DATE: Tuesday, June 24, 1997                TAG: 9706240279

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   46 lines

SENATORS LENDING EFFORTS TO VISITORS' SITE AT SWAMP ROBB AND WARNER HAVE REQUESTED FUNDS FOR A FEASIBILITY STUDY.

A pair of proposals in Congress could add acreage to the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and finally give Chesapeake a visitors' center it needs to tap the landmark for tourism.

The two senators from Virginia, Charles S. Robb (D) and John W. Warner (R) have requested $500,000 to study the feasibility of a visitors' center on the swamp's Chesapeake side.

And for the third year in a row, Robb has requested $750,000 to acquire 3,000 acres of forest land in Virginia and North Carolina for the refuge.

The request for money to fund a visitors' center on Chesapeake's half of the swamp comes as various federal and state agencies try to agree on a new route for U.S. Route 17, which runs along the refuge's eastern border.

Should the center be built, Chesapeake would be able to use the refuge it shares with Suffolk as a tourist draw, a plan that has long been one of the city's top priorities.

There is only water access to the swamp from the city, however. The visitors' center has always been located in Suffolk.

The 107,000-acre refuge was officially founded in 1974. The swamp once encompassed millions of acres before loggers drained a large portion for better access. Lake Drummond in the middle of the refuge is one of only two natural lakes in the state, and a young George Washington spent his pre-political years surveying the area and coming up with ways to harvest its huge bounty of cypress trees.

There is some urgency to the effort to buy more of the land along the refuge's borders.

``According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the opportunity exists to add nearly 3,000 acres of contiguous forested wetlands to the refuge,'' Robb wrote in his request for funding to the Interior subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. ``All of the properties in question are held by individuals who are willing sellers and have requested that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service purchase their properties in the near future. Without funding, however, this opportunity will be lost.''

The request said three of the landowners are having personal hardships that may require them to liquidate their holdings if the refuge cannot begin negotiations for their land.

``I know of at least one property that we've already lost,'' said Lloyd Culp, director of the refuge. ``We are losing these opportunities.''

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