THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 21, 1995 TAG: 9504210507
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
The City Council is expected to take a $100 million ``calculated risk'' next week on construction of the Lake Gaston pipeline.
Tuesday's council agenda, released Thursday, contains a resolution authorizing Norfolk to proceed with $100 million in improvements to its water treatment system to handle the additional water from the pipeline.
Virginia Beach will have to cover most of that cost because it will draw the lion's share of water from the pipeline. Once the city gives Norfolk the go-ahead, Virginia Beach will be responsible for whatever money Norfolk spends, even if the pipeline is never approved.
The decision to commit the money means the City Council is confident the 13-year Gaston dispute will be settled in the near future. City representatives have been meeting in private with North Carolina officials for more than four months to negotiate an end to the dispute.
Norfolk needed to know by April 28 - a week from today - whether to expand its water treatment plant, and the deadline has driven the two sides to seek a conclusion, those close to the negotiations said. Virginia Beach buys most of its drinking water from Norfolk.
Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf said Thursday that she thinks it would be a ``calculated'' but ``very sound risk'' to give Norfolk the go-ahead next week.
``It is also, hopefully, the harbinger that a solution to the obstruction of the pipeline will be resolved in the near future,'' Oberndorf said.
The terms of a proposed settlement, made public two weeks ago, call for both sides to make once-unbelievable concessions.
North Carolina would drop its legal actions against the pipeline and would get a guarantee that Virginia cities could take no more than 60 million gallons of water a day from the man-made lake that straddles the two states.
Virginia Beach would have to agree to conserve water during severe droughts; Virginia would have to widen two highways in Chesapeake that lead to Outer Banks beaches, U.S. Route 17 and Virginia Route 168.
Once the pipeline is built, the Beach would be able to lift the water restrictions that have kept its residents from washing their cars or watering their lawns with city water for three years.
The Norfolk deadline was imposed by the treatment plant's construction schedule and could not be moved back, Louis L. Guy, Norfolk director of utilities, said recently. The Moores Bridges plant, which is more than 100 years old, has been under renovation for more than a year to bring it into compliance with federal clean water standards, Guy said.
``We're not going to do it at the larger size unless Virginia Beach accepts responsibility for the larger cost,'' he said. ``We can't wait; we've got to go forward.''
Virginia Beach appears willing to take that risk. If the plant is not expanded now, its capacity couldn't be enlarged until the current renovations completed in several years.
The expansion will take three years and would be completed about the same time as the pipeline if construction could begin by the end of the summer, said Thomas M. Leahy III, a Virginia Beach city engineer and its Lake Gaston project manager.
The capacity improvements will cost about $100 million, in addition to the $140 million required to construct the pipeline, Leahy said. Of that, $40 million to $50 million would be used to expand the treatment plant and the balance would expand capacity at the water transmission facilities at the Norfolk end of the pipeline, he said. by CNB