THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 10, 1996 TAG: 9601100411
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY JOE TAYLOR, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
The city has awarded six of the seven contracts needed to build the 76-mile Lake Gaston water pipeline and is spending about $1 million a week to manufacture the pipe.
Site preparation for the pumping station has begun, but a ceremony to mark the opening of the long-awaited project probably will be held in two to three months, officials said Tuesday.
The remaining contract is awaiting a permit from Isle of Wight County, where officials have raised concerns about potential pond flooding from holding up to 60 million gallons a day that the supply line will carry.
The Board of Supervisors probably will not take up the permit issue until its February meeting, Isle of Wight officials said.
Tom Leahy, Virginia Beach's manager for the pipeline project, said city officials are confident of overcoming remaining hurdles, including a lawsuit filed by a group of Virginia legislators, and North Carolina's appeal of a federal permit for the project.
``They've got venue problems. They've got standing problems. They've got all kinds of problems in that suit,'' Leahy said of the legislators' case, which was filed in November in Mecklenburg Circuit Court.
In the suit, 10 lawmakers and a group of landowners from Roanoke River basin areas that have opposed the pipeline challenged a 1992 state law authorizing the project.
But Virginia Beach officials contend, among other things, that the law isn't a necessary part of the legal foundation supporting the project and that the city shouldn't have to defend a case challenging a General Assembly-passed law.
The city also contends the case should have been filed in either Richmond, where the law was passed, or Virginia Beach, which has been pushing for the pipeline since the early 1980s to ease chronic water shortages.
The intake point for the pipeline is in Brunswick County, where the manmade lake straddles the border with North Carolina. The line will not cross Mecklenburg, the next jurisdiction west of Brunswick.
Leahy said the judges in Mecklenburg have excused themselves from the case and no new judge has been assigned to hear it. No date has been set for the numerous motions brought by the city to invalidate the suit, he said.
``There's a lot of procedural stuff that's going to take some time to resolve,'' he said.
North Carolina, which contends the water withdrawal will hurt the environment and economic development downstream of Lake Gaston, has a pending appeal of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permit for the water intake facility.
North Carolina officials repeatedly have warned that Virginia Beach is risking the wrath of its taxpayers by spending money to begin a project that the city may be forced to abandon.
The pipes that are to carry Lake Gaston water are being made this winter at plants in Maryland and Alabama, Leahy said. The city hopes to begin receiving Lake Gaston water by April 1998.
KEYWORDS: LAKE GASTON PIPELINE WATER SUPPLY PLAN by CNB