BY LAWRENCE LATANE III

Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

An environmental group is raising new questions about the need for a proposed reservoir facility in King William County.

The Sierra Club -- which a decade ago pointed out errors that threatened to derail the project -- today released studies that show Newport News-area water use has dropped from 45.7 million gallons a day in 1990 to 43.5 million gallons a day last year. Newport News predicted in its environmental impact study for the reservoir that water consumption would have reached 61.2 million gallons a day by 2007.

Newport News officials countered that demand has slowed temporarily because of conservation efforts but said demand will exceed current capacity without the reservoir water.

Washington consultant Michael Siegel and Don Philips, a retired NASA physicist from York County wrote the studies.

In 1997, Siegel and Phillips each presented water-use data that prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to do its own projection. As a result of the corps study, the head of the corps' Norfolk office at the time declared the reservoir unnecessary. He issued a preliminary decision in 1999 to deny the federal permit needed for the reservoir.

The corps reversed that decision upon appeal by then-Gov. Jim Gilmore and issued the permit in 2005.

The city is expected to seek a final State Water Control Board permit needed for the project in 2012. The Sierra Club released its latest studies days before Newport News City Council meets to consider borrowing $20 million to begin buying land in King William for the reservoir, now estimated to cost $289 million.

Kelly Place, a Williamsburg waterman who has been critical of the reservoir plan, said, "We think it's very premature to burden the citizens of Newport News with the extra debt."

Newport News has been championing its reservoir plan since 1990, when it entered into a contract with King William County to host the project. In addition to Newport News, the city's waterworks furnishes water to Williamsburg and Hampton and some nearby counties.

The lake would flood 1,500 acres along Cohoke Mill Creek and be supplied by water pumped from the Mattaponi River. Opposition to the project is widespread. Environmentalists note that the 400 acres of wetlands inundated by the reservoir would be the single greatest wetlands impact on the East Coast since federal restrictions in 1972.

The Mattaponi Indian Tribe views the project as a threat to the annual shad spawning run that has been a part of tribal culture for thousands of years.

Contact Lawrence Latané III at llatane@timesdispatch.com