THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507290023
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
How long, O Government, until Virginia Beach can start construction on the pipeline from Lake Gaston? How long until this 12 1/2-year battle is concluded on the merits - if ever?
Last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission concurred with a string of federal and state agencies and courts:
The requested withdrawal from Lake Gaston is vital to Virginia Beach - in fact, to all of South Hampton Roads.
The impact of the pipeline on aquatic life and the physical environment is negligible, and even that is mitigable.
The impact on the quantity and quality of water for current and future needs of Southside Virginia and North Carolina is nil.
Uncovering historic artifacts during pipeline construction is unlikely, but construction will suspend if any are found.
So, for the ninth time, Virginia Beach wins on the merits. Even the judge who issued the most recent stay doubts that Carolina's arguments will prevail. So the only bar to completing the pipeline quickly should be stumbling upon Noah's Ark or Pocahontas' canoe, right?
Wrong: North Carolina's losses in courts and agencies reduce it to increasingly specious arguments, but its strategy of winning by slowly losing continues. The question most asked this past week: Will Carolina run out of court-ordered stays before Virginia Beach runs out of time?
It's a weird question, considering the findings of FERC and every other agency concerned with water-and-pipeline. The interbasin transfer that Virginia Beach seeks won't deprive either Virginians or Carolinians of water for residential, commercial or industrial use. There's plenty to go around the localities situated to need water from this basin. With every passing day, with every passing order, the Gaston dispute has become less and less about water and merit, and more and more about power and politics.
Virginia Beach is now resisting pressure to settle out of court, and no wonder: Everybody wants a piece of either its pipeline or its revenues, and some of the same folks who elbowed most for their share in past settlements now promise to behave.
If it's in everybody's interest to settle - and it is - then it's time to pose the problem differently, and not to Virginia Beach. The FERC order posed it this way: `` . . . (W)e conclude that granting the application (for the pipeline) is best adapted to a comprehensive plan for improving or developing the waterway for beneficial public purposes.'' Public purposes. The emphasis is ours. It should be everybody's. by CNB