The conversation about how Albemarle County and Charlottesville will get drinking water for the next 50 years — and at what cost — has heated up since an engineering firm hiked a cost estimate by tens of millions of dollars.

This week’s storms dumped 5.57 inches of rain in the Charlottesville area, the fifth-highest August total for a “single event” during 110 years of record-keeping at the McCormick Observatory, according to Jerry Stenger of the University of Virginia Climatology Office.

State regulators have added 10 local rivers and creeks to a list of “impaired” waterways, but that classification doesn’t necessarily mean the waterways are off limits for recreation.

The offensive odors that regularly waft through the Belmont and Woolen Mills neighborhoods from the nearby wastewater treatment plant may soon be a thing of the past.