THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 18, 1995 TAG: 9511170004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
Omaha might call legislation to bring sand to the beaches nothing but pork. To Virginia Beach - and to the rest of this region and state - the bill President Clinton signed earlier this week is more like preserving the bacon.
The legislation provides federal money to begin construction of the Hurricane Protection Project along the city's resort and residential oceanfront and for the Corps of Engineers' design of a sand-replenishment project for Sandbridge.
What will the wider beaches, higher seawall and embellished dunes protect?
For starters, they will protect Army Corps of Engineers' jobs and projects, which Mr. Clinton wanted to scale way back. Rep. Owen Pickett, 2nd District Democrat, and federal legislators from another two dozen states that have long counted on corps projects persuaded the president otherwise. The corps and Virginia Beach, for instance, have been refining the Hurricane Protection Project for 25 years.
That project will also protect the resort area of Virginia Beach, the major contributor of tourism revenues to the state, the region and the city.
And it will protect Oceanfront residences. That's no small concern to their owners, to the city that taxes them and to federal taxpayers, who foot most of the relief bill in the event of flood, storm or other natural disaster. The price tag for the Hurricane Protection Project is $93 million. Pay now, or pay more later (in money and misery, too) is its rationale.
There is a caveat: Of that $93 million, the feds' share is 65 percent and, as of this week, they are committed to only $1.1 million. That's enough to get the project started, which usually assures its getting finished. But these are unusual times. The other $60 million or so will have to be gotten over the years from a Congress and a White House vying to find projects they can cut without cutting their own throats. Much the same with the city's 35 percent share: It will have to be committed by one City Council after another.
The Sandbridge sand-replenishment plan carries some similar caveats on finance. It now has enough federal money to complete the design, but none for actual initial replenishment or maintenance over who knows how many years. Sandbridge property owners voted to become a special tax district to cover the city's 35 percent share of the Sandbridge plan.
But on one other score - efficacy - Sandbridge's project carries a bigger caveat than the resort's. Sandbridge is more fragile; ideally, oceanfront homes would never have been built there. Whether any design can effectively keep relentless nature at bay is a very big question. And if Washington continues in its cost-effectiveness, cost-cutting mode, it's a question Sandbridge and the corps could find themselves increasingly forced to answer.
KEYWORDS: STORM DAMAGE BEACH EROSION by CNB