THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 17, 1996 TAG: 9610170004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By JAMES K. SPORE
LENGTH: 86 lines
In a recent column (Perspectives, Oct. 2), Glenn Allen Scott provides an inaccurate and misleading characterization of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake efforts to implement the Lake Gaston project and resolve the regional water shortage. He ignores Chesapeake's participation, wrongly suggests that the Lake Gaston project might be farther along if it had been undertaken by a regional authority and unrealistically suggests that the Assamoosick Swamp Reservoir ``might have been a comparatively quick fix'' to the regional shortage.
In fact, the Assamoosick Reservoir would not have survived the regulatory process, and Virginia Beach and Chesapeake pursued the Lake Gaston project independently only after a decade of regional inability to make any progress toward resolving the water shortage.
The Assamoosick Reservoir involved a dam on the Assamoosick Swamp plus a 200 million-gallon-per-day pump-over from the Nottoway River. In addition to the reduction in downstream flows, the reservoir would have eliminated 6,200 acres of wetlands and 7,700 acres of prime wildlife habitat. In a 1983 environmental study, the Fish and Wildlife Service called the environmental impacts ``unmitigatable.'' In 1984, the Environmental Protection Agency called them ``irreversible'' and threatened to veto the federal construction permits. An EPA veto would have terminated the project, in the same way it did James City County's 10-year effort to construct the Ware Creek Reservoir.
Both the Assamoosick Swamp and Nottoway River are tributaries of the Chowan River. North Carolina had promised to use the same legal and regulatory tactics on any Chowan Basin project that it has used on the Gaston project. Unlike the Gaston project, however, it would have been easy to kill the project in the environmental-review process. As for the ``quick-fix'' theory, even in the early 1980s, the time required to develop reservoirs that didn't have environmental baggage was measured in decades.
The Assamoosick Swamp proposal would also have created serious water-quality problems because Assamoosick and Nottoway water would have produced high levels of disinfection byproducts (DBPs). DBPs cause cancer in laboratory animals and are strictly regulated by state and federal law. The Assamoosick Swamp Reservoir would have aggravated a serious water-quality problem in this region, and it would have disproportionately impacted Virginia Beach. Because it does not originate from a swampy watershed, Gaston water will have very low DBP levels and is expected to improve water quality.
Mr. Scott argues that ``No one knows if a regional effort to wring water from the Assamoosick would have succeeded (or) how the Gaston Project would have faired if it would have been undertaken by the Southeastern Water Authority of Virginia (SWAV) instead of by Virginia Beach alone.'' Actually, history provides significant insight.
In 1973, SWAV proposed the construction of a reservoir on the Blackwater River but abandoned that effort when regional infighting and environmental opposition from North Carolina and others surfaced. In 1976, SWAV proposed to implement the Lake Gaston project but again abandoned that effort when the regulatory climate heated up and the regional will to implement the project died.
Had the Southeastern Public Service Authority (SPSA, SWAV's successor) pursued the Assamoosick Swamp Reservoir, it likely would have suffered the same fate as SWAV's two previous initiatives, once the legal, regulatory and political debates reached critical mass. Even if SPSA had stayed the course, the project still would have needed every state and federal approval the Gaston project has already received, except one. If we make a regulatory leap of faith and assume that the project could have survived those hurdles, an EPA veto would have been certain.
With respect to the Gaston project, the legal, institutional and regulatory gantlet would have been the same, no matter who pursued the project. Virginia Beach and Chesapeake have survived that gantlet to date and have completed 60 percent of the project construction. There is nothing to suggest that SWAV or SPSA could have endured a similar ordeal, or that anyone else in the region would have been willing to help fund the effort and share the risks.
The bottom line is that water shortages were predicted in southeast Virginia in the early 1970s. A decade and two droughts later, there had been no regional progress toward any solution. Virginia Beach and Chesapeake have had to absorb the majority of the water-shortage hardships in this region, and it is they who will suffer the majority of the consequences if the shortage is not resolved. How many regional reports, false and attempts to purse unimplementable projects should they have endured before taking action to protect their citizens from the next severe drought?
Every city in the region, and The Virginian-Pilot, have gone on record numerous times supporting Virginia Beach and Chesapeake efforts to implement the Lake Gaston project and secure a safe and reliable water supply for their citizens while also resolving the regional water shortage. It is time to stop the second-guessing and get behind the project for the good of the region.
KEYWORDS: LAKE GASTON ANOTHER VIEW by CNB