ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, March 14, 1996               TAG: 9603140043
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-5  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH
SOURCE: Associated Press 

1ST PIPE LAID AFTER 5-YEAR WORK DELAY

THE LAKE GASTON project resumed this week. Virginia Beach hopes to get water from it in two years.

The construction of the Lake Gaston pipeline quietly resumed this week, more than five years after the $150 million project was halted.

Virginia Beach officials, nervous about the construction process and the likelihood of more problems to come, played down the event. In a clearing on the east side of the Nottoway River in Southampton County, the first concrete tube was lowered 10 feet into the ground Monday morning.

Thomas M. Leahy III, Virginia Beach project manager for the pipeline, said the moment was a little anticlimactic after anticipating the work for so long, but he was still happy to have been there.

``It's nice to see 13 years of effort finally come to fruition,'' he said Tuesday.

It's been 13 years since Virginia Beach decided to pursue the pipeline.

The construction will take two years - if it is not interrupted again with litigation from one of the pipeline's many opponents.

The pipeline from the Virginia-North Carolina border lake would bring 60 million gallons of water daily to the Virginia Beach area.

In 1990, when construction began the first time, North Carolina obtained an injunction that quickly stopped virtually all work. The court allowed the city's contractors to install only about a mile of the 76-mile route.

In September, Virginia Beach received its final federal permit and, despite an appeal by North Carolina, began the process of hiring construction contractors. The appeal is still pending, and pipeline opponents in Virginia have filed suit as well, but Virginia Beach officials have decided it's now or never.

``We're confident that we're going to prevail,'' said City Council member Louis R. Jones, who has led the council's pipeline efforts.

Contractors laid about 1,600 feet of concrete pipe Monday and Tuesday in rural Southampton County near the Sussex County border. Each piece of pipe measures 20 feet long and nearly 6 feet wide and weighs 24,000 pounds.

On a good day, Leahy said, workers can install 800 to 1,000 feet of pipe. At that rate, it will take 400 days to lay the pipeline.

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