THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 10, 1995 TAG: 9503090176
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBBIE MESSINA, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
The city will resume use of an old borrow pit along Oceana Boulevard late this week after getting permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Environmental Quality.
The city's highway department had been dumping concrete, sand and rock from road projects into the lake for seven years without proper permits, including the city's own conditional use permit.
Last July, the corps became aware of the illegal operation and ordered the city to stop and to secure the proper permits under the Clean Water Act.
Now those permits have all been issued and work can resume.
The city's conditional use permit requires that additional screening with plants and fencing be put in place. Joe Russell, city highway administrator, said they may have to wait until the fall planting season but that will not prevent use of the borrow pit now.
Since July, the city has used the land surrounding the pit to store material, but none of it could be pushed into the lake. Due to space limitations, some material was taken to the landfill for disposal, Russell said.
The irregularity became apparent after a local business questioned why it was required to endure a two-year process of securing a city permit to fill the other end of the same lake while the city was not subject to scrutiny.
Russell said he was not aware that any permits were necessary.
He said he was told by the city's planning and engineering departments when the fill operation began in 1987 that ``the city does not have to issue a permit to regulate itself because the city already regulates itself.''
Plus, he said, the staff from the corps had previously visited the site and indicated that no corps permit was needed.
The corps said that ruling might have occurred, but they have no record of any corps clearances. Corps officials said they only recently learned of the city's fill operation and that it does come under the corps' jurisdiction.
Over the past seven years, the city has filled about half of its portion of the lake with ditch-cleaning spoils, sand, rock, and concrete curbs, gutters and sidewalks. It will take about five to seven more years to complete the fill operation. The abandoned borrow pit is in an industrial area where several borrow pits are operating. by CNB