THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 26, 1995 TAG: 9504260470
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
Concerned that North Carolina has not yet approved a pact that would end the Lake Gaston dispute, the City Council Tuesday deferred authorizing a $100 million expansion to a Norfolk water treatment plant.
North Carolina and Virginia Beach are within days or hours of an agreement, several people close to the negotiations have said. It was unclear Tuesday whether the council's action was a negotiating tactic or meant there would be a delay in the settlement.
The council voted 10-0 to ``delay indefinitely'' any action on the plant expansion, which would be needed to handle the lake water.
Council member Louis R. Jones, one of the council's Gaston negotiators, made the only public comments before the vote: ``Because of the fact that the state of North Carolina has not responded in the affirmative, I'm going to defer this indefinitely.''
The council spent about 90 minutes in an executive session before the public meeting discussing the Lake Gaston pipeline settlement, although none of the members would comment on it publicly. Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf said last week that the council would be taking a ``very sound risk'' by authorizing the expansion.
Virginia Beach, which would pay for any work done, has until Friday to notify Norfolk that it will fund the plant's improvements. If it doesn't, Norfolk will proceed with other construction at the plant.
Should the pipeline be approved this summer, it would bring water to a Norfolk reservoir in Isle of Wight County in the spring of 1998. But Norfolk would not be able to process that water for several additional years, if it does not expand its plant now.
The council could still meet the Friday deadline by scheduling a special session later in the week. The Virginia Beach Code allows the council to call for a special meeting without prior notice as long as all council members and members of the media have been advised.
Virginia Beach and North Carolina officials have been negotiating behind closed doors for four months, hoping to find a peaceable way to end the 13-year interstate battle. The Friday deadline has been crucial to the negotiations, City Council member John A. Baum has said, and may have pushed the sides toward a resolution.
A preliminary version of a settlement, made public several weeks ago, revealed that Virginia Beach and other southeastern Virginia cities would get to take as much as - but no more than - 60 million gallons a day from Lake Gaston, which straddles the border between the states.
In exchange, Virginia cities would agree to restrict their water draws from the lake during severe droughts. The state would agree to widen U.S. Route 17 and Virginia Route 168 to provide better tourist access to North Carolina beaches, and Northeastern North Carolina would be permitted to tap up to 35 million gallons a day from the lake. by CNB