TUNNEL FLOOD STUDY MEETS POLITICS
By Kimball Payne
Virginia Transportation Commissioner David Ekern told state transportation decision-makers Thursday that he expects a detailed report by mid-September on the busted water main that flooded the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.
The Virginia Department of Transportation is putting together a panel of tunnel, road and emergency experts to weigh in on the flood, which locked up Hampton Roads fragile network of bridges and tunnels on the eve of the July 4 holiday. The panel has familiar faces, including state emergency planners, state police and officials from Hampton, Norfolk and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
But Ekern said the agency is also reaching out to Johns Hopkins University, the Federal Highway Administration and the Port Authority of New Jersey and New York to get fresh eyes to search for how a busted water pipe snarled traffic for hours at the region's most notorious bottleneck.
"This is an extra step that we needed to take," Ekern told the Commonwealth Transportation Board.
Ekern laid out a tentative schedule where the panel would come together for meetings in early August and finalize a report that could land in the center of two different seasons in Hampton Roads. Mid-September marks the tail end of the busiest part of the hurricane season on the East Coast, when local water crossings could face weather tests more severe than the thunderstorms that complicated the response to the flood.
It also signals the rise of Virginia's frenetic election season that features statewide races for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general and dozens of House of Delegates contests. The state transportation agency is a frequent and familiar whipping boy for state lawmakers, and any report involving VDOT and the HRBT would likely become instant campaign fodder for challengers and incumbents alike. Candidates could score points slamming VDOT, but they could also find voters weary of legislative wrangling without action in Richmond.
For years the General Assembly has struggled to find a politically palatable way to fund a transportation upgrade for the state's beleaguered network of interstates, especially in the two most congested regions - Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia.
Both candidates for the executive mansion - Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds - have cast votes and been involved in the debate, usually on opposing sides. The stakes in the governor's race all but guarantee that Deeds and McDonnell will scour the report for vindication of their own efforts and vilification of the other side.
Tax increases for transportation projects have consistently died in the House of Delegates, where Republicans and some Democrats have balked at increasing taxes. The only tax plan passed by the House in recent years - and signed into law by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine - faced blistering criticism before it was gutted by the state Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
So state political leaders and challengers will likely be primed for more information about how a piece of metal pipe broke through its concrete casing and flooded the westbound tube of the tunnel.
Hampton Roads' representatives on the state transportation panel warned that the faulty water main is a symptom of an aging system.
"At the end of the day, it's a 52-year-old pipe," said Aubrey Layne, the president of a Virginia Beach property management company and a new member of the panel. "The fact of the matter is, these pipes are going to break again."
Dana Dickens, the head of the Hampton Roads Partnership, said voters realize that serious road repairs don't come cheap.
"The public is beginning to realize that we do indeed have a funding issue," he said.
THE PANEL
Those studying the tunnel flood likely include:
* Federal Highway Administration
* Johns Hopkins University
* Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
* Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel