The Virginia Annual Water Resources Report (Annual Report) is submitted in October of each year to the Governor and the Virginia General Assembly in accordance with § 62.1-44.40 of the Code of Virginia. The current Annual Report focuses on water quantity and supply, summarizing reported water withdrawals for the 2020 calendar year, identifying water withdrawal trends, and providing an update on the Commonwealth’s water resources management activities. The Annual Report also serves as a status report on activities associated with the State Water Resources Plan between five year updates. The Draft 2020 State Water Resources Plan was released for public comment in June 2021.

Water quality issues are addressed in the most recent biennial Water Quality Assessment Integrated Report, published by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

Chapter 1 provides an overview of water resource management activities and outcomes during 2020. This chapter discusses several DEQ programs including water withdrawal permitting and compliance, water supply planning and analysis, groundwater characterization, surface water investigations, and drought assessment and response.

Chapter 2 provides a detailed summary of all water withdrawal reporting data during the 2020 calendar year. Reported information is organized by water source and use type.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of water withdrawal reporting trends from 2016-2020, and allows for direct comparison of 2020 withdrawals to the last five years. Information is organized based on water source, use type, and permit status.

Chapter 4 identifies new, continuing, and future priorities, challenges, or other topics of specific interest in terms of water resources management at DEQ. These include updates on new legislative or regulatory actions, programmatic goals and achievements, and other items.

In addition to the main chapters, the report includes several appendices that provide: detailed information on reported use for each category (Appendix 1), the top 20 largest reported withdrawals in 2020 (Appendix 2), reported use by locality (Appendix 3), an overview of Virginia’s water resources and climate by the numbers (Appendix 4), and some additional information on water transfers (Appendix 5).