Where does your water come from, and where does your flush go?

The Water Path

Pick a spot in Virginia to see where its drinking water comes from, where its wastewater goes, and where a raindrop that lands there ends up.

Tap and flush cover Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield and Hanover. Rain works anywhere in Virginia.

About the data

Everything on this map comes from public data. Lookups run in your browser; addresses you type aren't stored by Apogee Geospatial and are never put in the page link.

Addresses: VGIN Composite Locator (Virginia Geographic Information Network, Virginia Department of Emergency Management). Fallbacks: Photon and Nominatim, data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
Rivers and paths: USGS Network-Linked Data Index (NLDI), live, on NHDPlus V2.1 (USGS/EPA). Richmond-metro rain and flush paths saved from NLDI on 2026-09-27. Non-tidal travel time from NHDPlus V2.1 EROM mean-annual flow (TOTMA), shown only as a range.
Watersheds: USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset (HUC12), full detail (live service; saved metro copy from the WBD release of 2025-01-08).
Water systems: U.S. EPA Community Water System Service Area Boundaries v2 (SDWIS 2025 Q2; live service, saved metro copy 2026-09-27). Sources and supply blends from the utilities' water quality reports: City of Richmond 2025, Henrico County 2023 and the Henrico County Water Supply Plan, Chesterfield County 2025, Hanover Suburban 2025.
Plants and outfalls: U.S. EPA ECHO / ICIS-NPDES facility and outfall locations (2026-09-27). The City of Richmond water plant is located by geocoding its published address with VGIN.
Source water: NHDPlus V2.1 waterbodies (Swift Creek Reservoir, Lake Chesdin) and flowlines; approximate source watersheds from NLDI basin delineation (2026-09-27).
Boundaries: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2025 (counties, Town of Ashland; Virginia outline dissolved from the counties). Hanover County Suburban Service Area (Hanover County GIS, 2026-09-27).
Travel times: Shen & Lin 2006, tidal James (Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 68:101–112); Shen & Haas 2004, tidal York (Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 61:449–461); Du & Shen 2016, Chesapeake Bay residence time (Journal of Marine Systems 164:101–111).
Basemaps: Powered by Esri. Light Gray and Dark Gray Canvas: Esri, HERE, Garmin, © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS user community. World Imagery: Source: Esri, Vantor, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community. World Topographic Map: Sources: Esri, HERE, Garmin, Intermap, increment P Corp., GEBCO, USGS, FAO, NPS, NRCAN, GeoBase, IGN, Kadaster NL, Ordnance Survey, Esri Japan, METI, Esri China (Hong Kong), © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community.
Map software: Leaflet 1.9.4 (BSD-2-Clause).

Please keep in mind

Intake locations aren't published; we show the source water body instead.
Pipe routes are schematic.
Wastewater plant assignment is approximate outside Richmond, since the counties don't publish sewer-service boundaries.
The Bay crossing is schematic.
Travel times are typical ranges from scientific studies, not a forecast.
River lines come from the medium-resolution national dataset.
This is an educational map, not an official utility record. For service questions, contact your utility.

The moving droplet only shows the order of the journey; its speed isn't physical. Private wells and septic systems are inferred from the absence of a public water system (and, in Hanover, from the Suburban Service Area), not from records.

Live services: not used yet.

Build water-path-20260927b.