Toms Creek sewer advocates can't use the courts to hold Blacksburg Town Council to a 1972 annexation agreement wherein it promised to provide public sewer to residents there, so ruled the Virginia Supreme Court in March 2007.

That's good news for Blacksburg's environmental and slow-growth advocates, who orchestrated a revolution in town politics in 2004 by voting out a pro-Toms Creek sewer council majority.

But it's disappointing to longtime basin landowners who hoped to have their aging septic tanks and drain fields replaced, and to some builders who want public sewer service available for development.

Council, however, is still waiting on the results of a multi-phase sewer study that may guide the future of public utilities and development in the basin in years to come.

But other basin residents hope not to see a sewer built out of fear that they will be forced to pay thousands of dollars to connect to the system. And some, whether or not they live in the basin, believe that a conventional sewer system will allow rampant development, turning that rolling farmland into a maze of subdivisions.

What are your thoughts on the project?

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