THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 29, 1995 TAG: 9504290328
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
City Manager James K. Spore and City Attorney Leslie L. Lilley were beaming Friday morning as they signed the last page of the document that resolved the 12 1/2-year Lake Gaston dispute.
Flanked by Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf and City Council members Louis R. Jones and John A. Baum, the two men excitedly inked their names under the scrutiny of three television cameras, a handful of reporters and a dozen clapping officials.
A few minutes later, about 200 miles away, two top North Carolina state officials added their signatures, without ceremony, to page 16 of the settlement, and the deal was done.
It was almost anti-climactic, to have a decade of legal battles and four months of intense negotiations come to an end in a nondescript office on the 14th floor of a building in Raleigh's government complex.
``Relief'' was the emotion most of the players said they experienced after knowing for sure that the agreement had been endorsed by both sides.
``It'll be nice to call my North Carolina friends again,'' said Thomas M. Leahy III, a Virginia Beach engineer and the city's project manager for the Lake Gaston pipeline. ``I started my professional career there. My best friend lives there. . . . It'll just be nice not to be at war with them anymore.''
Although this is by far the closest Virginia Beach has been to building the pipeline, there are still a few more steps to take before workers can begin laying the 76-mile concrete and steel conduit. The agreement must be ratified by both state legislatures and the City of Chesapeake within 60 days; it must pass muster at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; and one provision must be approved by both houses of the U.S. Congress.
Sounds like a lot to do to accomplish by the fall, but the man who brokered the deal is confident the conditions will be met.
``There's a high likelihood that in 60 days all these things will come to pass,'' John Bickerman, a Washington, D.C., mediator, said Friday.
``The momentum, the force of this, is such that I think it will be extraordinarily difficult for anybody to overturn.''
What has changed over the past four months to move the sides from name-calling to hand-shaking is a willingness to see each other's point of view, said Bickerman, a lawyer with the Washington firm of Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays and Handler.
``The whole relationship of the parties have changed.
``They're allies,'' he said. ``That's what's so extraordinary, that these people have begun to work together and will work together.''
Baum, one of the Virginia Beach City Council's negotiators, said, ``It was easy to be suspicious'' of North Carolina when the mediation began last December, after both sides agreed to try to settle their differences out of court. But Bickerman's patience and both parties' perseverance kept them at the table and on the phone long enough to craft a deal.
``It has been a long process,'' said Jones, the other council member on the negotiating team. ``The city of Virginia Beach, the city of Chesapeake and the entire South Hampton Roads region has been working a long time to get to this point.
``I feel a great sense of relief,'' he said, ``and, at the same time, satisfaction that we will be able to move forward in this process.''
Both councilmen made their comments at a special council meeting shortly before the signing, at which the City Council voted 10-0, with one member absent, to move ahead with the deal. The council also authorized the city of Norfolk, by a 10-0 vote, to proceed with an expansion of a water treatment plant that will be needed to process the extra water from Lake Gaston.
Councilman W.W. Harrison Jr. was out of town and unable to vote.
Friday was the last day Norfolk's contractor could be notified to proceed with the water plant expansion. After Friday, the expansion, and therefore the flow of water from Lake Gaston, would have been delayed another few years.
Although they had originally planned to ink the deal earlier in the week, it was symbolic, perhaps, that the two sides signed on the day that drove them together. The contractor's deadline had been their target date all along. It had helped the two sides to face each other in a different way and helped the parties see their shared interest in a settlement rather than their differences in a courtroom.
Friday was not a time for celebratory champagne, City Attorney Lilley said, or even for tall glasses of water: Those days will come later, when the legislatures give their OK, and the first gallons course through the pipeline.
``I look forward to a very active 60 days,'' Oberndorf said, in closing the signing ceremony. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN, Staff
In Virginia Beach, city officials happily inked the agreement. From
left, City Attorney Leslie L. Lilley, Councilman Louis R. Jones,
Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf, Councilman John A. Baum and City Manager
James K. Spore attend the signing ceremony. Within the next 60 days,
several important steps must be taken before construction on the
pipeline can begin.
KEYWORDS: LAKE GASTON PIPELINE WATER SUPPLY PLAN by CNB