
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 5, 1990                   TAG: 9007050196
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CITY WATER IS THE PLAN TO PRAY FOR RAIN?

ROANOKE CITY'S two new councilmen apparently won't try to stop the 12 percent increase in sewer and water rates to go into effect next month. But, say James Harvey and William White, they don't want it to be the first step in a plan to increase rates by more than 60 percent over the next five years.

Fine. How many Roanokers want their water and sewer bills to go up?

Except that City Manager Robert Herbert and Finance Director Joel Schlanger recommended the increases for a purpose: to pay for $32 million in improvements to the city's water and sewer systems.

How many Roanokers want their water pressure to drop to a trickle during the next serious dry spell? How many Roanokers want the state to ban new sewer hookups in the city? How many Roanokers want the harm either predicament would wreak on the city's economic-development efforts?

Because Harvey and White join like-minded Councilmen Howard Musser and David Bowers to form a council majority, mere dissent is not enough. The ball cock now is in their tank, and the obligation falls to them to explain:

Where Herbert and Schlanger are wrong in their assessment of what's needed, and how the state Water Control Board can be persuaded not to impose a sewer-hookup ban even though the sewage-treatment plant already is operating above rated capacity;

Or, alternatively, why low water pressure, a ban on sewer hookups and a no-growth economy would be good for Roanoke;

Or, if the disagreement isn't over the need for the improvements but over the proposed financing method, what is a better way to get the money.

If the answer is cutbacks in other city spending, the opponents' obligation then is (a) to specify where to cut back and (b) to explain why water and sewer operations should be subsidized from general tax revenues.

If the answer is increased contributions from other Roanoke Valley localities served by the sewage-treatment plant, the opponents' obligation is to explain how - given the valley's record of intergovernmental "cooperation" - that can be done within the lives of their children's children.

by CNB