THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 17, 1995 TAG: 9507170039
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
In the war over the Lake Gaston pipeline, the battleground has moved from environmental claims to whether Hampton Roads really is short of water.
After more than a decade of attacking the environmental consequences of the 76-mile pipeline, North Carolina filed a legal motion last week that never mentioned threats to wetlands or spawning fish.
Instead, the document focused on South Hampton Roads' repeated assertion that it needs up to 60 million gallons of Gaston water a day.
Boiled down, the North Carolina argument holds that growth in this region is no longer exploding and that residents have learned to be frugal with their water. The combination, state officials contend, means that there is plenty of water for current needs and cheaper solutions for future ones.
North Carolina also challenged 3 1/2 years of water restrictions that forbid Virginia Beach residents from watering their lawns, washing their cars or filling kids' wading pools.
There's plenty of water in Hampton Roads if only the region's cities would share their supplies, North Carolina said.
Virginia Beach officials bristled at the charges. Water supplies are not so easily predicted, City Manager James K. Spore said Friday, and the city is unwilling to be cavalier about something so vital to its economy and the safety of its residents.
Thomas M. Leahy III, the Beach's pipeline project manager, fired off a series of rebuttals:
Every federal and state agency that has considered the issue - and there have been nine - has said the water is needed.
North Carolina has overestimated the area's water supply and underestimated the demand.
North Carolina's assumptions would be self-fulfilling. By denying Virginia Beach and pipeline partner Chesapeake the Gaston water, desired development, which would have pushed up water demand, would be choked off.
But conditions in Hampton Roads have changed since the Beach first decided to pursue Gaston water, North Carolina argued in its legal papers.
Back in 1982, it might have made sense to build the pipeline, North Carolina officials conceded. Virginia Beach was one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation, and President Reagan was planning to nearly double the size of the Navy's fleet.
But the Cold War has ended, military installations are being shut down and Hampton Roads' population boom has moderated, North Carolina said.
Water use is down, and the pipeline is being pursued merely to save face in a decade-old decision that no longer makes sense, state officials said.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission sided with Virginia Beach in a yearlong study released July 7. The commission is to decide by July 26 whether to allow Virginia Beach to build the project.
The study released last week concluded that South Hampton Roads' population will increase to about 1.3 million people by the year 2030, with more than 1.2 million of them using public water. Each resident will consume about 118 gallons of water per day, for a total of 144.6 million gallons daily. The agency concluded that the pipeline would be justified to meet those needs.
But North Carolina found fault with the commission's numbers. In its 26-page argument, state officials said the commission assumed far too much growth and projected a significant annual increase in water use, even though records show a flat or declining demand for water in South Hampton Roads since 1990.
That conservation and efficiency, North Carolina officials said, will continue to improve.
As water rates increase, people start to conserve naturally, state officials argued. They catch leaks faster, water their lawns at night and buy water-saving shower heads.
And, most of all, water usage will decrease, the officials said, because of improved toilets.
Old toilets use 6 gallons of water per flush. New ones, required as of last year in all new homes, use only 1.6 gallons. As more new toilets are installed, North Carolina noted, the use of water per person will drop.
All those changes may be minor, but together, they add up to big savings, according to their motion.
When combined with North Carolina's lower population estimates, they would erase the need for the $150 million pipeline, the state contended.
``Development of smaller incremental water sources as they are needed would be far more economical and would meet all the cities' needs,'' John Morris, director of North Carolina's division of water resources, said Friday.
Beach officials don't see it that way. The struggle for water has hurt their efforts to lure industry and has helped push residential development to Chesapeake and Suffolk.
They aren't willing to bet their water supply and their city's future on the chance that North Carolina's numbers are right.
``I understand their argument. I don't agree with it,'' said Spore, the Beach city manager, on Friday.
A pretty big fudge factor is needed when planning a water supply, Spore said, because the consequences of running dry are too horrible to imagine.
Tourists and businesses wouldn't come to a town without a reliable water supply, and residents would want to move out. Protracted shortages, such as almost happened in the early 1980s, pose significant health risks as well, Beach officials have argued.
Once a pipe runs dry, Leahy said, lines must be cleaned out and disinfected. That can take up to six weeks.
``We have plenty of water when it's raining,'' Leahy said. But at some unpredictable point, it's going to stop.
It's prudent to leave the reservoir levels as high as possible, he said, and the water restrictions that have been in place for 3 1/2 years are designed to do that.
Such a program is like driving with your windshield wipers on because someday it will rain, North Carolina officials retorted.
``In normal periods, there is no hydrological reason for water restrictions in the region,'' Morris said through a spokesman, ``(although) there may be political reasons. Even if a drought comes, there is a large emergency well capacity to see the region through the drought.''
North Carolina officials might be right in their conservative estimates and their predictions of water use, but such a future is not one Virginia Beach officials would want to embrace.
``If we never want to grow,'' Spore said, ``and we never have a drought . . I don't think that's what's going to happen, and I don't think that's what we want to achieve.''
Spore said he might be more willing to take the chance if the Lake Gaston pipeline created environmental havoc or deprived northeastern North Carolina of basic needs. But it doesn't, he said.
``Why should we adopt their assumptions and maybe just suffice,'' Spore asked, ``when they have more than enough?
``We're not building an atomic clock here,'' Spore said. ``You cannot measure these things and predict the future to the degree of accuracy that I think their assumptions would imply.''
KEYWORDS: LAKE GASTON PIPELINE WATER SUPPLY PLAN by CNB