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

DATE: TUESDAY, November 8, 1994                   TAG: 9411080128
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IN VIRGINIA

RICHMOND - The Lake Gaston pipeline moved another step closer to construction Monday when a state regulatory agency allowed Virginia Beach to condemn land needed to build the water project.

The State Corporation Commission granted a ``certificate of public necessity'' allowing the city to obtain the property from Virginia Power, which operates Lake Gaston as a hydroelectric project.

The utility could not voluntarily transfer the land without permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The FERC which decided in June to conduct an environmental study of the pipeline project.

City officials believe condemnation will allow them to circumvent the FERC study because Virginia Power will no longer own the land, about four acres along the lake's shore.

The FERC study is the final major obstacle in a decade-long effort to build a 76-mile pipeline between Virginia Beach and Lake Gaston.

- Associated Press

Mother, 1-year-old rescued from marsh

NASSAWADOX - A Coast Guard helicopter picked up a woman and her baby off a marshy Eastern Shore island where they were stranded for 36 hours while her husband crossed six miles of tidal waterways and marsh to get help.

``The mother and child, other than being scared to death, were in good shape,'' Coast Guard Petty Officer Joe Dye said Sunday.

Cynthia Wall, 36, of Portsmouth and her 1-year-old daughter, Sarah, were taken from Myrtle Island, on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Eastern Shore, and flown to Northampton-Accomack Memorial Hospital. The woman's husband, Brian Wall, 36, was treated for a strained knee.

Mike Caison of the Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries Department said the family was on an outing on an inflatable pontoon boat when Wall struck some oyster shells that punctured the pontoons.

Brian Wall waded through thigh-deep marsh for about two miles to reach the Eastern Shore.

- Associated Press