THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 23, 1996 TAG: 9602230490
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
The County Board of Supervisors Thursday put off deciding whether to allow Virginia Beach permission to end the Lake Gaston pipeline in the county.
After hearing from three speakers in favor of the project and three against, the five-member board decided to appoint a committee to learn more about the proposal, and deferred consideration of the permit request until its March meeting.
Most of the 25 county residents in the audience applauded when the last speaker warned the board to be skeptical of Virginia Beach's request to empty the 76-mile pipeline into a channel that runs through the western portion of the county en route to a Norfolk-owned reservoir in Suffolk.
Virginia Beach Director of Public Utilities Clarence O. Warnstaff said the Beach would reduce drainage problems along the Ennis Pond Channel by spending $500,000 to widen culverts along the stream.
But a number of residents said they felt Virginia Beach was asking them to pay the price for the resort city's explosive growth.
``They have taken advantage of Isle of Wight,'' one woman, who did not want to be named, said after the meeting. ``They've made this mess themselves. They have overgrown.''
Virginia Beach would draw up to 48 million gallons of water a day from Lake Gaston which straddles the Virginia-North Carolina border. Chesapeake would take up to 10 million gallons per day, and Franklin and Isle of Wight could draw up to 1 million gallons per day each.
In 1987, the Board of Supervisors gave Virginia Beach permission to run 9 miles of the pipeline through the county en route to Suffolk. Three years later, to simplify the project and save $32 million, the city eliminated a pumping station and changed the pipeline's route to end in Ennis Pond.
All the federal permits the city has received since then, including the final permit issued in September, have been based on that route.
Virginia Beach officials, who said they do not have a contingency plan if Isle of Wight turns down their request, said they were pleased with the Board's actions Thursday.
``I frankly thought it was a positive response on the part of the board to defer it and work out some wrinkles,'' council member Louis R. Jones, who heads the city's Lake Gaston Task Force, said after the meeting.
Warnstaff said a one-month deferral would not throw off the pipeline's construction schedule, though a longer delay could present problems. The Beach has hired five contractors to manufacture and lay the pipe, and construction is expected to begin next month.
KEYWORDS: WATER SUPPLY PLAN LAKE GASTON by CNB