THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 23, 1995 TAG: 9511230551
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
A group of Southside legislators filed suit Wednesday against the city of Virginia Beach, hoping to derail the proposed Lake Gaston pipeline.
The suit filed in Mecklenburg County Circuit Court alleges that the General Assembly violated the state constitution in 1992 by giving the city permission to tap Lake Gaston.
The bill, the 19-page suit alleges, should not have been approved.
Virginia Beach officials, reached late Wednesday, dismissed the suit as an act of ``creative desperation'' by politicians who misunderstood the purpose of the bill.
``That allocation was symbolic,'' Deputy City Attorney William M. Macali said. ``We didn't need the state to allocate water to us.''
In 1992, a majority of state legislators voted to allow South Hampton Roads communities to withdraw up to 60 million gallons of water a day from Lake Gaston, a man-made impoundment on the North Carolina-Virginia border, about 125 miles from Virginia Beach.
The bill was approved by a simple majority in the Senate. The suit alleges that the legislation was a ``special act'' which required a two-thirds majority.
The suit also argues that the owners of land along the Roanoke River would be deprived of water rights if the pipeline is approved.
The complainants include:
Dels. Ward L. Armstrong, D-Martinsville; William W. Bennett Jr., D-Halifax; Whittington W. Clement, D-Danville; Joyce K. Crouch, R-Lynchburg; Allen W. Dudley, R-Rocky Mount; W. Roscoe Reynolds, D-Martinsville; and Frank M. Ruff, R-Clarksville.
Sens. Virgil H. Goode Jr., D-Rocky Mount, Charles R. Hawkins, R-Chatham, and Richard J. Holland, D-Windsor, whose brother Clarence A. Holland, D-Virginia Beach, submitted the original pro-pipeline language.
Property owners along the Roanoke River in Virginia and North Carolina joined the suit.
Rocky Mount attorney T. Keister Greer, who drafted the suit, said it deals with a fundamental issue in the 12 1/2-year pipeline dispute: whether Virginia Beach can go outside its watershed to tap the Roanoke River Basin.
Greer, a nationally known water rights attorney, who has done a lot of work in California, told the Roanoke Times that he doesn't believe South Hampton Roads will be content with 60 million gallons of water a day.
Virginia Beach wants to take up to 48 million gallons of water per day from the pipeline. Chesapeake, a one-sixth partner in the project, would draw up to 12 million gallons a day, and Franklin and Isle of Wight County would each be eligible for up to 1 million gallons a day.
Leslie L. Lilley, Virginia Beach city attorney, questioned the timing of the lawsuit - more than three years after the legislative action and a few days before construction contracts are due to be signed to build the 76-mile pipeline.
``It's creative desperation,'' Lilley said. ``We have overcome every single legal objection which opponents of this vital public project have raised, and we have every confidence that this suit will meet the same fate as all of the others.''
KEYWORDS: WATER SUPPLY PLAN HAMPTON ROADS TIDEWATER
NORTH CAROLINA LAKE GASTON by CNB