Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 1, 1994 TAG: 9402010152
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Diana Weigmann minces no words in her fund-raising pitch.
"We need help," she said Monday. "This is life or death."
Weigmann is interim director of the Water Resources Research Center at Virginia Tech. For 30 years, the center has studied pesticides in ground water, lead in drinking water, wetlands, and other issues with an eye to protecting these vital resources.
This year, the center completed a five-year study of the amount of water needed in the Roanoke River to maintain healthy fish populations, especially when the Spring Hollow reservoir starts holding back some of the river's water.
But research like this may come to an end soon. Funding for the center has been eliminated from the state's proposed budget.
Without it, Weigmann said, the center will close July 1.
The center, located on Tech's Blacksburg campus, is one of 55 water research centers throughout the country established in 1964 by Congress. Virginia would be the only state without one, Weigmann said.
She recently sent about 13,000 letters to recipients of the center's monthly newsletter appealing for help. And she enclosed names and phone numbers of all the state legislators and the governor.
Del. Mitchell Van Yahres, D-Charlottesville, has introduced a bill that would reinstate the center's $363,700 yearly allocation.
Now it is up to Weigmann and others to put the pressure on.
Tech's water center is not the only operation hearing the death knell from Richmond.
Money for the Center for Coal and Energy Research would be eliminated, as would money for research centers in wood sciences and material systems.
Weigmann said the coal center received immediate backing from legislators, the railroad industry and others, whereas she had to launch a mass mailing to alert those interested in water issues.
"There's a lot more support for coal than water," Weigmann said. "Water is viewed as something that's free."
In 1982, the General Assembly officially declared the water center as the state agency responsible for water quality and quantity research and public outreach. Its annual share of state funds was about $450,000, and the staff numbered more than ten full-time people.
Every year, it doled out roughly $200,000 to sponsor ten or so research projects. Faculty and students from all Virginia universities participated in the research.
Other money went to publishing hundreds of reports and books - written in layman's terms - on important water-related problems.
These publications are free to Virginians - "a good use of tax dollars," Weigmann noted - and are a useful source of information for citizens, legislators, local governments, state bureaucrats, teachers, reporters and others.
But its budget has shriveled in the past few years, like other state agencies.
"We're not spending the kind of money that needs to be spent to do the jobs to protect our natural resources," said Patti Jackson, executive director of the Lower James River Association and an active environmentalist on state issues.
Only 1 percent of the state's budget is allotted to the secretariat of natural resources, who has jurisdiction over the departments of Environmental Quality, Game and Inland Fisheries, Conservation and Recreation, and others, Jackson said.
By comparison, she said, the secretariat of economic development gets about 3 percent of the budget.
The proposed budget would slice at least $4.7 million from the Department of Environmental Quality, Jackson said. That money would be used to monitor air and water pollution and help local governments treat wastewater.
A department spokesman could not be reached for comment.
The Department of Conservation and Recreation also may take some hits, said Jack Frye, director of the Soil and Water Conservation Division.
His division could lose about 20 percent of its budget, about $1.4 million a year. Much of that money pays for assistance to farmers who use soil conservation techniques on their land.
Another $244,000 per year is proposed to be cut from grants to local governments for parks, ballfields and other small-scale projects.
He said that some of these programs may be saved by bills now pending before the General Assembly.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994
by CNB