THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 24, 1995 TAG: 9503240424
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF REPORT
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short : 36 lines
The federal government should honor commitments to support more than $115 million in hurricane protection, beach replenishment and erosion-control projects in Virginia Beach, a congressman and a city councilman told a House subcommittee Wednesday.
Rep. Owen B. Pickett and City Councilman Linwood O. Branch III were part of a parade of witnesses from across the country who oppose Clinton administration efforts to sharply cut federal support for water projects. The administration wants to provide federal aid only to projects that cross state lines. Even in those cases, it would cap the federal contribution at 25 percent of the project's cost.
At stake immediately for Virginia Beach is $1.6 million in start-up aid for a 50-year, $112 million hurricane-protection project at the resort strip. Branch suggested that the city would be unable to complete the project without federal help.
The city also is seeking more than $3.1 million in previously promised federal reimbursements for beach-replenishment along the strip from 1987 to 1993. The Clinton administration omitted those funds from its budget request but urged approval of $470,000 in preconstruction and engineering expenses for an erosion-control project at Sandbridge.
Pickett and Branch got a sympathetic hearing from the two House appropriations subcommittee members at the hearing. Chairman John T. Myers, R-Ind., and Tom Bevill, D-Ala., were sharply critical of administration plans to scale back federal involvement in flood-control and other water projects. by CNB