THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 9, 1995 TAG: 9508090397
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Three years after beginning construction on the Lake Gaston pipeline, the City Council is ready to try again.
In the process, it will risk $100,000 to continue along a 12 1/2-year path of frustration that has cost taxpayers nearly $40 million.
Despite court-imposed delays, the council decided Tuesday to begin searching for contractors to build the 76-mile pipeline, complete a pumping station and install a flow-control system.
Advertisements will begin running this weekend to solicit bids for seven separate contracts. The bidding process will cost about $100,000; the construction work is expected to total $100 million.
The council approved the move unanimously and without discussion. Several council members agreed, however, that they were taking an expensive calculated risk.
If North Carolina continues to succeed in delaying the project, the money spent obtaining the bids and selecting contractors will be wasted. But if North Carolina can't manage to delay the project and the council hasn't acted, Virginia Beach will have lost precious time.
The council hopes to have the concrete and steel pipeline completed by the spring of 1998, shortly before the expiration of its water contract with Norfolk, which supplies all of Virginia Beach's drinking water.
``It's a necessary step in the process, and we want to move forward,'' Council member Louis R. Jones, the lead Gaston negotiator, said. ``It's a $100,000 risk, but in the event that everything goes right, we would save much more than that of citizens' time and money.''
``If you want to make sure everything's safe, you'll never do anything,'' fellow councilman and negotiator John A. Baum added.
The council has overseen construction of almost a mile of the pipeline, begun in 1992 and completed last summer. Part of the pumping station located at Lake Gaston also has been built.
But in 1992, a U.S. District Court judge in Raleigh blocked further construction until Virginia Beach obtained a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The commission, which has jurisdiction because it regulates a Virginia Power hydroelectric plant on the man-made lake, issued the permit to Virginia Beach on July 26.
North Carolina, however, again found a way to delay the permit. It persuaded a federal judge in Washington to review a different aspect of the pipeline project. The FERC permit will not take effect until after the judge makes a ruling, promised by Sept. 22.
Pressure from North Carolina and other pipeline opponents could add further delays.
The commission allows anyone unhappy with its decisions 30 days to voice a challenge. Then the commission has another month to reconsider its verdict.
Pipeline project manager Thomas M. Leahy III said Tuesday that he hopes to advertise for contractors throughout the month, hold a meeting with would-be applicants in the middle of September and formally open the bidding process by Oct. 2.
If he can hold to that schedule, Leahy said, the council probably would be ready to award the contracts by the end of October and construction could begin sometime in November.
The work is expected to take 2 1/2 years.
KEYWORDS: WATER SUPPLY PLAN LAKE GASTON PIPELINE by CNB