Reservoir fight ends on Peninsula

Newport News officials - after 22 years, millions of dollars and repeated court dates - decided this week to finally end their attempt to build a massive regional reservoir in King William County. It is a bitter admission by city officials that they could not overcome environmentalists, conservationists and Indian tribes who aligned against the project; data that consistently questioned the need for the 13-billion-gallon reservoir; and a major setback in federal court involving a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.

The city's decision is the correct one. Newport News Waterworks still had hurdles - financial, legal and administrative - to clear to build the reservoir on the Cohoke Creek. The city had already spent $55 million on the $289 million effort to provide a reliable water source for several Peninsula localities and federal installations for 50 years. The reservoir would have destroyed 403 acres of wetlands, though the city had planned to restore or create twice that amount.

But here's the good news: Efficient water use by customers and other conservation measures since 1987 suggest the reservoir might not be needed after all. That's what the opponents had repeatedly said, though it was difficult to know, years ago, whose long-range forecasts would prove more accurate.

"While the number of [water] connections and population served has continued to increase over the past 15 years, total water demand has remained relatively static," Neil Morgan, acting city manager, said in a recent memo to Newport News City Council. The city is serving about 60,000 additional customers with no higher demand.

"They've got plenty of time to figure out the number of alternatives," Glen Besa, state director of the Sierra Club, told The Pilot. "There's a range of things they can do."

The Sierra Club and the Alliance to Save the Mattaponi, correctly, have presented a list of suggestions that the Waterworks should consider. In fact, both sides should work together as collaborators, not antagonists, to ensure that Peninsula residents and businesses can get all the water they need at a minimal cost to the environment.

Alternatives include: using efficient appliances - toilets, shower heads and washing machines; reclaiming wastewater; and reactivating the Big Bethel and Jones Pond reservoirs that previously had been run by the military. The city opened up the Lee Hall desalinization plant in 1998, which also helped.

Environmentalists noted that systems in Norfolk and Richmond have excess water. Harry Kenyon, spokesman with Norfolk's Department of Utilities, says the city has about 10 million gallons per day that could be sold, but he added that Newport News hadn't inquired about buying the water.

Still, the whole saga must anger Newport News officials. They pursued the regional effort, in part, because the feds prohibited James City County from building its own reservoir on Ware Creek. Newport News officials tried to mitigate harm to the shad in the Mattaponi River where the intake pipe would have been located. They spent a lot of time, money and effort in the process.

The best news is that the water needs of the Peninsula are being met using a variety of methods. City Council members, correctly, urged Waterworks officials to include reservoir opponents in charting the area's future water needs. Those one-time opponents, who have credibility on their side, deserve to have a prominent place at the table.