THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 26, 1995 TAG: 9505250191
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
By the time you read this, a Bickerman clone, a surprise emissary or the Good Fairy may have mediated enough goodwill between Virginia Beach and Norfolk to wring water as well as politics out of Lake Gaston.
At this writing, however, Norfolk's first and so far final demand is $495 million from the Beach in exchange for Norfolk's agreement not to sell water west of Willoughby. That puts the Beach back over the barrel the Gaston pipeline was supposed to collapse: Norfolk's rejection of that restriction would kill the agreement between Virginia Beach and North Carolina to finally stop fighting and start completing the Gaston pipeline. Beach officials would return to federal courts and agencies and pray the thing is up and flowing before its interim contract for Norfolk water runs out and they are back where they are now: negotiating with a hard-nosed Norfolk determined to establish a crisis price as the ``benchmark'' value of its water.
Norfolk's hard-nosedness is understandable to a point: The Beach could not commit Norfolk to restricting its water sales, nor expect it to restrict them without compensation of some sort. Its veto over the interstate Gaston agreement, Mayor Paul Fraim said last week, is ``a big stick, but a stick we didn't want.''
Yet they wield it like a Neanderthal's club. Half a billion bucks over the next 32 years? We're talking Norfolk water, not Lourdes. For that sum, couldn't the Beach have become independent of Norfolk's tap forever? For that sum, couldn't it snub Norfolk now?
The short answer apparently is no, although City Council as a whole and some members in particular are ``exploring all options.'' After 12 1/2 years, the Beach Council's carefully knit unity of purpose (water) and of method (Gaston) is as close to unraveling as it's ever come - close enough that Norfolk's arguments risk overplaying its advantage, underestimating public ire and defying common sense. For instances:
Norfolk touts regionalism in tourism, transportation, economic development, public housing and school systems, but including Norfolk's water is regionally incorrect. ``You don't start regionalism,'' City Manager Jim Oliver says, ``with the one asset Norfolk has left.'' True, he says, a regional authority would mean equalization of water rates, ``but that doesn't benefit Norfolk customers.'' Oh. How long must Beach customers in this regional system subsidize Norfolk's?
And ``regional'' Norfolk's system is, says Mayor Fraim, ``in every sense; 700,000 to 750,000 people drink from it every day.'' It's just that Norfolk owns the system, operates the system and charges those half-million neighbors who tap into the system for both treating water and delivering it. Virginia Beach, says Oliver, couldn't afford Gaston ``without putting it on top of our system.''
Whose system? The Beach is paying $100 million to expand the capacity of that system.
Norfolk has demanded secrecy about its outlandish proposal, and been properly balked by Beach officials: We're talking public money here. Also public water.
Norfolk, expecting to lose its biggest water customer when Gaston comes on line, expected also the freedom to market its surplus to the highest bidder. What market? What bidder, other than Virginia Beach? Newport News and Hampton don't want to rely on Norfolk water for the 15 years or so until the Southside needs Gaston's water and Norfolk's too. A bidding war over Norfolk water might please Norfolk. But why would the Peninsula set out to spraddle the same Norfolk barrel the Beach spraddles now?
Getting the other guy - the Beach, the governor, the delegate, the senator, the council member - over a barrel may be great political sport. But getting water to Beach customers, getting out from under Norfolk's control - and getting both without getting gouged - are the goals. The reservoir of public patience with politicians and officialdom generally is running dry. Botch water, and voters will thirst for blood. by CNB