Some Virginia cities and counties do not have unified "service authorities," consolidated utility systems that distribute water based on watersheds and gravities rather than political boundaries. Instead, water systems have been created to supply separate political unit. The water for the city of Fairfax comes from Goose Creek in Loudoun County. It is distributed through a pipeline down Hunter Mill Road, just south of Vienna.
In areas with political tension, where the "community" is defined by a political boundary, you can see service areas defined by the straight lines created by city charters and later annexation, rather than topography and natural divides. The customers have paid for different reservoirs and water treatment plants and pipelines, because politics really does makes water run uphill.
In Virginia, the 1998-99 drought showed that many communities lacked pipeline connections that would allow adjacent political units to sell large amounts of water to each other. Political disconnects were mirrored by pipeline disconnects. Roanoke County and Roanoke City will construct new facilities to share water between the jurisdictions, and when you see the politicians at the groundbreaking ceremony, look around for other examples where political geography does not reflect the physical geography.
Water law in the east is evolving to address water rights issues... or wrongs, depending upon your point of view. The Danville Chamber of Commerce adopted a Public Policy Statement in January, 2000 to object to any proposal to export Dan River water to Greensboro, NC:
Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting... is a traditional phrase in the Western United States. With its different climate, a reliable supply of fresh water is well worth a fight west of the 100th Meridian. The word "desert" is applied to areas receiving less than 10 inches of rainfall annually. Cities in one area that have maxxed out the supply within their watershed engage in "inter-basin transfers," building dams and reservoirs and pipelines to transport water from other watersheds.
Los Angeles' capture of Owens River and Mono Lake water was dramatized in the movie Chinatown. Denver has fought similar wars with the western part of Colorado, and Las Vegas with the communities upstream in Northern Nevada. Courts have had to adjudicate water rights for all users on some rivers to resolve the conflicts, and in some cases Congress has had to approve water pacts that settle multi-state water wars.
In land use planning dreams, people would move to the resources, rather than modify the natural environment to move the resources - like water - to excessive concentrations of people. However, people in Virginia communities don't passively accept natural limits on water supply any more than their Western counterparts.
Few residents in Tidewater move to Danville or Appomattox; it's a far-different lifestyle being near the bay and the ocean, compared to living in Southside farm country. As the Hampton Roads area has grown in Virginia, water distribution battles have heated up between Virginia Beach and North Carolina over a water pipeline from Lake Gaston (an interbasin transfer from the Roanoke River), and between Newport News and the Mattaponi Indians over a proposed reservoir moving Mattaponi River to a city on the James River.