Newport News to sell parts of never-built King William reservoir land

Newport News plans to sell a large part of the land in King William County that it has held for decades in hopes of creating a reservoir.

It plans to sell nearly 199 acres by the intersection of King William Road and West Rose Garden Road for $230,000 to Everett Upshaw, city filings show. Separately, the city plans to sell 35.9 acres on West Rose Garden Road to Monty Henderson and Justin Henderson for $81,600.

King William tax records show the city still owns more than 690 additional acres in the county.

The city-owned Newport News Waterworks had hoped to create a 12.2-billion-gallon reservoir in King William County, flooding 1,500 acres to create a reservoir. that would have held nearly as much water as the utility’s five existing reservoirs.

Newport News Waterworks began campaigning for permits for the reservoir in 1984, winning an Army Corps of Engineers permit in 2005.

It spent about $15 million buying land, $14 million on environmental studies, more than $11 million in legal fees, about $5 million on engineering work and $1 million on archeological surveys.

But the Mattaponi tribe challenged the plan, saying the reservoir would flood former hunting campsites and sacred sites and disrupt the spawning of the American shad.

Environmentalists said plans to replace flooded wetlands by creating new ones elsewhere were inadequate.

In April 2009, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that Corps of Engineers “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” when it issued a construction permit for the reservoir in 2005, ordering another look. The judge found that changes in water use meant he could not tell whether other alternatives had become more practicable.