DATE: Saturday, November 8, 1997            TAG: 9711080581
SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A14  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JEFFREY S. HAMPTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CURRITUCK                         LENGTH:   54 lines

CURRITUCK CONSIDERS TAPPING NORFOLK'S SURPLUS WATER SUPPLY

Now that water flows from Lake Gaston to Virginia Beach, Currituck County may draw from Norfolk's surplus.

Norfolk and Currituck officials confirmed Friday that there has been contact concerning the possibility but that no formal talks have taken place.

``It's a probability,'' Commissioner Owen Etheridge said of negotiations with Norfolk. ``This is a regional concern. The state line does not stop it from being a region. That line is not the Great Wall of China.''

If Currituck is successful, a North Carolina community will benefit from Virginia Beach's 15-year legal fight with the state of North Carolina to get water from Lake Gaston. Virginia Beach will no longer need the 32 million gallons a day it buys from Norfolk.

``Currituck County is interested in solving its water problems, whether it be from our own sources or the sources of someone else,'' said Paul O'Neal, chairman of the Currituck County Board of Commissioners.

Currituck County has stronger ties to southeastern Virginia than any other county in northeastern North Carolina. The county is part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan statistical area and has joined the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce.

``Northeastern North Carolina should have joined with Virginia in the lawsuit, and we would have our water problems solved,'' O'Neal said.

Currituck is seeking to quench the thirst of the rapidly growing Outer Banks and extend its water lines to residents on the south end of the mainland who have waited for county water since a $4.7 million bond referendum passed in 1988. The new water lines stopped in Grandy when the bond money ran out faster than anybody had expected.

But O'Neal said Currituck plans to provide an estimated $750,000 in the next two months to lay 9 miles of 10-inch water lines to Point Harbor, its southernmost community.

Currituck is looking at several options besides Norfolk for water, including digging 10 new wells at the Maple wellfield, building a new $2.25 million ``nanofilter'' water plant and building a reverse osmosis plant.

Plans for a bridge to the Currituck Outer Banks include a water line, which would open up the possibility of the mainland and the beaches becoming not only more physically but also more politically connected.

The gap may have widened after Dare County entered a mutual agreement with a private water company on the Currituck Outer Banks to provide water in case of an emergency. Currituck officials were rankled because Dare had earlier declined to discuss the possibility of sharing water and did not include them in discussions that led to the agreement.

Geneva Perry, chairwoman of the Dare County Board of Commissioners, was not aware of Currituck's interest in Norfolk water. She said Dare does not plan to compete with Currituck for the Norfolk water. MEMO: [For a related story, see page A1 of THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT for this

date.]

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