THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 15, 1995 TAG: 9503150001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
The word the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission just got from the Environmental Protection Agency was not a yes or a no. It was a maybe: Maybe EPA will agree that FERC should issue the last federal permit necessary for the Lake Gaston pipeline.
FERC can do what it wants. But EPA seldom goes away when ignored.
FERC's recent Draft Environmental Impact Statement, which is favorable to the pipeline, provides ``insufficient information'' to allay EPA's ``concerns.'' It sees a ``need for updated information to substantiate the purpose and need for the project; analysis of additional alternatives . . . and updated environmental analysis.''
In sum, EPA says, ``the deficiencies lie in the amount of data provided to substantiate the assumptions made.''
If Virginia Beach had a week's worth of water for every page of Gaston data it's supplied these past 15 years, everybody in town would have been out Sunday washing cars. Legally.
Surely in that vast bank of reports, studies, testimony, court pleadings, etc., lie data to counter EPA's ``concerns'' or expose them as unreasonable or specious - from maps of the region's water supply systems to charts of population-increase projections, from a ``detailed description'' of the Beach's conservation plan to analyses of well use and wastewater reuse for industry and agriculture.
EPA isn't sure about that. It recommends that ``FERC convene a meeting of the key parties to develop an acceptable six to 10 year interim withdrawal allocation.'' But why would Virginia Beach spend hundreds of millions - How could it finance hundreds of millions? - for what would amount to a pilot program for the pipeline? And short of legal reform that makes the losing state pay the winning state's attorneys' fees, what would halt Carolina's lame but unending court battle to kill the pipeline?
That's a question officials don't discuss publicly but reportedly discuss privately. If Beach Congressman Owen Pickett is right - if ``some additional paperwork'' will satisfy federal regulators and satisfying federal regulators will resolve this dispute - then crank up the fax machine.
Those are very big ifs in a dispute full of bluffs. Both sides would be wise to crank up the legal and political negotiations, too. by CNB