DATE: Tuesday, October 21, 1997             TAG: 9710210006

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   52 lines

WATER COOPERATE WATER

Hampton Roads needs to begin working toward closer regional cooperation in water. Eventually, the logic points toward some form of regional water authority. Never was there a stronger argument favoring such a body than last week's complicated and costly deal that finally persuaded Suffolk to step aside and allow the completion of the Lake Gaston pipeline project.

But the agreement was months in the making and signed only as the dispute threatened to grow into a full-blown legal battle pitting the cities of Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake against Suffolk. Had the matter gone to court, each of the parties would have run up astronomical legal fees and it would have further delayed a water project that has already been 15 years in the making.

In the end, Suffolk walked away with more than $4 million in cash and the right to take as much as 2 million gallons of water a day from the Lake Gaston flow.

It's bad enough that Virginia Beach has had to battle the state of North Carolina as well as residents of Virginia's Roanoke River basin to get the 76-mile long pipeline built. But Suffolk's stubborn refusal to allow Norfolk to enlarge its pumping station (which happens to be located in Suffolk - another argument in favor of a regional water authority) meant that it could tie up the whole deal until its demands were met.

That's not neighborly. But it is understandable. Water is the lifeblood of this region, and any locality that fears it will be left short of the precious commodity can be expected to fight tenaciously to ensure a steady, affordable supply. As Virginia Beach has done.

If history is any predictor, this kind of hard-nosed bargaining will come back to bite Suffolk when it seeks some kind of cooperation from the other cities of the region in the future. Memories are even longer than pipelines in Hampton Roads.

Suffolk city officials tried to hide behind so-called environmental concerns for its groundwater supplies in delaying the Gaston pipeline. But experts declared their concerns unwarranted from the start, and we never supported them.

In the end, Suffolk held up the deal long enough to make the bigger cities willing pay to get Suffolk to remove the impediment. Virginia Beach ponied up $3 million to get Suffolk to drop its concerns over Norfolk's wells, and Chesapeake coughed up $1.15 million and agreed to let Suffolk use the pipe it plans to build connecting Norfolk's water with Portsmouth.

If details of the agreement sound confusing, they are. More than anything else, the 20-page pact that was signed last week highlights the need for regional cooperation rather than conflict on the most basic of all community needs: water.

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