DATE: Friday, March 21, 1997                TAG: 9703210657

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONI GUAGENTI, STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   55 lines

BEACH DISCUSSES IDEAS FOR COLECHESTER ROAD

City officials Thursday evening discussed proposals to repair Colechester Road - a two-lane byway heavily damaged over the past year by the constant hauling of sand from a nearby fish pond excavation.

But residents' concerns and questions about the road went far beyond the safety of the 1 1/4-mile lane.

They quickly turned to issues of planning and the environment surrounding the 10-acre excavation on farmer Steve Barnes' property.

City officials couldn't answer many of the questions because they went beyond the realm of the problem at hand: repairing a road that has become a safety hazard for the people who live off it. More than 25 of them attended the meeting at Tabernacle United Methodist Church.

Many wanted to know why neighbors weren't notified when Barnes started the excavation early last year. The answer: a fish pond on agriculturally zoned land is a permitted use of that land, a city official said.

The city scheduled the meeting to ask residents' permission to go onto their properties to do some work if the road gets repaired, as suggested by Barnes and hauler, Thompson's Grading Co., in the next several weeks.

City engineers, over the past 10 days, have been reviewing alternative plans from Barnes and Thompson's to repair the road to handle the weight of trucks hauling the sand and eliminate the need for constant maintenance.

The estimates call for paving the road with about eight inches of a cement material, followed by another five inches of asphalt along most of the road. The city would have to align the elevated road with residents' driveways.

Residents, though, objected to the first proposal, calling it a safety hazard for everyone using the road. They said shoulders should be put on the road and the drainage ditches on the sides moved away from the edge.

Arthur Shaw, operations engineer for the Public Works Department, said the city, in addition to 30 feet of right of way, has about 10 feet to install four-foot shoulders on either side.

``My primary concern is public safety,'' said Al Henley, a Colechester resident. ``The quality of life we had on that road ceased to exist.''

``I've been here a lot of years; I've seen a lot of cars in ditches,'' said resident Stanley Lugar. ``I've seen people killed on that road. If you're going to build a road, do it safe.''

The city is also talking about widening the road from 16 feet to 24 feet, which would encroach on residents' properties.

Barnes and his attorney, Neil Lowenstein, attended the meeting, but didn't talk during the two-hour session.

The city sued Barnes and Thompson's last year for not applying for a hauling permit to continue the excavation.

The pair applied for the permit earlier this year after a Circuit Court judge ordered them to do so. Since then, negotiations have been ongoing over the cost of repairing the road.

Work at the site has been stopped since March 10, while details of the negotiations are ironed out.

Another hearing in Circuit Court is scheduled for next Friday.

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