Newport News Mayor Joe Frank said today the city’s two-decade-long effort to develop a reservoir in King William County is dead.
"It’s certainly something that had to happen — the termination of the project," Frank said in a telephone interview this afternoon.
Frank’s words followed the circulation today of a Sept. 16 memo from interim acting City Manager Neil A. Morgan that called for ending the project.
"[It] is recommended than the [reservoir] project be terminated," Morgan wrote.
The project has appeared dead since April, when a federal judge struck down an Army Corps of Engineers’ permit for the lake, saying in effect it would wreak too much destruction on the environment.
Opponents have said the $250 million project would destroy more than 430 acres of wetlands, threaten rare American shad and flood Indian archaeological sites.
Newport News has spent nearly $55 million on the project.
Morgan’s memo went up on Newport News’ Web site last week, but it got wider circulation today when reservoir opponents publicized it.
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