DATE: Monday, April 21, 1997                TAG: 9704210067

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY KAREN JOLLY DAVIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CAPE CHARLES                      LENGTH:   50 lines

CAPE CHARLES LOOKS AT ITS WATER SUPPLY AND GROWTH

The future of this tiny town will be determined by the answer to one question:

Is there enough groundwater here to support growth, particularly the sprawling country club community that developer Dickie Foster of Baymark Construction Corp. wants to build?

Nobody knows the answer yet. But Cape Charles, Northampton, Baymark and the bicounty groundwater study committee are pooling resources to come up with a permit application that will fly.

``The part that I'm pleased with is everybody's working together,'' said Tom Harris, Northampton County administrator.

In the past, Cape Charles and Northampton officials have frequently found themselves at odds. Foster wants to build his golf-course community on land that Cape Charles annexed after a bitter dispute with the county.

Now, the county is helping Cape Charles get the assistance it needs to develop that land. Northampton's supervisors asked the Eastern Shore of Virginia Groundwater Study Committee to provide a contractor who will do computer modeling of the proposed water withdrawal.

That model will show how much can be pumped without pulling salt water into the area's drinking water resources. It should be completed within the next few months.

Tim Hayes, director of the county's office for sustainable development, said the application, submitted on behalf of Cape Charles, will ask for just under a million gallons of water per day. Of that, 180,000 gallons per day will be committed to the Port of Cape Charles Sustainable Technologies Industrial Park.

``We're never going to pump that much water,'' Hayes said. The eco-industrial park plans to recycle its water, which will substantially reduce the amount its businesses will need, he said. But for planning purposes the county is using the upper-range figures.

``We're being ultraconservative here, to protect the residents and investors,'' Hayes said.

One of those investors may be Dickie Foster, who has extended his option to buy about 1,900 acres around Cape Charles from Brown & Root.

He's planning on building PGA-quality golf courses, even though Virginia Beach is doing the same at Lake Ridge. Foster said it's almost unfair to compare Lake Ridge and Cape Charles. The bay-and-creekfront golf courses he is planning will have a natural beauty that the Virginia Beach site can't touch, he said.

``I don't compete against anybody,'' Foster said. ``They compete against me. We will have the best golf course around here.'' KEYWORDS: GOLF COURSE EASTERN SHORE

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