DATE: Thursday, March 13, 1997              TAG: 9703130427

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

VIRGINIA

RICHMOND - Attorney General James S. Gilmore III said Wednesday that he will ask federal regulators to suspend a Washington, D.C., sewage treatment plant's newly issued pollution permit until a public hearing can be held.

The Blue Plains treatment plant is ``an environmental time bomb that threatens Virginia and its citizens,'' Gilmore said.

The district operates the plant under an Environmental Protection Agency permit. Sewage from the district and several northern Virginia and Maryland communities is treated at Blue Plains.

Blue Plains' permit expired in February 1996. The EPA reissued the permit in January over Virginia's objections.

Gilmore said at least 20 percent of Virginia's population in localities between Washington and the Chesapeake Bay is affected by the plant's sewage discharges into the Potomac River.

He said Virginia officials question whether the new permit adequately controls sewage overflows and nitrogen discharges into the Potomac. The permit also fails to address defects in operation, maintenance and staffing that have plagued Blue Plains for 16 years, he said.

Jo Anne Robinson, the district's acting corporation counsel, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. SOUTHSIDE Councilman withdraws proposal for King statue

HOPEWELL - City Councilman Curtis W. Harris has withdrawn his long-standing proposal to have a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. placed on city property.

``You are not going to allow African-Americans to put any statue on any property of the city of Hopewell,'' Harris told fellow council members Tuesday night.

Harris' latest plan for a King statue was to place it at the city's new visitor center, a plan that other council members believed would lead to more controversy over the already controversial placement of the visitor center away from downtown.

Since 1994, Harris has proposed to put a King statue on the front lawn of the city's courthouse and at the Municipal Building.

Both proposals were rejected.

Councilman Jeffrey M. Fitch said any statue placed at the visitor center should be a product of Hopewell. ``Dr. King only visited Hopewell once,'' he said.

Fitch told Harris he wouldn't oppose a statue of Harris himself at the visitor center, based on Harris' record of fighting for civil rights.

Councilman Anthony J. Zevgolis said he also had nothing against placing a statue of King on city property, but that the new visitor center was not an appropriate place. From The Associated Press.

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