THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506050172
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB AND MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 260 lines
Norfolk and Virginia Beach have been squabbling for the past month over several aspects of a proposed Lake Gaston pipeline settlement that Virginia Beach negotiated with North Carolina.
The settlement, which must be approved by both state legislatures by June 27, calls for a regional water authority and requires Norfolk to agree never to sell its surplus water to the Eastern Shore or the Peninsula.
Both cities have agreed Norfolk deserves some long-term financial compensation for agreeing to restrict its sales areas, but as of last week, they were still more than $100 million apart.
If the settlement falters, the fate of the 76-mile pipeline reverts to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The last federal agency that must approve the pipeline, FERC is expected to issue its ruling by July 15.
If FERC sides with Virginia Beach, as an early report suggested it would, North Carolina is likely to challenge the decision in court, reopening the decade of legal battles the settlement was meant to resolve and delaying further the arrival of water from Gaston.
It was a hot day in mid-July when Gary F. Russell's ancient Chrysler Newport gave out in a shopping center parking lot.
He got sympathy from passersby - ``Oh, you've got a problem,'' and ``Wow, I'd hate to be you.'' But they continued on their way.
One guy, though, walking out of a store with his son, stopped to help. He ended up splicing a hose to fix the leak in Russell's radiator.
Russell offered to pay the man, but he refused. ``And what he said to me has remained with me to this day and always will,'' Russell said. ``He said `No. That's OK. Thank God that I'm in a position to help you today and perhaps you'll be in a position to help someone tomorrow.''
To Russell, that's the way the cities of Hampton Roads should be acting toward one another in the current Lake Gaston water dispute and in other regional issues. They should do something for each other when they can, with the expectation of long-range returns.
``It might sound ideal and utopian, but it's true,'' said Russell, a Portsmouth resident who manages a bank branch in Hampton.
Russell and a dozen other Hampton Roads residents who responded to an invitation from The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star to participate in a roundtable discussion last Wednesday, had different ways of looking at the water issue than the stalemated political leaders of Norfolk and Virginia Beach:
The citizens had difficulty understanding why the two cities seem so incapable of working together to solve mutual problems.
Municipal boundaries mean little to them in their daily lives: Joseph M. Donnelly lives in Virginia Beach, works in Portsmouth and spends weekends near Lake Gaston; Eloise Collins-Hall leaves her Portsmouth home several times a week to visit friends, eat out, enjoy the arts or cheer on sports teams in nearby cities; F. Mason Gamage spent his first 30 years in Norfolk and the past 40 in Virginia Beach.
``My mother used to tell me that `We're all members of this family whether we like it or not,' '' Donnelly said. ``As members of this family, we have an obligation to other family members, and I think because Virginia Beach and Norfolk are members of the same family and we're part of the same family as the Peninsula, we all have obligations to one another.''
The citizens also had trouble understanding how Norfolk and Virginia Beach can talk about the need for water without talking about other related issues such as transportation, the environment and even race relations.
``No relationship depends on a single part, a single issue,'' said Mark Yatrofsky, a Norfolk resident who shops and participates in civic and cultural events in other cities.
To the participants, Lake Gaston is important, they said, because it will help bring jobs to the region, because Beach residents can't water their lawns or wash their cars, because drinking water in the area sometimes tastes funny, and because as taxpayers, they will pay the price in the long run if water rates go up or taps run dry.
And the citizens said they feel that they and others who might have been able to help solve the water problem were cut out of the process years ago.
Tom Aiken of Virginia Beach said his city ``got off on the wrong foot trying to do it as Virginia Beach rather than looking at water as a regional problem.''
``If this had been handled regionally from the beginning, . . . we would have had a lot more clout going out as Southeast Virginia.''
IF I TRUST YOU, WILL YOU TRUST ME?
The trouble started long ago, the citizens said, when modern Virginia Beach was formed to avoid annexation by Norfolk. The problem with regionalism now is that years of misdeeds and poor communication - of trying to take baseball teams and avoiding social responsibilities - have left a well-worn path of mistrust.
It would be hard for Norfolk to believe that if it gives Virginia Beach the OK on the water contract, Virginia Beach will give it something else in the future.
``So now, if we cooperate with Virginia Beach on the water,are they going to cooperate with us on the railway?'' asked Jerry M. Foley, a Norfolk resident who commutes to a military base in Portsmouth and used to work at another in Virginia Beach. ``Are you hearing me Virginia Beach? If we cooperate with you, will you cooperate with us?''
But Yatrofsky wonders whether the cities will ever see their neighbors the same way he regards a co-worker who happens to live in Virginia Beach - as a friend who sometimes needs a helping hand.
``I work downtown and over the cube wall from me is a woman from Virginia Beach, and I think the world of her,'' Yatrofsky said. ``I don't think the less of her because she lives in Virginia Beach, and I don't want her children not to be able to take baths because the water is insufficient. No. That's what regional cooperation is going to derive from. The fact that we care about each other as people and neighbors. We need to take care of each other.''
Virginia Beach hurt its credibility by secretly negotiating away some of Norfolk's rights. The proposed settlement the Beach reached with North Carolina requires Norfolk to agree not to sell water to the Peninsula or the Eastern Shore.
North Carolina insisted on this stipulation to ensure that Virginia cities did not profit from Lake Gaston sales and to encourage better water management in this region. Norfolk was not included in the negotiations because it was not a party to the lawsuit that led to the federally mediated settlement. But Virginia Beach briefed Norfolk on the terms as soon as the mediator allowed, six weeks before the deal was made public.
Donnelly said he doesn't care when or how Norfolk learned of the settlement provision; Virginia Beach did wrong by negotiating away Norfolk's rights.
``My wife is dead, but when she was alive, we never, never committed the other person without first talking to them,'' Donnelly said. ``Even if it meant forgoing the deal with North Carolina, Virginia Beach should not have done that. Now, how do we get past that? I don't know. Do we have a divorce?''
WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN INVOLVED ?
Virginia Beach made another key mistake in 1982 when it decided to pursue Lake Gaston water alone. It should have joined with its neighbors and gone after the extra water as a team, the citizens said.
``It's ridiculous to go out and say I'm going to do a project such as water, a subject this large, by myself,'' Collins-Hall said. ``You've got to have a friend someplace you can call in, some little city or somebody to come in and help you, or at least agree with you.''
The only way to get past the history and bitterness is for politicians to start talking openly and honestly with the people of all Hampton Roads cities, Foley said.
``Stop doing these things behind closed doors without asking the public's opinion,'' Foley added, ``and don't just ask our opinion and forget about it. Ask our opinion, and then act on what the people tell you.''
The initial decision to pursue water from Lake Gaston was a political one, which meant citizens were not consulted, Virginia Beach resident and retired city planner F. Mason Gamage said. Not being part of the process has left many citizens feeling disconnected and not nearly as committed to the Gaston project as their leaders.
Residents repeatedly asked why ocean water cannot be desalted, reservoirs widened, aquifers tapped - why there can't be a simpler and cheaper way of solving the region's long-term water problem.
WHAT'S NOT BEING ADDRESSED ?
Politicians tend to chop issues up and deal with them one at a time.
They have positions about the water crisis, job growth, and the need for more low-income housing and a better mass transit system. The residents tie all those together, because jobs are useless if you can't get to them, and lots of water is useful only if you have people and businesses who need it.
``The water problems we have today are a good example that we would have all been better off if we had taken a regional approach 12 years ago,'' Aiken said. ``And there are other areas like transportation where the whole area will benefit, and it isn't a matter of one city having to sacrifice for the benefit of the other.''
This gap between local governments and citizens may be a big factor in explaining why cities have not been able to achieve better regional partnerships.
Local politicians are elected by voters within city boundaries, so it is often hard for them to act in the region's interest.
By being responsive to needs within their municipality, city leaders believe they are serving residents well. The citizens said, however, that politicians often can work for voters just as well by being less parochial.
``I think it should be presented and applauded as a noble thing when the individual governmental units or politicians put the family unit ahead of the individual family member,'' Donnelly said, ``and that it is an undesirable, selfish thing when they put their own self-interests ahead of the family as a whole.''
Virginia Beach may be a great place to live, but if crime and other poverty-related problems are allowed to overwhelm Portsmouth and Norfolk, then businesses won't want to be anywhere in Hampton Roads, the citizens said.
If politicians don't make those connections, people will never understand what they mean when they talk about regionalism, Vincent D. Carpenter noted.
Regionalism ``seems to have multiple meanings for different people, and it seems to be a word that's selectively used,'' said Carpenter, a self-employed financial planner in Chesapeake.
THE RESOLUTION
In a crisis, a family tends to band together. Older siblings will comfort younger ones, the mutual support will help everyone make it through.
Carpenter likened that family reaction to what happened in Hampton Roads over recent threats posed by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to Oceana Naval Air Station and the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth.
``Business leaders, politicians, senators, congressmen, everybody was concerned about BRAC,'' Carpenter said. ``That was a crisis, an impending crisis, so everybody started pulling together.''
The Gaston dispute is a crisis, too, the group agreed, but so far it has driven the cities farther apart rather than bringing them closer together.
Business leaders have made a good effort to bring the region together, Carpenter said, with regionalism a focus of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce; Forward Hampton Roads, the Chamber's economic development arm; and Plan 2007.
But residents need to participate, too, the discussion group members said.
``You just simply have to get the citizens together in each one of these entities and say, `Look, we're not going to take this kind of treatment any more,' '' Collins-Hall said. ``We're the ones who are paying the bills. We're the ones who have the interests, so we're going to be the ones who have to come forward and say, `This is what we want, this is a good idea,' and let (the politicians) take the ball from there.''
Cities will only work together, should only work together, if they get something out of their cooperation, Aiken said. Robert M. King, for instance, said he would be upset if Norfolk didn't get money from Virginia Beach for agreeing to limit the places it can sell its water.
But the cities also need to realize the benefits they can provide each other, the citizens said.
Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Suffolk have the land for development and industry that Norfolk and Portsmouth lack. The core cities have jobs and resources that residents of the other cities need. The cities can't go it alone, and should stop trying, the residents said.
``If (regionalism) is to be effective,'' said Russell, the Hampton banker, ``if it's to be viable as a means of solving regional issues, then the one thing we have to agree on is that there are times when some of us or all of us will have to give, in order that the region can benefit.
``My point is that we are a region and we share each other's resources,'' he continued. ``If there is a time when we can give a little of ourselves to help our neighboring city, then look at the big picture. What's good for America is generally - not always - but generally good for all Americans. If there is no America then where are we? We're nowhere.'' MEMO: Staff writer Esther Diskin and staffer Kay Reynolds contributed to this
report. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Tom Aiken
Joseph M. Donnelly
Gary F. Russell
Mark Yatrofsky
Eloise Collins-Hall
Jerry M. Foley
F. Mason Gamage
Vincent D. Carpenter
Robert M. King
Graphic
GETTING ANSWERS
The Virginian-Pilot would like to help citizens get answers to
questions they have about regionalism and the Lake Gaston dispute.
You can phone, fax or mail in questions to Karen Weintraub this
week. Responses to many of the questions will run next Sunday.
Phone: 547-9764, Fax: 436-6389, mailing address: The
Virginian-Pilot, 921 North Battlefield Blvd., Chesapeake, VA 23320.
by CNB