THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 15, 1995 TAG: 9507150019
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
Never say never: Could the Gaston agreement that drowned in political crocodile tears two weeks ago yet rise from the deep? Might its rescuers include Norfolk and North Carolina, last seen wrapping it in concrete blocks? Might the Beach, its defender then, start mixing the sand and gravel now?
What can have changed so drastically? Virginia Beach's fortunes, or so it hopes, in the form of a Final Environmental Impact Study released July 7 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Agen-cy.
The Gaston pipeline, the study concludes, is still the most reliable, cost-ef-fec-tive long-term source of essential potable water for the most populous city in the commonwealth. The pipeline's adverse environmental and economic im-pacts are insignificant. And despite declining water use at the Beach over the past several years because of conservation, recession and the slowdown on economic development, population growth has out-stripped the projections on which the pipeline's capacity was based. And over the next 20 or 30 years, it may yet outstrip the 60 million gallons a day the Beach has re-quest-ed.
Who didn't know that? All parties involved have known that, but that's not the question. The question is, Who all will once and for all admit it?
As promised, North Carolina has challenged FERC's findings, a challenge that holds about as much water as the Chowan River on a drought-in-Norfolk day. How can Carolina ask for a hearing to re-argue allegations it has already acknowledged as bogus in two tentative agreements? Easily, apparently. How can FERC grant such a hearing? There is no barking dog in this case, only a Carolina offense that makes no sense.
But then it isn't designed to make sense: It's designed to create delay that will pressure Virginia Beach, Norfolk, the commonwealth's governor and its legislature back into a compromising mood. If Virginia Beach will have its pipeline despite Norfolk's, Carolina's and Southside's best efforts to sink it, then this is opponents' last chance to get something out of it besides hard feelings.
When Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt rejected that last agreement, citing Virginia's political shenanigans, his state lost out on 15 million gallons a day of Gaston water for Northeastern North Carolina, another potential 20 mgd or so for Northwestern North Carolina and about $2 million a year from Virginia Beach into a Carolina kitty, ostensibly as payment for the diversion to the Beach of 1 percent of Gaston flow. The misinformed of the Roanoke River Basin blame the Beach's diversion for the basin's inadequacy of water distribution and lack of economic development. Will they also demand payment from Carolina if it diverts a share?
When (Democratic) Speaker of the House Tom Moss rejected (Republican) Gov. George Allen's request to assemble the legislature only long enough to approve the settlement, his home district of Norfolk lost Virginia Beach as a sure customer for at least 12 mgd of its ``surplus'' water and the right to sell that 12 mgd and the rest of its 30 mgd ``surplus'' to any other locality that would pay more than the Beach. Norfolk gained, moreover, Carolina's genuine threat to challenge the city's claim to the interbasin transfer from Virginia's Nottaway and Blackwater rivers, which produce Norfolk's ``surplus'' by drawing down a Carolina river far more than Beach withdrawals from Lake Gaston ever will.
Southwest Virginia, which acts as though Gaston water pooled at its feet from the sweat of its brow rather than the engineering of Virginia Power, lost $2 million a year the Beach was to pay, at 5 cents per 1,000 gallons. Southside haggled not over water but price, an example that won't be lost on other water-rich localities. It won't be lost, either, on other water-short localities like the Beach.
Virginia Beach, meantime, can sit tight on its ``We told you so.'' It can refuse, and has refused, to reconsider paying Carolina and Southside for Gaston water the feds and the courts say it's due for free. It can wish Nor-folk well in finding customers for its ``surplus'' until Carolina finds a court to put a cork in it. It can presume that FERC will issue the crucial permit for the 60 mgd the Beach requested, that no court will issue an injunction to prevent construction and that the pipeline will be functional by at the latest 1999, before the Beach would have to (re)negotiate another water-purchase contract with Norfolk.
And what happens 30 years hence when the Beach's contract with Norfolk to treat Gaston water runs out and, maybe sooner, Gaston's 60 mgd no longer suffices in the region? The Beach can hope that Norfolk will still have the water and a more reasonable will to deal. Or it can hope that technology has produced a seawater desalination process that runs on free solar power, not Redi Kilowatt.
Is there another way? Maybe. The Beach has already committed itself to ``those provisions of the tentative (Gaston) agreement which were intended to pro-vide (environmental) enhancements for the Roanoke Ba-sin''; e.g., to cap at 60 mgd withdrawals for Southeastern Virginia, to keep that 60 mgd here, to develop a drought index, to facilitate striped-bass spawning, to keep conserving and to spend hundreds of thou-sands for weed control in Lake Gaston.
The Beach can, from its unfamiliar and fleeting catbird seat, entertain a deal that further benefits the Beach and the smaller Gaston customers in this region, plus Norfolk, Northeastern North Carolina, Southside and Virginia as a whole:
Virginia Beach can ``find the stomach'' that Southside Del. Frank Ruff, writing elsewhere on this page, wishes it had had years ago: In return for reconsidering more provisions of the rejected agreements, the Beach can demand by a date certain the establishment of a state water policy on interbasin transfers and a water authority - regional, intrastate, interstate - to oversee it . . . and to spare the Beach and every other locality its ordeal of the past 12 1/2 years.
This region, and others, can cooperate or they can take turns crying. There aren't enough tears, crocodile or real, to wash the first car in Kempsville, pay the first bill in Norfolk, float the first boat off Buggs Island, clean the first fish in Corolla. The choice shouldn't be hard. by CNB