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

DATE: MONDAY, May 15, 1995                   TAG: 9505160013
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DIVVYING UP THE RIVER'S WATERS

VIRGINIA is not the arid West, where water is so scarce that the rights to it can be as precious as gold. But even in the humid mid-Atlantic, water has considerable value, and its distribution can require a careful sorting of entitlements to it.

In agreeing to let Virginia Beach pump water out of the Roanoke River basin, via an 80-mile pipeline from Lake Gaston, the state of North Carolina has not relinquished lightly its downstream rights to use Roanoke River water. In return for allowing the fast-growing Virginia municipality to divert up to 60 million gallons per day into another watershed, North Carolina would get an option on 35 million gallons per day from the lake, improvements to Tidewater roads that lead into North Carolina, and other considerations.

This is presumably satisfactory to Virginia Beach and to North Carolina, or the deal wouldn't have been struck.

Among those left out, however, is another group with a considerable interest in what happens to water within the Roanoke River basin: The 500,000 Southside and Southwest Virginia residents who live in the river's watershed upstream from the proposed diversion.

You need not be opposed either to interbasin water transfers in general or to a pipeline from Lake Gaston to Virginia Beach in particular to appreciate Southside Virginia's irritation. As noted by by 5th District Congressman L. F. Payne and several state legislators, the interests of upstream Virginia through which much of the river flows had no voice in the negotations, are ignored in the the settlement's provisions, and would go entirely unrepresented on the proposed Bistate Advisory Commission to implement the agreement.

By itself, that opposition may not be enough to block the settlement and thus the pipeline, but it won't make approval any easier.

At the federal level, Payne has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission not to expedite approval of the required environmental-impact statement. The accuracy and thoroughness of the draft environmental-protection statement, he argued earlier this month, is suspect on several grounds.

Moreover, the settlement requires General Assembly approval - a prospect whose odds have grown longer because of Norfolk's opposition to a provision to bar that city from selling its excess water not only to VIrginia Beach but also to other Tidewater localities.

Upstream opponents' fears that the pipeline would threaten economic development in their own region may be exaggerated. Those fears are not, however, altogether implausible. Upstream, by definition, means having the water first and, by legal doctrine, a right to use it. But that right is constrained by the rights of downstream users to enough water to meet their needs. Thus, water deals downstream could affect access to water upstream.

There's the fear, too, that the Virginia Beach pipeline will prove to be just the first of several interbasin transfers from water-rich rural areas to thirsty cities and suburbs. Such arrangements aren't necessarily bad. But they should pay more respect to all legitimate interests than does the proposed North Carolina-Virginia Beach settlement.

by CNB