Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Blacksburg doesn't have to build sewer
A judge has ruled that a 1972 annexation agreement is no longer enforceable.
MONTGOMERY COUNTY -- Blacksburg Town Council cannot be held to a 34-year-old promise to build a public sewer system in the Toms Creek Basin, a circuit court judge has ruled.
Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Robert Turk ruled in December that C. Givens Brothers LLC was at least 20 years late in filing a grievance over a lack of sewer service in the basin.
On Feb. 1, Turk declined to hear an appeal of his December ruling.
The Givens suit argued that a 1972 annexation decree transferring 15 square miles of the Toms Creek Basin from Montgomery County to Blacksburg required the council to build a sewer system for basin residents.
The decree stipulated that the town had until 1975 to build the sewer. But that didn't happen. The town did extend sewers to some subdivisions in the basin later.
Turk wrote in his ruling that "It would be inconceivable to believe ... annexation orders could be left in effect ad infinitum for any future landowner down the line ... to attempt to enforce."
Givens Brothers filed its sewer lawsuit last year after the council voted down the company's request to rezone 121 acres off North Main Street for a high-density residential development.
Some council members cited sewer capacity problems as a reason to deny the request.
The company also has filed a court appeal of the council's rezoning decision, but no hearing has yet been scheduled.
Two other plaintiffs, longtime basin residents Robert and Geneva Davis, filed suit against the town on the sewer issue last year but withdrew it recently, according to court records.
These lawsuits weren't the first efforts to get sewer service in the most rural part of town.
In the early 1980s, a group of farmers living in the basin threatened to file a de-annexation suit over the lack of sewer service, but that effort faded away.
The council passed an ordinance in 1985 that officials have said relieves the town of any responsibility for providing sewer to any future developments in the basin.
Turk cited that ordinance in his December ruling and seemed to uphold its validity.
The Davises' attorney and nephew Christopher Tuck promised last year that he would take the sewer issue all to way to the Virginia Supreme Court.
Neither Tuck nor Carroll Givens of Givens Brothers could be reached Tuesday for comment on Turk's ruling.
The council tried in 2004 to build a Toms Creek sewer system.
But residents voted out three pro-sewer candidates in that year's election, effectively killing the plan.
