THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 16, 1995 TAG: 9511160264
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
North Carolina's two U.S. senators introduced legislation Wednesday that would give their governor the power to block the proposed Lake Gaston pipeline.
Sens. Jesse Helms and D.M. ``Lauch'' Faircloth, both Republicans, said the measure is needed because the federal agencies that have reviewed the project have ``run roughshod'' over North Carolina's interests.
``Our bill stops the withdrawal of water from the lake until the federal bureaucrats listen to the concerns of countless thousands of citizens of both North Carolina and Virginia,'' Helms said in introducing the Lake Gaston Protection Act of 1995 soon after the Senate convened Wednesday.
The legislation would allow the project to proceed if the leaders of both states agree to the interstate agreement negotiated this summer. The pact dissolved at the end of June, when the Virginia General Assembly and Gov. George Allen could not agree on procedural details.
Leaders in Virginia Beach dismissed the bill Wednesday as a ``political show'' and an act of desperation by pipeline opponents who have repeatedly tried to kill the project over the past 12 1/2 years.
Virginia's congressional delegation, in a joint statement released Wednesday night, said they think Helms' measure has little chance of winning approval.
``It is our firm opinion that the Congress will not try to intervene legislatively in this dispute between Virginia and North Carolina,'' said Sens. John W. Warner and Charles S. Robb and Rep. Owen B. Pickett. ``We will carefully watch out for any attempts to move this legislation and will stand together in opposition.''
Robb officially notified the Senate leadership that he opposes the bill, making it unlikely that the legislation will ever be brought up in committee, said Karen Gravois, Robb's press secretary. Both Warner and Faircloth sit on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that would address the bill.
``For all practical matters, it won't be brought up,'' Gravois said. ``Sen. Robb really wants to reassure the people of Virginia Beach that he feels confident the project will go through as planned.''
Virginia Beach officials are poised to resume construction of the 76-mile pipeline, begun in 1990.
The city received a permit in July from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to proceed with the project. At the end of September, a federal court decided that Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown acted properly when he declined to oppose the project, thereby validating the permit and allowing construction to begin.
The city has chosen seven contractors and is expected to sign work agreements totaling nearly $100 million by the end of the month.
In a statement he read while introducing his bill, Helms said that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission failed to adequately examine the pipeline's potential impacts, and that more study of the project is needed.
``The FERC officials did not look closely enough at the potential negative environmental effects of withdrawing 60 million gallons a day from the lake,'' Helms said. ``The withdrawal could very well pose dire consequences to the commercial and recreational fishing industry that depends so heavily on an adequate exchange of freshwater and saltwater in the estuary.''
FERC, which has oversight because it regulates a hydroelectric plant on the lake, concluded this summer that the pipeline would cause no significant environmental damage along the river and was the best source of additional water for Hampton Roads.
Virginia Beach would receive up to 48 million gallons a day from the pipeline; Chesapeake would get as much as 12 million gallons a day; and Franklin and Isle of Wight County would each take up to 1 million gallons a day.
The man-made Lake Gaston was created by a hydroelectric dam along the Roanoke River. Only a finger of it stretches into Virginia; the rest lies on the North Carolina side of the state line.
Clarence Warnstaff, Virginia Beach director of public utilities, said Wednesday that the legislation ``represents in my opinion, a desperate act on their part to stop the Virginia Beach project.''
``They have lost their case before three separate federal regulatory agencies, and they've lost every challenge to those decisions,'' he said. ``They have been totally unable to convince a federal regulatory agency or a federal court of the merits of their arguments.''
``The only thing I can figure is that it's to put on a political show,'' said City Council member Louis R. Jones, who met with Robb, Warner and Pickett on Wednesday to bring the legislators up to date on the project.
Virginia Beach City Council member John A. Baum, who also traveled to Washington on Wednesday, said he is fairly sure the Virginia delegation will sidetrack Helms' bill. But he doesn't want to get too complacent.
``We've had so many bad things happen that even though it seems unbelievable that these tactics would work, if you don't stay alert and keep checking, something could happen,'' he said. MEMO: Staff writer Mason Peters contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
KEYWORDS: WATER SUPPLY PLAN TIDEWATER VIRGINIA
LAKE GASTON by CNB