DATE: Thursday, July 17, 1997               TAG: 9707170507

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ERIKA REIF, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS                      LENGTH:   79 lines

SIERRA CLUB CRITICIZES PROPOSED RESERVOIR'S IMPACT STUDY ENVIRONMENTALISTS SEEK A 60-DAY EXTENSION OF THE COMMENT PERIOD.

The state's largest environmental group released a report Wednesday that rips into the Environmental Impact Statement used by Newport News Waterworks to support building a reservoir in King William County.

The reservoir is intended to guarantee a water supply to the Peninsula until the year 2040.

The Sierra Club, which opposes the 1,525-acre reservoir, hired consultants two months ago to examine the impact statement released for public comment in January.

The Sierra Club's consultants found what they say are flaws in the city's calculations of future water needs for the area.

According to the group's projections, there is no need for a new reservoir, nor would there be cost savings in building one. At the very most, the group said, the region would need another desalination plant.

The group accuses the Environmental Impact Statement of ``fudging'' numbers, and in other instances of ``the wholesale manufacturing of numbers . Club lobbyist Albert C. Pollard Jr. said in a news conference.

``There is an alternative agenda,'' Pollard said of the city's plans. ``Our fear is that the reservoir is simply a water-grab: If you want to be a player, you have to have the water.''

Siegel briefed Waterworks officials on the report Wednesday. Dave Morris, planning and programs director for Newport News Waterworks, said his department will look at the report more closely.

But, Morris, who directs the project, said, ``I don't think it's going to reveal anything significant. We've been studying the `need' issue for years.''

The Sierra Club has been battling the reservoir project as part of its national campaign against urban sprawl.

The project has also been taking fire from another front since March, when the Mattaponi Indian tribe began vigorously fighting the project based on treaties more than 300 years old. The Mattaponi say the treaties protect their reservations with buffer zones that would be violated by the reservoir.

The Sierra Club's financial and environmental consultant, Michael L. Siegel of Washington, D.C., explained his water demand figures at the news conference. Siegel worked with an economics consultant to produce his analysis of water-needs projections.

His report states that Newport News' projections inflated future residential, commercial, industrial and military water needs.

For instance, instead of using Virginia Employment Commission data for residential projections, the city used ``subjective guesses by local economic development officials,'' that ``usually are on the optimistic side,'' Siegel said.

But Morris says he has as much confidence in local planners who are ``closer to what's going on in those communities'' as he is in Virginia Employment Commission population projections.

Industrial-use projections were the most exaggerated, according to the Sierra Club report. The city's study assumed industrial water usage would increase. But the environmental group's report states that employment in heavy water-usage industries, such as the Newport News Shipyard, is declining, leading to a corresponding drop in demand for water.

The report also says that the city's projections don't include the fact that as prices go up, people tend to use less water, helping to reduce the demand. The city also failed to consider programs designed to reduce demand through regulation, the Sierra Club said.

The result, the report says, is that ``The Lower Peninsula water users will be burdened with having to pay to support the costs of expensive new facilities with substantial over-capacity.''

Water prices would nearly double over the next 14 years, according to the report.

Morris said prices will not double, but could increase by up to 50 percent. Someone has to pay the start-up costs for large public projects, Morris said, and ``we are taking the plunge now.''

``It's the same way these projects have been done for a hundred years in Norfolk and on the Peninsula, and how they will be done in Virginia Beach and King William County,'' he said, referring to the Lake Gaston pipeline and the King William reservoir.

The Sierra Club has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to extend the public comment period for the reservoir project 60 days beyond the July 25 deadline. An extension would give the public time to react to the group's report and to review comments by government agencies.

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