THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 2, 1996 TAG: 9610020001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: GLENN ALLEN SCOTT
LENGTH: 89 lines
Virginia Beach, the most-populous city in Virginia, set out more than a dozen years ago to tap Lake Gaston for water it must have to thrive in the next century.
The up to 60 million gallons a day of Gaston water that the Beach seeks is essential to its own well-being and that of the rest of South Hampton Roads: Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Isle of Wight County, Franklin and Southampton County.
Without more water, South Hampton Roads will be unable to accommodate comfortably its enlarging population, now about 950,000. The quest for industry to strengthen the regional economy is hampered by the well-documented reality that demand for water in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake will soon exceed what Norfolk (and Portsmouth) can easily provide in all circumstances.
But although it has invested tens of millions of dollars and will ultimately invest tens of millions more in the pipeline and the upgrading of Norfolk's Moores Bridges water-treatment plant, Virginia Beach has yet to drink a drop of Gaston water.
The Beach has overcome formidable environmental, legal and political barriers to Gaston, but North Carolina's tenacious fight against the project could delay indefinitely the moment when the city will be permitted to pump water from the lake even if the pipeline is in place.
That's not good. While construction of the pipeline proceeds, construction of housing, industrial and commercial structures in Virginia Beach and neighboring Chesapeake (Virginia's fastest-growing city) proceeds also. Chesapeake will get up to 10 million gallons per day of Gaston water from the Beach to supplement the 10 mgd it produces from its own system and the 10 mgd that Norfolk and Portsmouth can supply.
The outlook for robust development will be iffy until more water is assured. Housing developers don't much worry about the water situation, but industrial and commercial developers must.
Virginia Beach has been drinking Norfolk water for seven decades. Norfolk's system, whose current safe yield is 81 mgd was cobbled together over more than a century.
The first components - Lake Wright, Lake Taylor and the Moores Bridges plant - were assembled in the 1870s. Lake Lawson and Lake Smith were added later in the century. Lake Whitehurst, Little Creek Reservoir and Stumpy Lake were added after 1900, Lake Prince in the 1920s. Norfolk acquired Lake Burnt Mills in 1940. Around then, the Navy constructed intakes on the Blackwater and Nottoway rivers and turned them over to Norfolk to operate. Norfolk added the Western Branch Reservoir in the 1950s and dug four deep wells in the 1960s.
Norfolk built its water system when environmental obstacles were few. But environmental considerations were about to become a complicating factor when the 1960s drought signaled that Norfolk might not be able to slake swiftly growing Virginia Beach's thirst much longer. The Southeastern Virginia Water Authority, predecessor of the Southeastern Public Service Authority, was established. With help from Congress, the authority recruited the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to find a water source. The Corps of Engineers identified Lake Gaston - 100 miles from the oceanfront - as the best option,
But then Jimmy Carter became president and eliminated 23 water projects that he judged to be pork and changed the criteria for approving new projects. The Corps of Engineers returned to the drawing board, only to again finger Lake Gaston as the region's best bet.
Meanwhile, a consultant hired by the Southeastern Virginia Water Authority proposed what might have been a comparatively quick fix for South Hampton Roads' water shortfall: development of the Assomoosick Swamp (straddling the Southampton County/Sussex County line) and Somerton Creek (in Suffolk) into a reservoir yielding 65 mgd.
The water-authority board, composed of representatives from all South Hampton Roads cities and counties, found the Assomoosick/Somerton option appealing. The source would be nearby and less expensive to create than going to Lake Gaston. But Virginia Beach wanted to study the option. That was in November 1982. Two months later, the Beach told the board it favored Gaston and would pursue that objective alone, if need be. The Beach invited other localities to join in, but as the biggest prospective customer for the lake's water, the Beach thought it only right that it call the shots. Thus ended any regional search for a new water source.
No one knows if a regional effort to wring water from the Assamoosick would have succeeded. No one knows how the Gaston project would have fared if it had been undertaken by the Southeastern Virginia Water Authority instead of by Virginia Beach alone. Perhaps Virginia's state government would have entered the battle against North Carolina if the Gaston project had been a regional enterprise.
We do know that South Hampton Roads is still without water it needs. And we know that the Gaston project is held hostage in the courts and that another long drought could wreak havoc within the region.
So pray for a continuance of abundant rainfall. Pray, too, for speedy demolition of the barriers to Lake Gaston. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The
Virginian-Pilot. by CNB