
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 29, 1994                    TAG: 9406290407 
SECTION: LOCAL                     PAGE: B4    EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA  
SOURCE: BY MARGARET TALEV, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: 940629                                 LENGTH: BUXTON

CONFERENCE EXAMINES EFFECTS OF WELL DRILLING \

{LEAD} Scientists working on state and federally funded well research projects met Tuesday with the Cape Hatteras Water Use Advisory Committee for the first day of a conference about how wells affect water table levels, vegetation and other aspects of the environment.

The two-day conference is scheduled to continue Wednesday morning at the Cape Hatteras Water Association office in Buxton.

{REST} The projects discussed Tuesday by researchers - from North Carolina State University, East Carolina University and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science - are being funded by the National Park Service.

The scientists scheduled to meet with the advisory committee today are conducting projects funded by the state Department of Environmental Health and Natural Resources.

Most of the projects are scheduled to be completed by the end of 1995.

In the meantime, an environmental group and the Cape Hatteras Water Association continue to battle over the legality of constructing new wells in state owned portions of the rare maritime forest Buxton Woods.

Rich Shaw of the Division of Coastal Management said it is important to bring researchers together to ``keep as much science in this as possible. There's a lot of emotion . . . and a lot of potential politics.''

In the past two years, questions about whether new wells should be drilled in parts of this Outer Banks forest have caused conflicts among state agencies and pitted environmentalists against developers.

Without additional wells, no new homes can be constructed on the southern portion of Hatteras Island.

The state Division of Coastal Management issued the water association a permit to drill nine new wells in a state owned section of Buxton Woods maritime forest in December 1991.

One month later, the Friends of Hatteras Island, an environmental group, sued the state Division of Coastal Management for issuing a permit to drill to the Cape Hatteras Water Association

In 1993, a Superior Court ruling prevented the new wells from being drilled.

But the water association appealed that decision to the N.C. Court of Appeals in Raleigh. Attorneys for the water association and the environmental group said they expect to go before that court this fall.

Lark Hayes of the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represents the Friends of Hatteras Island, said the questions scientists are trying to answer now ``should have been answered before the permits were ever issued.''

She said that in addition to focusing on wells, ``some of the public research funds should be directed toward studying alternatives'' such as reverse osmosis and water conservation.

Both Hayes and Robert L. Outten, attorney for the water association, said that any findings by the scientists currently conducting research would not be admissible before the Court of Appeals. by CNB