Newport News abandons reservoir plans

Newport News called an end yesterday to its two-decade effort to build a reservoir in King William County. Opponents had long considered the lake an affront to Indians and the environment.

A memo from acting City Manager Neil A. Morgan recommended ending the project, and Mayor Joe S. Frank said yesterday afternoon that it is indeed dead.

"At some point you have to say it's not going to happen and put an end to it," Frank said in a telephone interview.

Newport News had said it needed the 12.2 billion-gallon, $250 million lake to provide water for a growing Peninsula region.

But the project was dealt a devastating blow in 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.

Newport News' City Council is expected to discuss the reservoir today, but Frank said there was little if any support for it, and the talk would probably be short.

"Now we have to start again and find other alternatives," Frank said.

Newport News spent nearly $55 million pursuing the project over 22 years.

Opponents said the reservoir would destroy more than 430 acres of wetlands, threaten rare American shad and flood Indian archaeological sites.

Kay Slaughter, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, a Charlottesville group that represented several opponents in the court case, welcomed the pulling of the plug.

"It's a good example of citizens being able to use the law to get a just result," she said.

Carl "Lone Eagle" Custalow, chief of the Mattaponi tribe, said: "It's a big relief. I've been fighting this thing for 15 years."

Shortly after the court issued its ruling, the council suspended the project until its staff could look into whether it was worth pursuing.

Morgan replied with his memo. It came out Wednesday but became widespread knowledge only yesterday, after environmentalists circulated it.

Morgan wrote that the city was facing "a legal, regulatory and public-relations environment where successful project implementation is extremely unlikely, if not impossible. Building on this conclusion, it is recommended that the [reservoir] project be terminated."

Newport News' demand for water increased in the early and mid-1990s, fueling the desire for the reservoir. But over the past several years, demand flattened even as the number of customers continued to go up, the memo said.

City officials attributed that to people and businesses doing more to conserve water.

Newport News wanted to create the reservoir on Cohoke Mill Creek, about 45 miles east of Richmond. The lake would have produced up to 24 million gallons a day and would have drawn water from the Mattaponi River.

Contact Rex Springston at (804) 649-6453 or .