
DATE: Saturday, November 29, 1997           TAG: 9711290243

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   87 lines

BAYVIEW RESIDENTS AWAIT CLEANUP FOR LAKE MODOC MUCK AND JUNK AREN'T GOOD SIGNS, THEY SAY.

An old rope hangs from a tree over the water, but who in their right mind would swing in?

Lake Modoc looks like lumpy, brown gravy. Tires, entrenched in mud, poke from the water while scummy muck laps about them.

The litter that floats in the 1.5 acres of storm water run-off disgusts John Roger, president of the Bayview Civic League.

A floating RC Cola bottle here, a shredded Super-Mix cement bag there - little bits of junk add up into the kind of eyesore that blights a whole neighborhood.

Roger and his wife, Ginny, have been fighting for their community for 20 years and believe the little battles matter. Squaring away a 1.5-acre chunk of real estate is important to Norfolk; the city is made up of little plots of land.

The neighborhood between Chesapeake Boulevard and Chesapeake Street has shown some of the community blight Ocean View has worked hard to scrub away in recent years.

An open-air drug market used to operate at a lot near Chesapeake Street and Hillside Avenue, a block or two from the lake. The police cracked down.

``If we take small bites, pretty soon you get the whole meal,'' Roger said. ``I know that sounds corny, but that's pretty much the way it is.''

There was a public meeting Nov. 19 concerning a proposed dredging of the water.

Members of the civic league asked the city: While dredging it, why not make a little park? People who live in multiple-family housing around the lake wanted parking spaces made. The civic league did not - parking lots attract the wrong type of late-night activity, they argued. Put up lights, the residents said. Dirty deeds are done in the dark.

The city hasn't ruled out anything.

Lake Modoc will be the second pond dredged under the Storm Water Capital Improvement Program.

According to James E. Daman of the Division of Environmental Storm Water Management, the city has $200,000 tucked away for it.

Storm Water Management dredged Lake Scott this summer. The pond, roughly the size of Lake Modoc, yielded 1,300 truckloads of debris.

The division is pursuing environmental permits, and hopes to dredge the pond some time next year. Daman called it a ``general cleaning.''

Lighting is not certain.

``We're looking at that,'' Daman said.

A functional, unclogged run-off pond is the main goal of the dredging.

``Certainly we want to open up a portion of the brush around the lake,'' he said. ``Especially on the Chesapeake Boulevard side.''

That's where most of the dumpers drive up. But building a small park is a whole other matter.

``To say that it's going to be a park - that may not be a fair representation of what we're doing out there,'' Daman explained. ``It's a maintenance project. That's primarily the focus - clearing the brush.''

Roger feels that turning Lake Modoc into a place where people could take their family could become a maintenance program for the neighborhoods. But there isn't a lot of space around Lake Modoc to transform, and he knows the city can't wave a magic wand and fix the problem of having people who litter.

``It just takes the people in the neighborhood'' to keep watch, Roger said. ``The blight and the rest of it just creeps up on you.''

George B. Derby Jr., a live-in landlord of a duplex bordering Lake Modoc, drove up, joined the discussion and disagreed.

``It's not going to stay clean,'' Derby said.

``It will if we care for it,'' Roger told him through Derby's passenger-side window.

``How are you going to stop them?''

Roger said locals would keep their eyes out.

``What are you going to do?'' Derby asked. ``Police it 24 hours a day?''

That's where the lights come in, Roger explained. Keep it lit.

Derby didn't buy it. He said he has watched folks walk up and dump stuff in the water. Some of them were from the neighborhood. They don't care, he said.

``How about in the daytime?'' Derby asked Roger. ``All this happens in the daytime.''

The conversation ended.

``You gotta try something,'' Roger said. ``You gotta try to clean it up.''

Park or no park, he said. Clean it up and hope people will change - and care, Roger said.

``It's all up to the people.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot

Debris gathers at the edges of Lake Modoc on Thursday. The Bayview

Civic League wants the city to dredge the lake - and create a park,

too.