop to 1 mgd.”
When the King William Reservoir project was ultimately abandoned, NNWW fulfilled the agreement using their existing water supply instead. Currently, water is pumped from Diascund Creek Reservoir and the Chickahominy River above Walkers Dam and transferred through pipes to reservoirs in Newport News for storage and use by Williamsburg. Counting this additional supply, Williamsburg has between 4.76 and 5.14 mgd of water available every day according to the consultant’s 2009 yield report. But this assumes the well is a source of .67 mgd and the City has a supply of 2.0 mgd from Newport News, both of which are now questionable.
Dependency on backup water supply poses problems
As currently approved development projects in the city are completed, demand for water will only increase. I expect that the City will likely exceed its own Safe Water Yield supply capacity during the peak summer months on a fairly regular basis over the next few summers with just normal weather. Significant drought could further reduce the reservoir’s output. Without self-sufficiency in its water supply, the only other source currently is the supply under its agreement with Newport News.
Unfortunately, using Newport News raw water supplies is problematic. The current agreement requires a payment of over $18 million to secure the second 1 mgd supply, on which the City has yet to decide how to proceed. Besides costing Williamsburg more, there are also questions about the water’s safety. Last year, Newport News announced that some of its water supply is contaminated by PFOS — one of the “forever chemicals” — at levels above regulatory limits. In response, they plan to upgrade their treatment facilities to be able to filter out the PFOS chemical from its treated water. However, Williamsburg cannot purchase treated water from NNWW and blend it with its own treated water because the two systems use different chlorination processes. So if Williamsburg decides to continue to use Newport News as its backup water source, it will have to upgrade its own water treatment facilities to remove the PFOS chemical. That would be another expense that isn’t currently budgeted.
Where does the City go from here?
We’re still waiting on the results of the study announced last June and as I mentioned, the City has maintained silence on the issue since then. Hopefully, the recommendation they receive is to develop a comprehensive Water Supply Strategy as other neighboring jurisdictions have done. This should include an attempt to better understand future water supply demands incorporating not only approved projects, but also future growth.
After-all, it's not like they don’t know about a lot of the mega projects headed our way already. For instance, Colonial Williamsburg failed in its attempt last year to rezone property adjacent to the new regional sports facility for 532 high-density residential units, commercial and light industrial — a “Sports Town” to rival nearby New Town. Expect some version of that project to come back around again. And according to emails documenting meetings with City Officials and Colonial Williamsburg, CW also plans to close the Green Golf Course and seek to rezone the property for a retirement village and separate residential community. Plans for development of its property on Pocahontas Trail and the remaining acreage on the former Spotswood Gold course have yet to be announced, though I expect them to come eventually.
The City must determine if the well can be rehabilitated and at what cost and whether they can acquire a new permit from the State. Another question to answer is whether the Safe Yield of the reservoir can efficiently be increased. These two issues will be integral in formulating the City’s long-term plans. Whether or not the City should continue to use Newport News water as a backup source also needs to be settled. Factors in that decision include negotiating lower costs as well as funding the investment needed to upgrade the filtration facility so water from the two systems can be safely mixed.
Addressing the City’s water supply is likely to be expensive and extend over many years. The City will need revenue and will undoubtedly hunt for grant money. Unfortunately, those won’t likely cover all the improvements needed, so expect sizable increases in the City’s water rates. Although having a safe, reliable water supply might not be as sexy as building Sports Towns and music venues, it’s actually an issue that’s critical to us all, and one that City leaders should be spending more time addressing. Considering what’s at stake for residents and businesses, they should also strive for greater transparency and more frequent communication about the subject going forward.
About the Writer: During a 45-year career, Robert Wilson worked with senior leadership teams to develop and implement innovative strategic and business plans that have fostered growth and profitability. His background includes direct profit and loss responsibility, forging effective multi-functional leadership teams, restoring organizations to sound financial footing, and implementation of best practices initiatives. He has demonstrated a mastery of turnarounds and troubled companies in a variety of business sectors.
Prior to retiring in 2021, Mr. Wilson was Co-COO of a $2 billion operating division of a Fortune 500 Company. He has held the positions of CEO, President, COO, and CFO in several regional and national organizations during his career. Since retiring from corporate life, Mr. Wilson has served as an adjunct instructor in the business school at Christopher Newport University.
Mr. Wilson holds a BBA degree from the College of William & Mary, a MS in Finance degree from the University of Arizona, and a Doctorate in Management from the University of Maryland Global Campus. He is a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma honorary business fraternity. Since 1979, he has held a Certified Public Accounting license in the Commonwealth of Virginia (currently inactive) and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and an original member as a Chartered Global Management Accountant.
Mr. Wilson resides in the City of Williamsburg and may be contacted at wilstar2001@gmail.com.
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