Water debate heats up ahead of pipeline vote

NAHOR — In drabs and dribbles they drove to the shopping center parking lot, drawn by the red, white and blue bunting and decorated SUV to sign a petition to force Fluvanna County’s supervisors to send a proposed water authority to a general vote.
The petition-gathering effort is the second for area residents, after the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors denied their first series of more than 2,000 signatures.
“It’s the option to vote that I’m signing for, and I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have the chance to vote,” said George “Chops” Csapo, a Lake Monticello resident, as he stopped to sign the petition, offered by Leroy McCampbell. “There’s something iffy about it, if they don’t want us to vote. What’s wrong with getting the whole county involved?”

County supervisors on Wednesday will consider joining Louisa County in a joint water authority to build a pipeline and a treatment plant and to distribute water throughout the counties.
Signatures requesting the authority vote be delayed, and a referendum held, were presented March 19. Those signatures were deemed improper by the Fluvanna County attorney because the petitions did not comply with state laws.
The two counties agreed in 2003 to study a method of bringing water from the James River into both counties to support residential and commercial growth, especially in the Zion Crossroads area, a burgeoning commercial center that straddles both counties.
“Water is an essential ingredient for life and, even though the economy is down, growth in our counties — especially along the Interstate 64 corridor — is going to continue,” said Dan Byers, a Louisa County supervisor. “We’ve tried to communicate with the constituents, to let them know the need, and they seem to understand it.”
“Our wells are already not giving us what we need,” Fluvanna Supervisor John Gooch said at the March 19 Board of Supervisors meeting, when the authority was previously considered. “The way I see it, if we don’t get that water line up there, then we might as well go ahead and shelve the Comprehensive Plan.”

A $50 million bill shared

The project is projected to cost between $45 million and $50 million, which would be split evenly between the counties. The counties’ supervisors would be responsible for approving the financing for their respective halves of the project.
Approximately 3 million to 6 million gallons of drinking water could be provided per day through the project, officials estimate.
Petition passers want the vote and many signers want the chance to vote it down.
“Some people don’t like the way the supervisors are going about creating a separate agency that will have a financial impact on residents through fees and taxes, and others just don’t like the idea of going deeper into debt,” said McCampbell, as he walked from car to car in the parking lot, soliciting signatures. “There are a lot of impacts that people don’t know about.”
According to preliminary designs completed by Timmons Group, the proposed pipeline from the James River would pull in water from an existing Dominion Virginia Power intake structure. River water would flow through an existing Tenaska-owned waterline already in place in the southern half of Fluvanna County to a new water treatment plant to be constructed in the Pleasant Grove area.
According to the proposed alignment, the treated water for drinking would then cross the county toward Zion Crossroads, with a tie-in to the existing water system near Lake Monticello and supplies to Fork Union.
Three options for the final pipeline’s route at the northern end of Fluvanna are proposed to connect to Louisa County Water Authority lines in place near the intersection of U.S. 250 and U.S. 15.

‘Too much power’?

The authority, if approved, would have the power to “acquire, purchase, finance, construct, reconstruct, operate, and maintain facilities for developing a bulk or wholesale supply of potable water,” the proposed resolution states.
That gives the proposed agency authority to construct “water intakes, reservoirs, filtration and purification plants, pumping stations, transmission lines, and storage facilities … deemed necessary and convenient.”
That authority, officials say, is necessary for the agency to do its job bringing water to the counties. It’s that authority, however, that bothers many who signed the petition calling for the general vote.
“This agency would have too much power over the residents and there’s too much that we don’t know,” said Jerry Passer, also of Lake Monticello. “When a great number of people call their elected representatives asking for a chance to vote on something, why not put it up to a public vote? The worst that can happen is that the people turn it down and the supervisors don’t get their way.”