On July 1, 2026, AlexRenew announced that RiverRenew was fully operational. The project, the largest piece of infrastructure ever built in Alexandria, centers on a 2.2 mile tunnel running 100 to 140 feet under the waterfront, bored by a machine the crews named Hazel and completed in March 2024. The full system, including the plant upgrades and remaining sewer work around it, took until this summer to finish, at a total cost reported near $615 million. It exists because a 2017 state law required Alexandria to stop its four combined sewer outfalls from dumping untreated overflow into the Potomac, and the deadline, after one extension, was July 1 of this year. Old Town residents lived around active tunnel construction for the better part of six years. It is done now, and it is designed to keep roughly 120 million gallons of combined sewage out of the river annually.
That project sits under a city with an unusual authorization structure, worth being specific about rather than waving at "Old Town charm." The Old and Historic Alexandria District was locally designated in 1946 and became a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and the Historic Alexandria Foundation calls it the third-oldest historic district in the country. The city's Board of Architectural Review has real authority here: exterior work visible from a public street, which can include a vent stack or a utility penetration through a historic facade, can require design review before it happens. A repair that would be routine and same-day almost anywhere else can, in Old Town specifically, need a scheduling step most markets never account for.
West End presents the opposite kind of complexity. Built out mostly in the 1960s through 1980s as dense condominium and townhome stock, it is a part of the city where the person calling about a leak is frequently a tenant or a property manager rather than the owner who can authorize and pay for the work. Getting the real decision-maker identified before a truck rolls is its own first-call problem here, distinct from a rowhouse market where the caller almost always owns the building outright.
Underneath both structures sits a water utility relationship that is also unlike the rest of this set. Alexandria does not treat its own drinking water. It buys it wholesale from Fairfax Water, sourced from the Potomac River and the Occoquan Reservoir, and Virginia American Water, a private company, bills for it and delivers it. That three-party arrangement means a water quality or billing question is often not a plumber's question at all. What is squarely verified is the number itself: total hardness rose from 148 parts per million in 2023 to 191 in both 2024 and 2025, per Virginia American Water's own reports. That is hard water on any scale, and it drives fixture and water heater work independent of the authorization questions above it.
Add in a Virginia American Water rate case working through the State Corporation Commission this year, with Alexandria's mayor citing a possible 25 percent increase, and this is a city where the caller's first question is sometimes about the water utility relationship itself before it ever gets to the actual plumbing.
