DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9711030158

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  251 lines

POINT MAN ON THE PIPELINE TENACITY WINS IN FIGHT FOR WATER

Louis R. Jones says he has never lost a game of Monopoly.

From his first roll of the dice, Jones starts buying up property - St. Charles Place, Virginia Avenue, Marvin Gardens.

His is a game of quiet cunning: While others play from one move to the next, Jones locks up the board, slowly cornering his competitors into bankruptcy. And he'll wait as long as it takes.

The same tenacity Jones brings to the Parker Bros. game has helped sustain - and sometimes dragged out - Virginia Beach's 15-year quest for Lake Gaston water.

Jones, a Virginia Beach council veteran and former mayor, has been involved in virtually every major decision affecting the pipeline since 1982, when he helped persuade council members to tap Lake Gaston instead of the Assamoosick Swamp in Southampton County.

Without Jones' passion and focus, millions of gallons of water might not be rushing now through a 76-mile stretch of iron and concrete. That water will quench thirsts for decades and marks a coming of age for the 35-year-old Virginia Beach.

On Friday, amid speeches and back-slapping designed to celebrate the completion of the pipeline, Jones will be recognized as one of the key players in the city's most important construction project.

The Beach's water problems date to the beginning of the city's history in 1963, when Princess Anne County and the oceanfront town of Virginia Beach were merged to avoid being absorbed by Norfolk. The only problem was that Norfolk owned the water system both communities drank from.

Norfolk officials were so ticked at county leaders for trying to evade annexation that they threatened to cut off the new city's supply, triggering 35 years of regional water disputes.

In 1980, Virginia Beach's pursuit of an independent source took on a new seriousness.

The rain stopped.

Norfolk's reservoirs fell to an 84-day supply that summer.

In Virginia Beach, white vehicles were coated with dirt. Lawns browned, plants died.

Beach officials feared that the tourists they count on for revenue would wind up a water-consuming luxury they couldn't afford.

The crisis tipped the balance for a 44-year-old, self-confident businessman, who had moved into the city five years earlier. Jones, then owner of six funeral homes, had been thinking about running for a seat on the City Council. With the water issue, Jones thought he had found a campaign issue with which he could win.

Used to being boss, Jones began jockeying right after Election Day to get his council colleagues to appoint him mayor. He built a coalition and surprisingly won the job - and the center seat on the council dais.

Jones' first order of business, as a new member of the city's water committee, was divining the best source of new water out of 26 possible options.

A series of factors conspired to make Lake Gaston the committee's top pick.

A new study questioned the quality and quantity of water in the Assamoosick Swamp; Norfolk volunteered to treat the Beach's new supply, saving tens of millions of dollars that would have had to be spent for a Beach system; and a hot-shot Richmond lawyer named James Ryan decided a pipeline to Lake Gaston could be built without the support of the General Assembly - a way around the longtime opposition of Southside residents.

The new plan was announced to the public in November 1982.

The most expensive project in the city's history had begun.

It was supposed to take five years to jump the legal hurdles and lay the pipe. But North Carolina altered that timetable in early 1984 by challenging the pipeline in court.

``Once they filed the lawsuit, we had an idea that it was going to be a long, drawn-out affair,'' Jones said. ``I don't think we would have predicted that it was going to take 15 years.''

If anyone has the patience to stay interested in a water line for more than a decade and a half, it's Louis Jones.

Jones, whose thick, wavy hair turned from jet black to mostly white as he pursued the pipeline, is known for his drive and desire to get things done.

``He always has a plan, and he sticks to it, pretty much whatever it is he's doing,'' said his wife, Ellen.

The Joneses met at her first Granby High School dance - he was in 10th grade, she in eighth. They were married before she finished high school and have been together for the 43 years since.

He bought her family's funeral home company after her father died and built it into one of Virginia's largest mortuary businesses. He's been president of the International Order of the Golden Rule and secretary-treasurer of National Selected Morticians, both national funeral service organizations.

Jones, 61, is a back-room kind of guy.

His son, Paul, who works for him, says Jones is far more likely to sit behind his desk plotting the future of the business than to greet the newly bereaved in the front rooms of his funeral home on Tidewater Drive, in Norfolk.

Jones doesn't say much in the council chambers, under the glare of the television lights. But with a few carefully worded speeches, he directs the opinions of many of his colleagues.

Despite the tedium and the frequent setbacks, Jones said he's glad he got involved in the pipeline project.

``I've enjoyed the process.''

Why?

``Maybe winning,'' he said. ``Maybe achieving something that's important, not only for the present, but for the long term.''

Most of the process was spent in court - a dozen courts, actually: circuit courts in Suffolk, Brunswick County, Richmond, Mecklenburg County and Virginia Beach; U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia; U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina (three times); District Court of the District of Columbia; U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit; U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; and the U.S. Supreme Court, where the case is heading for the second time.

Virginia Beach has won all the cases that have been resolved; three remain.

Jones was defeated in his 1986 re-election bid but reclaimed his council seat in 1990. During the years Jones was off the council, the project was ``pretty well bogged down in the courts,'' Jones said. Lawyers took the lead, and the council didn't do much.

The council, and Jones in particular, did play a lead role in the negotiations that followed: four years at the table with Norfolk for a new long-term contract to process Beach water; five months of settlement talks with North Carolina that fell apart and were resurrected repeatedly only to die again; and finally, a successful out-of-court deal with Suffolk to allow Norfolk to expand a pump station in Suffolk needed to treat the Lake Gaston water.

Those who have sat at the negotiating table with Jones describe him as difficult and unyielding. His idea of reaching a deal is getting others to agree to what he wanted at the start, they said.

Jones concedes that his hard-line style has dragged out the pursuit of the pipeline. But, he says, he refused compromises only when he thought they weren't in the city's best interest.

Fellow council member William W. Harrison Jr., who often disagreed with Jones at the time, now thinks Jones was right.

``We could have caved in on the negotiations, we could have probably bought off North Carolina, we could have probably bought the cooperation of Southside Virginia,'' Harrison said. ``Yet we stuck to our guns and didn't back down.''

Jones credits the other council members - and particularly, Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf - for their cooperation. They trusted him and the rest of the Water Task Force to keep them informed and to make the right decisions.

``If our council had been divided, it would have been a lot more difficult to take the strong positions that we've taken,'' Jones said. ``Even though we have been threatened repeatedly, we have held a strong position in the negotiations and given up very little. Yet we are here at a point of success with the pipeline.''

The tide really turned for the pipeline in the second half of 1995, when Virginia Beach won a permit it had awaited for five years.

North Carolina challenged the permit in court, but the Beach decided to take a gamble and resumed building the $150 million pipeline anyway.

North Carolina didn't try to block the work. And, now, after 18 months of laying and sealing together giant pieces of pipe, the water line is complete.

Jones' most important Monopoly game is almost over.

``We started with nothing and now we have a pipeline, 60 million gallons of water a day, and, for all practical purposes, water independence for the city of Virginia Beach,'' Jones said.

There have been more than a few bad rolls of the dice: weeks of shuttling to Washington and Richmond only to have deals fall through, so many victories followed so quickly by roadblocks.

But Jones' piles of pastel-colored Monopoly bills are getting pretty thick now.

Although years of possible challenges remain, Jones isn't worried about who will win the game. The pipeline, after all, is in the ground now, filled with water.

``I'm sleeping pretty good,'' Jones said. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot

After 15 years, Louis R. Jones says he is sleeping better: The

pipeline is in its final stages.

Graphic

Map

BETH BERGMAN NAKAMURA/File photo

1992: A water-skier cruises...

MORT FRYMAN/File photo

1993: The Meherrin River crossing...

BILL TIERNAN/File photo

1996: Pipe sections lie along...

JIMMY WALKER/File photo

1996: A worker lays pipe...

BILL TIERNAN/File photo

1996: Lake Gaston is tapped...

VICKI CRONIS/File photo

Aug. 20, 1997: The first major flood...

LAKE GASTON PIPELINE: A LONG, DIFFICULT ROAD

A reliable water source for Virginia Beach has been a long time in

the making. Here's how it happened:

1975: Southeastern Water Authority of Virginia recommends Lake

Gaston as long-term solution to area's water needs.

1980-81: Hampton Roads suffers a debilitating drought and

initiate water restrictions and some rationing. Virginia Beach's

1981 tourist season is threatened by the lack of water.

Nov. 15, 1982: Virginia Beach City Council decides to proceed

with project.

January 1984: North Carolina files first lawsuit to block

pipeline, shortly after U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issues a

construction permit for the pipeline.

August 1987: Virginia Beach water rates begin to climb to pay for

the pipeline.

November 1987: Chesapeake agrees to be a one-sixth partner in the

pipeline, entitled to up to 10 million gallons of Gaston water per

day.

November 1988: Virginia Beach voters approve a $200 million bond

referendum to pay for the pipeline.

June 1990: Virginia Beach City Council authorizes construction of

pipeline to begin.

December 1990: North Carolina wins an injunction to block

pipeline construction.

February 1992: Virginia Beach imposes water restrictions. U.S.

Supreme Court decides not to hear North Carolina's appeal of the

Army Corps of Engineers permit for the project.

July 1993: Norfolk and Virginia Beach sign long-term water

contract for treating and transporting Gaston water and supplying

Virginia Beach until the pipeline can be built.

September 1994: Virginia Beach and North Carolina officials agree

to enter into mediation to try to settle their dispute out of court.

April 1995: North Carolina and Virginia Beach reach a settlement,

pending approval of state and federal leaders. Beach City Council

gives Norfolk the go-ahead to expand its water treatment plant to

handle the extra water from Lake Gaston.

June 1995: The settlement agreement falls apart when Virginia

Gov. George F. Allen, fighting with Democrats in the Virginia

General Assembly, declines to call a special session to ratify the

compact.

August 1995: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issues the

final permit for the pipeline. That fall, North Carolina appeals

decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia

Circuit.

March 1996: Pipeline construction resumes.

March 1997: Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake sue Suffolk

over zoning permits Norfolk needs to transport Gaston water. The

cities settle out of court on Oct. 15.

August 1997: The full U.S. Circuit Court upholds the final permit

needed to operate the Gaston project. North Carolina and Virginia

pipeline opponents are expected to appeal the decision in November

to the U.S. Supreme Court. Water begins flowing through the nearly

completed pipeline into Norfolk's reservoirs.

November 1997: Virginia Beach and Chesapeake hold a dedication

ceremony to celebrate the completion of the pipeline.

Future:

Fall 1998: The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the

challenge to the pipeline permit issued in August 1995 by the

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

2001: Virginia Power's 50-year license to operate a hydroelectric

power plant on Lake Gaston expires. North Carolina, whose permission

is needed to renew the license, threatens to shut down either the

power plant or the pipeline. KEYWORDS: LAKE GASTON PIPELINE WATER SUPPLY PLAN

HISTORY CHRONOLOGY TIMELINE

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu