Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407110110
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jan Vertefeuille Staff Writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
New Utilities Director Gary Robertson hopes to have the treatment plant under construction no later than the fall. With Craig's death, he said, "There's no question the time frame's going to change."
Right now, the reservoir is being filled, 10 feet at a time. Each time 10 feet of water is added, the pumps are shut off for a week, to make sure there are no problems. When the process is complete after six months, the diverted river water will cover 250 acres and be 240 feet deep.
The reservoir - with about 100 feet of water in it now - already looks like a quiet lake, deep green and surrounded by woods. Later, fishing will be allowed, and boats or canoes may be available through the Recreation Department. Motor boats and swimming are out, though, by order of the Health Department, because the reservoir will act as the settling basin for the water treatment plant.
The type of treatment system Roanoke County is building is unusual - at least in Virginia. The state didn't recognize the system when the plans were submitted, although it does now.
The standard process uses a settling basin before the water enters the treatment plant. In Roanoke County, "we're using the reservoir itself for impurities to settle and chemicals to be added," Robertson said. This way, he said, it's less expensive and less complicated.
Don Terp still thinks it's too expensive. He was a critic of Spring Hollow Reservoir when the Board of Supervisors gave the project the final go-ahead several years ago. The retiree said recently that "nothing has happened that would change my thinking."
He didn't like the way the county went about financing it. At first, Roanoke and Salem were expected to join the county in building it. After they declined, the county went ahead on its own, and "it was done very, very undemocratically, in my eyes," he said.
County voters approved a $16 million bond referendum for the project in 1986, but that was before the two cities dropped out and the county was faced with paying the entire bill.
"There's always been the question of cost, especially when the county had to go the project alone," County Administrator Elmer Hodge said. "In years to come, when we have a drought, the need for that reservoir will become apparent."
Once the reservoir is filled, there will be enough water in it to supply the county for a year without pumping more from the river. That would be necessary only in case of a drought, though, because the county cannot pump water when the river drops below a certain level.
Friends of the Roanoke River successfully fought to raise the minimum flow the reservoir must leave in the river: at least 30 percent flow in the summer and 40 percent in the spring, the spawning season for fish.
"The river is much better protected from the [reservoir's] intake down to the city of Salem," said Bill Tanger, a leader of Friends of the Roanoke River.
Downstream from Salem, which has two intakes of its own pumping water from the river, "the levels there are going to be extremely low while they're sucking water out," Tanger said.
The reservoir will serve about 60 percent of the county residents already on public water once the south part of the county is hooked up to transmission lines. Everyone in the county who now has public water should be linked to transmission lines in the next 2 1/2 years, Robertson said.
County residents with public water now are served from a variety of public wells and from Roanoke, which supplies 2 million gallons a day through a contract that is being disputed in court.
With the water treatment plant, the county also is having to extend its water lines. The first phase will lay lines from Starkey to Cotton Hill Road at U.S. 221.
Memo: NOTE: See microfilm for first five paragraphs