THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 12, 1995 TAG: 9509120261
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HERTFORD LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
Water resource engineers will go to work this week on plans that someday could link 16 Northeastern North Carolina counties in one enormous drinking water system.
Even Lake Gaston water, sought for 12 years by Virginia Beach, could be a future source of some of the water supplied to, say, Nags Head, Edenton or Elizabeth City, according to an engineer who has been hired by the Albemarle Water Resources Task Force.
``We have a lot of options, and Lake Gaston is one of them,'' said Eric T. Weatherly, a partner in Hobbs, Upchurch & Associates, a Southern Pines engineering firm that soon will start a regional water survey.
``We should have the contract details completed by this week,'' said Weatherly, who will be in charge of the survey.
Weatherly said his company had agreed to make the $42,000 study of water sources and problems in Northeastern North Carolina and report back to the Albemarle task force within six months.
``We have $45,000 to pay for the study,'' said state Rep. W.C. ``Bill'' Owens Jr. of Elizabeth City. Owens and Dare County Commissioner Clarence Skinner have been the organizers and prime movers of the regional water task force.
The money will include $25,000 for the water study from the Northeastern Economic Development Commission; $10,000 from the North Carolina Rural Center, a non-profit quasi-state agency in Raleigh; and $10,000 from the Albemarle Commission in Hertford. Hal Walker, director of the Albemarle Commission, is handling arrangements and providing some personnel for the Hobbs, Upchurch operations in the area.
The counties include Beaufort, Bertie, Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Halifax, Hertford, Hyde, Martin, Northampton, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington.
``We can't grow without water,'' Owens said Monday. ``We received input from counties, municipalities and community leaders, and the water task force idea grew out of that.
``Some counties have enough water; some could need water in emergencies or droughts, and the engineers tell us a study of available sources and interconnections could solve a lot of problems in the future.''
Weatherly said a tap onto the proposed Lake Gaston pipeline to Virginia Beach would be just one of the options studied. A provision of an earlier pact between Virginia and North Carolina would allow North Carolina to use some of the Lake Gaston water if the controversial pipeline is built.
``Our engineers have even explored reverse osmosis and other demineralization techniques which open the door to using the abundant saltwater in Northeastern North Carolina,'' Weatherly said.
Owens said the task force, organized a year ago, was particularly interested in learning how all available water sources could be exploited - if necessary - to create a single interconnected source of water that would be available to 32 Albemarle counties and municipalities if they wanted it.
``It won't be easy to get 16 counties and 16 cities to work together on this, but when everybody understands the advantages that could be realized, we think we'll have support,'' Owens said.
Across the Pamlico River in Beaufort County, Texas-Gulf phosphate mining operations can discharge as much as 60 million gallons of fresh water a day, said Owens.
``The same aquifer that supplies Texas-Gulf in Beaufort County may be available on our side of the river for use in an interconnected system,'' said Owens, ``The wells that supply Elizabeth City only supply a few hundred gallons a minute, while some wells in nearby counties can supply over 1,000 gallons a minute.''
In earlier discussions with the task force, Owens suggested that Texas-Gulf might be interested in going into the fresh water business as a sideline.
The cross-connected 16-county system is ``only one of the options,'' said Weatherly. But the engineer added that ``transmission mains (pipes) could be as large as 36-inches, depending on the final number of participants involved.''
``We'll tailor our engineering designs so the final product meets every need of the Albemarle commission and all entities involved in the regional water study,'' he said.
Owens emphasized that ``we're not going after existing water systems - we just want to make them better and more reliable.'' by CNB