THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 7, 1995 TAG: 9506070455
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
Virginia Beach officials say they need Norfolk's support for the Lake Gaston pipeline project as soon as possible or the agreement they reached with North Carolina will fall apart.
Norfolk officials say the 60-day deadline imposed by the settlement has made such support nearly impossible. The pressure of trying to meet the deadline, Norfolk Mayor Paul D. Fraim said, has forced both sides to take hard-line positions, making compromise more difficult.
The deadline has become a major factor in the dispute. Because the deadline was arranged during closed-door mediation, the negotiators who put the deadline in place have been reluctant to explain it.
Conversations with several of the participants indicated that the June 27 deadline was selected for a variety of reasons. They included the timing of the General Assembly sessions in both states, the date Virginia Beach had to notify Norfolk to proceed with a water treatment plant expansion to handle the Lake Gaston water, and the schedule of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the last federal agency that must approve the project.
When the mediation started last December, Virginia Beach negotiators were hoping that a settlement could be reached early this year while the Virginia General Assembly was still in session, Virginia Beach City Manager James K. Spore said this week.
After it became obvious that the negotiations would take longer, Virginia Beach officials assumed they would have to wait until next year to get legislative approval, Spore said. But North Carolina wouldn't agree to that delay.
North Carolina officials didn't want to work out a settlement seven or eight months before it could be approved, Spore said. And they told Virginia Beach officials that if North Carolina were faced with an issue as important to their state as Lake Gaston is to Virginia Beach, their governor would call a special legislative session to handle it, Spore said.
The next date that influenced the deadline, Spore said, was April 28, the day Norfolk needed to be notified if it had to expand its treatment facilities to handle the Gaston water. Virginia Beach now gets all its drinking water from Norfolk, and Norfolk would continue to treat any water Virginia Beach would get from Lake Gaston.
Once that settlement date was selected, the 60-day deadline made sense because it corresponded with when the FERC's decision was expected, Spore said.
Both Virginia Beach and North Carolina have an incentive to settle before the FERC ruling is made public, he said.
If the agency sides with Virginia Beach and permits South Hampton Roads cities to take as much as 60 million gallons of water a day from Lake Gaston, Virginia Beach would have much less incentive to make concessions to North Carolina.
If North Carolina wins a round and the FERC rejects Virginia Beach's efforts to get water or limits its take, North Carolina might be less motivated to accept the mediated compromise.
The end of June also has some significance to North Carolina, because the North Carolina General Assembly is expected to adjourn for the year by the middle of July. That body will not be in regular session again until May, 1996.
Norfolk is affected by the deadline because the settlement requires Norfolk's approval, and the Virginia legislature is unlikely to support the agreement without Norfolk's consent.
If Norfolk had more time, Fraim said, reaching an agreement with Virginia Beach would be much easier. ``I think if you lifted the deadline, that everything could come on the table,'' he said. ``When you start limiting yourself by days, then people's positions become hard and fast, and the more complex the issue, generally the more time it takes.
``If you want to put light rail on the table, disparity, those things would take a great deal of time,'' he continued. ``If you're going to confine the conversation only to water, I think we could do something like that in a matter of weeks, perhaps months.'' MEMO: The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star would like to help residents get
answers to questions about the Gaston dispute. You can phone, fax or
mail in questions to Karen Weintraub this week. Responses will run next
Sunday. Phone: 547-9764, Fax: 436-2798, mailing address:
The Virginian-Pilot
921 N. Battlefield Blvd.
Chesapeake, Va.
23320
KEYWORDS: WATER SUPPLY PLAN LAKE GASTON by CNB