Editor’s note: This is the first in a four-part series examining the 15th anniversary of Isle of Wight County signing its 2009 Norfolk Water Deal and its impacts. The second will focus on the deal’s impact on county water rates.

 

This month marks the 15th anniversary of the Western Tidewater Water Authority, formed from Isle of Wight County and the city of Suffolk, signing its costly 2009 Norfolk Water Deal.

Since each locality began paying its annual share of the then-$146 million agreement, Isle of Wight has spent an estimated $4.6 million to date on water that’s gone unused.

The 40-year deal, now estimated to cost the WTWA roughly $300 million, allocates Isle of Wight 25% and Suffolk 75% of the WTWA’s intake from Norfolk through 2048.

In 2013, when Norfolk allotted the WTWA an initial 3 million gallons per day, Isle of Wight was only able to use 350,000, or 46%, of its 750,000 gallon per day share, and paid over $188,000 for its unused portion, according to county estimates of its annual usage.

Per the agreement’s 25-year schedule of mandatory two-year increases, the WTWA has upped its intake of Norfolk water five times over the past decade to a current 8 million gallons per day, of which Isle of Wight receives 2 million. County usage estimates show Isle of Wight used only 680,000 gallons per day, or 34% of its share, and paid over $756,000 for the unused remainder as of the June 30 end of the county’s 2023-24 fiscal year.

When the WTWA reaches its maximum 15 million gallon per day allocation from Norfolk in 2038, Isle of Wight will be on the hook to pay for a 3.75 million gallon share.

 

‘Running out of water’ 

Isle of Wight saw its population grow 18% between 1990 and 2000 according to census data. To keep pace, the county signed an agreement in 1997 with Virginia Beach to tap up to 1 million gallons per day from the 76-mile Lake Gaston Pipeline, which carries 60 million gallons daily from the Virginia-North Carolina border lake to Virginia’s most populous city by way of Lake Prince, a Norfolk-owned reservoir that straddles the Isle of Wight-Suffolk line.

Suffolk saw its own population grow 22% over the same decade amid Virginia’s 12-year legal battle with North Carolina over the controversial Gaston pipeline, and by 2000, had joined with Isle of Wight to form the WTWA to look to their own shared water needs.

In 2002, Isle of Wight and Suffolk built their first interconnected water main, and by 2005, the WTWA had received a permit from the state Department of Environmental Quality to withdraw up to 8.3 million gallons per day from the Potomac aquifer, the largest source of groundwater in eastern Virginia.

According to annual estimates from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center, Isle of Wight’s population grew another 8.8% from 2000 to 2005, a surge likely fueled by the buildout of more than 500 homes at the Eagle Harbor housing development, and another roughly 340 at Founder’s Pointe, both located in the northern end of the county. Suffolk saw its own housing boom, growing another 23% over the same five-year period.

According to Chris Pomeroy, the WTWA attorney who began the three-year negotiation with Norfolk in 2006 on behalf of Isle of Wight and Suffolk, projections from that year showed the WTWA reaching or exceeding its permitted groundwater allowance by 2013.

“The driving concern back in the mid part of the first decade of the century … was running out of water in 2013, that’s what all the technical experts thought at the time,” Pomeroy told county supervisors in a March update on the water deal.

Believing there was an urgent need for more water within the next seven years, the WTWA hired third-party engineers who determined in 2006 that buying untreated water from Norfolk was the most feasible option for meeting the 2013 need.

But the population surge that had ushered Isle of Wight and Suffolk into the 21st century started to dry up by 2007 when foreclosures on high-risk or “subprime” mortgages spurred a nationwide housing market crisis.

The 2007-09 Great Recession stalled several planned northern-end subdivisions in Isle of Wight, including the 2005-approved, 179-home St. Luke’s Village development slated for the former Smithfield Downs golf course in Carrollton, which remains on hold to this day, and the 2008-proposed, 776-home Benn’s Grant development a mile outside Smithfield that didn’t break ground until 2015.

Isle of Wight, despite the pause in new housing, largely kept pace with its pre-recession surge, growing another 8.8% between 2007 and 2013, according to Weldon Cooper estimates. Suffolk saw its 23% five-year growth rate slow over the next seven to 8.3% between 2007 and 2013.