Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 9, 1995 TAG: 9506140024
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-18 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
We say: Let it die.
The deal is defective not because interbasin transfers are necessarily evil. The defect stems from the fact that too many legitimate interests weren't represented in the negotiations.
Instead, the deal was privately reached between the state of North Carolina, through which the lower part of the Roanoke River flows before its waters reach the Atlantic, and the city of Virginia Beach.
Chief among the unrepresented were the 500,000 Virginians who live in the Roanoke River watershed upstream from Lake Gaston, where the pipeline to Virginia Beach would begin. Their interest lies in the deal's potential impact as a precedent for future interbasin-transfer agreements, and in the potential effect of such agreements on upstream communities' access to the water.
The state of Virginia also was not represented in the talks. Yet the commonwealth has an interest not only in the general issue of how interbasin-transfer arrangements are to be patterned, but also, it turns out, in the specific promise to North Carolina that Virginia will upgrade its roads from Tidewater to the North Carolina line.
Finally, no other Tidewater locality was at the table. Ordinarily, there'd be no particular reason they should be: Like Virginia Beach, they're not in the Roanoke River basin; unlike Virginia Beach, they're not seeking Roanoke River water. But the proposed pact includes a provision that could prevent Norfolk from selling water to neighbors other than Virginia Beach. As with the highway improvements, Virginia Beach negotiated an item that, whatever its merits, lay outside the city's jurisdictional purview.
With less than four weeks to go, the possibility of reworking the deal to the satisfaction of all parties seems dubious. Easiest perhaps would be the Tidewater road improvements; they're needed whether or not Virginia Beach ever gets a drop from the Roanoke River basin. Perhaps, too, a bit of sweetener would persuade other Tidewater localities to drop their opposition.
If so, Southside Virginia lawmakers, with their more complicated objections, might be isolated as a minority too small to halt approval. But that also would be a recipe for more years of court battles, in a dispute that already seems to have gone on forever.
How much better if an accord could be reached, perhaps building on the Virginia Beach-North Carolina proposal, in which all parties would have had a say and with which all parties could be reasonably satisfied. That would take longer than cobbling out a legislative majority now, but in the long run it might save yet more time and trouble.
by CNB