U.S. Water News Online
ELK GARDEN, W.Va. -- While public concern has grown over the sale of West Virginia's largest water utility to a German conglomerate, the state lacks laws that would give it power to control its water resources, analysts say.
West Virginia has no water-use statute. Factories, farms or out-of-state water companies aren't required to publicly report how much water they use.
Also, no state agency keeps track of who takes water from West Virginia's rivers, streams and lakes, or polices how they use the water.
``We have no regulatory program for water use in West Virginia,'' said Charleston lawyer Larry George, a former top state environmental regulator who has researched the history of West Virginia water law.
American Water Works, the parent company of West Virginia-American Water Co., announced last year it would be sold to Thames Water, a British subsidiary of the German firm RWE Aktiengesellschaft, for $4.6 billion.
Approved by the state Public Service Commission in October, the sale has sparked concern among some residents that the state is forfeiting control over its water to a foreign company.
Attorney General Darrell V. McGraw Jr. plans to appeal to the state Supreme Court if necessary a commission decision blocking reconsideration of the buyout.
Still, to sell off the state's water, RWE-Thames would need specific project approval from the PSC. Billy Jack Gregg, director of the commissions' consumer advocate division, says that's a sufficient protection of state interests.
Gregg said he would be more concerned if a nonutility -- a company that doesn't supply water to West Virginians -- sought to tap into the state's supply. Under that scenario, neither the PSC nor any government agency would have authority to stop it.
Such scenarios aren't far-fetched.
For example, in the 1980s, Baltimore Gas & Electric proposed to build a huge coal-slurry pipeline from Logan County to one of its East Coast power plants. West Virginia water would have flowed through the pipeline, carrying pulverized coal. The idea eventually died.
In the 1990s, Kentucky proposed a pipeline to carry Ohio River water to quench growing areas around Lexington. That idea generated significant opposition and stalled.
Also, officials from Fairfax County, Va., studied for years a plan to draw water from the Stony River Reservoir, a small Grant County lake owned by Mead-Westvaco. In early December, Fairfax hydrologists concluded their plan wouldn't work.
The state's neighbors are already taking the state's water in one case. Three private companies have access to a mountaintop reservoir in Mineral County when Washington, D.C., water supplies run low.
In the 1960s, Washington-area water managers became concerned they might run out of water as the regional population grew. They proposed that 16 reservoirs be built in the Potomac River watershed.
While popular dissent quashed that plan, a compromise resulted in the 1982 construction of Jennings Randolph Lake, a 1,000-acre body of water formerly known as the Bloomington Reservoir.
Three D.C.-area water companies helped fund the project. In return, they got the rights to a third of the lake's water, which they can tap into in times of drought.
In 1999 and again this summer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Jennings Randolph Lake's dam wider, allowing extra water to flow down the Potomac to the D.C. suburbs. The same thing happened during last summer's d rought.
Jan Gonzalez, project manager for the corps, said that low water means the lake's boat ramps were above the water line earlier in the year, shortening the recreation season.
Regional water supply experts predict more proposals will come.
``The utilities are looking for potential new sources, and that includes looking in West Virginia,'' said Carlton Haywood, associate director of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin.
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