Richmond and Henrico County officials agreed Monday on their commitment to ensure reliable water service for the region, but they have not yet settled on the best way to make that happen.

Members of the Richmond City Council, the Henrico Board of Supervisors and utility leaders from both localities met at the city’s Department of Public Utilities headquarters to discuss solutions after a series of water treatment plant failures disrupted service earlier this year.

“My hope is that today we, as elected officials of the two neighboring localities that support each other in so many ways, can reach agreement on the need to have further detailed conversations that are aimed at strengthening the resilience and redundancy of our regional water system,” Mayor Danny Avula said.

Months earlier, Henrico County leaders had discussed separatingfrom Richmond’s water supply and building their own infrastructure, in the wake of a January outage at the city’s plant that left the region without running water for days.

After several weeks of discussion, including a meeting with Hanover County leaders, Henrico officials have shifted their focus toward greater regional collaboration on the water system with Richmond and surrounding localities.

“We can do this by working to- gether,” Henrico Board Vice Chair Roscoe D. Cooper III said, “by listening to experts and engaging with our residents and communities.”

Although the meeting remained mostly cordial, occasional tensions surfaced. City Council members questioned Henrico’s increased water usage in May following a plant incident that triggered the year’s second boil advisory. They also highlighted efforts to improve the facility and raised concerns about how planned county data centers could affect water supplies.

Henrico officials reaffirmed their commitment to delivering quality water, asked for updates on an ongoing project to upgrade the Richmond plant and stressed the importance of collaboration in its operations and staffing.

f“I don’t want you guys to think that we’re trying to force anything on you; we’re not,” Henrico Supervisor Tyrone Nelson said. “What we are saying is, we buy water from you, and our people, respectfully, y’all don’t represent them. We do, and we are on the outside.”

The meeting ended with city and county officials pledging to ensure reliable water service for the region and prevent future disruptions, despite disagreements and a lack of consensus on a long-term regional solution.

“We are committed to this, and committed to working collaboratively,” City Council President Cynthia Newbille said. “We are also committed to making sure we do due diligence in terms of ascertaining what that will look like.”

Council members have indicated further talks on this topic will be held Monday, July 7.