THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 15, 1997 TAG: 9702150372
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 57 lines
Virginia Beach won another legal victory Friday when a judge in Richmond told Lake Gaston pipeline opponents that they had not been injured by a Virginia law supporting the project.
The complainants in the suit included a U.S. congressman, three state senators and eight state representatives.
Retired Judge W. Park Lemmond, ruling for the city of Richmond Circuit Court, said that the legislators and landowners on a lake in southside Virginia were not harmed by the law.
He said he would consider allowing a third set of complainants - landowners along the Roanoke River - to keep the suit alive if they did a better job of proving that they would suffer if Virginia Beach is allowed to draw from Lake Gaston.
Virginia Beach counsel George A. Somerville said the city never felt threatened by the lawsuit because it does not need the state law to win approval for the 76-mile pipeline.
``It always feels good to win, but I think there was a lot less at stake in this case,'' Somerville said.
Virginia has been trying for 14 years to tap Lake Gaston on the North Carolina-Virginia border. It has been challenged by North Carolina and opponents in southside Virginia.
Construction of the pipeline, which would also serve Chesapeake and perhaps Franklin and Isle of Wight County, is about 85 percent complete.
U.S. Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., who lent his name to the case against Virginia Beach, said he doesn't know what the complainants will do next, except continue to fight the pipeline.
``I'm still optimistic that either through state court or federal court that the pipeline can be stopped,'' Goode, a Democrat and former state senator from Rocky Mount, said. ``I still think we're on the right side of the issue.''
Goode and the other Southside legislators alleged that a 1992 state law supporting the pipeline was inappropriately adopted and unconstitutional, and that they were therefore ``injured by a distortion of the process by which a bill becomes law in Virginia.''
The other legislators involved in the suit are: state Sens. Charles R. Hawkins, R-Chatham, Richard J. Holland, D-Windsor, and L. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth; and Dels. Ward L. Armstrong, D-Martinsville, William W. Bennett Jr., D-Halifax, Whittington W. Clement, D-Danville, Joyce K. Crouch, R-Lynchburg, Allen W. Dudley, R-Rocky Mount, Lacey E. Putney, I-Bedford, W. Roscoe Reynolds, D-Martinsville, and Frank M. Ruff Jr., R-Clarksville.
The complainants also included property owners along Smith Mountain Lake, a man-made lake on the Roanoke River northwest of Danville.
The third set of complainants includes landowners along the Roanoke River in Virginia and North Carolina, who argued that the legislation would allow water to be taken from the river and would therefore deprive them of taking the same water.
Any of the complainants could appeal the judge's ruling to the Virginia Supreme Court.
KEYWORDS: RULING LAKE GASTON CIRCUIT COURT PIPELINE