DATE: Tuesday, September 30, 1997           TAG: 9709300009

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   46 lines

SEAWALL: WHO'S GOING TO PAY?THE CONTROVERSIAL VIRGINIA BEACH HURRICANE PROTECTION PROJECT IS IN FINANCIAL TROUBLE.

Federal funding, which is supposed to make up the lion's share of the $102 million Virginia Beach Hurricane Protection and Beach Erosion Control Project, has been an uncertain proposition from the start. Federal dollars became even more elusive last week after Congress appropriated just $13 million for the coming fiscal year - less than half of the $30 million the city needed.

Trying to put the best face on clearly disappointing news, Virginia Beach officials insisted that the fact the feds are sending any money at all indicates Washington's support for the $102 million project.

``It's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,'' quipped Assistant City Manager Bob Matthias.

That's one way of looking at it. But if Congress truly supported the project, it would have fully funded it. By refusing to do so, Congress leaves the city wrestling with a decision about how to spend the meager funds it did get and worrying about how to pay for the remainder of the project if future funding doesn't materialize. Because of the way the seawall is being built - with First through Eighth streets completed and 42nd through 58th streets under way, there is virtually no way to abandon the project without leaving a big chunk of the resort area in a breech - even more vulnerable to high seas and flooding than it was before.

Preliminary indications are that the $13 million will be used for two pumping stations that are necessary for the storm drainage component of the project to work.

But even the $13 million isn't a sure thing. The Clinton administration has opposed beach-erosion projects and included absolutely no money for the Virginia Beach plan in the presidential budget. Now that he has the line-item veto, Clinton could delete this $13 million from the budget with a stroke of the pen. In fact, when he was pressing Congress to give him the line-item power, Clinton pledged to use it to excise pork-barrel projects from the budget. If he gets close to this hurricane project, Clinton may very well smell bacon.

With an unenthusiastic Congress and a hostile president, it may be time for the city to start talking about how it will finish the beyond-the-point-of-no-return seawall project without the needed federal dollars. That is likely to anger voters who were never asked if they wanted to embark on the largest public-works project in the history of the city.

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