THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604070041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
Sometime early in the next century, a drink of water in northeastern North Carolina probably will come through a $41.9 million Lake Gaston-style pipeline across four border counties.
Such an aqueduct was recommended last week in a progress report from engineers hired to study the water needs of rapidly growing populations in four northeasternmost counties along the Virginia line.
The survey showed that residents of that area - including Elizabeth City - will have to pay a pretty penny to get more water.
Currituck County, where growth is fastest, will have to pay the most because that county's portion of the pipeline will have to be longer and water will have to be pumped farther from a proposed new source in Perquimans County.
The aqueduct in North Carolina will be needed, the engineers said, for the same reason that Virginia Beach has for years pleaded and battled for life-sustaining water pumped in a new pipeline from North Carolina's Lake Gaston:
Populations in both areas are growing faster than the water available there.
``Sooner rather than later, we're going to run out of water if we don't look ahead,'' said Chairman Jimmy Dixon of the Northeastern Economic Development Commission, which paid more than half of the cost of the $45,000 hydrological survey. A further engineering study is expected to be ready for the May meeting of the commission, he said.
State Rep. W.C. ``Bill'' Owens, D-Pasquotank, organized the survey several months ago through the Albemarle Commission, which paid $10,000 for its part of the study. State planning agencies picked up the rest of the tab.
Owens and Dixon said the water task force figures will give northeastern counties an update on what they face as populations increase. The survey breaks down the pipeline costs for each of the benefiting counties and calculates user costs per 1,000 gallons of water.
The engineering firm of Hobbs, Upchurch & Associates of Southern Pines conducted the survey, which included the study of dozens of alternate water sources, including reverse-osmosis plants.
The engineers said the cheapest and most efficient way to bring water to the northeast counties would start with a new $41.9 million well field, a water treatment plant and a connecting pipeline near Winfall in Perquimans County. From Winfall, the 36-inch pipeline would follow U.S. 17 to Pasquotank County and Elizabeth City. From there the pipeline would drop down to 24 inches and cross the Pasquotank River to Camden County. A 16-inch conduit would carry water from Camden County to Currituck, where the pipeline would connect with the county system near the airport at Barco.
In an area that seems full of water, the actual amount that's safe to drink is limited and tough to come by, the engineers said. They recommended a new well field at Winfall as a source that would tap into the easily pumped Yorktown Aquifer.
The Yorktown Aquifer, under Perquimans and Chowan counties, and the Castle Hayne Aquifer, south of Albemarle Sound, provide most of the underground water in eastern North Carolina, the company report said.
But the hydrologists found that the Castle Hayne Aquifer, above Albemarle Sound, is ``thinner and less permeable than in the Central Coastal Plain.'' For this reason, the engineers said, multiple wells drawing on the more northerly Yorktown Aquifer in Perquimans County would be more reliable for the proposed new northeastern water source.
The scenarios were based on the following daily water demands for the proposed system:
Pasquotank County: 5 million gallons.
Elizabeth City: 3 million gallons.
Camden County: 1 million gallons.
Currituck County: 1 million gallons.
Perquimans County and Winfall: 500,000 gallons.
Raw water pumped from the Yorktown Aquifer would probably not require more than basic filtration and treatment to make it potable, the survey suggested. Well fields in Castle Hayne probably could require reverse-osmosis treatment, the study said.
Water layers in the Yorktown Aquifer yield as much as 400 gallons per minute and can usually be found less than 1,000 feet down, the survey said.
When the Water Resources Task Force was created last year, the group specified it would not seek to share any water that might be made available to Virginia via the proposed Lake Gaston pipeline.
Another water source, from the former Texas-Gulf phosphate mining operations near Aurora, was rejected. The phosphate mine, now foreign-owned, discharges nearly 50 million gallons of water a day into the Pamlico River in Beaufort County.
Much of the $41.9 million estimated cost of the system would be in the pipeline itself, the engineering firm reported, and is far from the estimated $142 million cost of the Gaston pipeline.
The pro-rated pipeline and storage costs in various counties and cities were given as:
Currituck: $3,114,466.
Camden: $397,466.
Pasquotank: $3,091,589.
Elizabeth City: $2,454,778.
Perquimans: $2,986,685.
Dixon emphasized that the new system would only augment existing water plants.
Financing was not discussed in the survey. Bond issues and federal aid figure prominently in preliminary studies of the construction costs.
Actual cost of the water to end-users would depend on existing water costs plus the cost to individual counties of a pro-rated share of the new system.
The engineers said probable costs in the new system would be:
Currituck: $2.24 per 1,000 gallons.
Camden: $1.63 per 1,000 gallons.
Pasquotank: $1.37 per 1,000 gallons.
Elizabeth City: $1.41 per 1,000 gallons.
Perquimans: $1.23 per 1,000 gallons. by CNB