POST Local

The City of Falls Church abruptly suspended Friday’s planned auction of its water utility after the federal agency that now supplies the city with water determined that the agency could not sell water to a privately owned utility — a legal finding that appeared to contradict another from the same agency two months earlier.

The turn of events means the focus of the long-running water war between Fairfax County and Falls Church — whose stakes involve thousands of customers’ utility bills and hookup charges for developers in Tysons Corner and elsewhere — is likely to return to court.

Less than 24 hours before Falls Church had planned to auction its water utility for at least $44 million, city officials called off the sale, citing a legal ruling from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the corps’ Washington Aqueduct, which supplies the city’s water, can provide water from the Potomac River only to a publicly owned utility.

Earl Stockdale, chief counsel for the Corps, said that after reviewing a 1947 federal statute, he concluded that Congress gave authority to the corps to deliver water from the Washington Aqueduct “only to governmental entities,” according to an e-mail sent to Fairfax County officials. Stockdale said his May 17 opinion is also consistent with a 1963 opinion issued by the Corps.

Falls Church officials, however, had arranged to open the bidding for the city’s water system to any qualified buyer, including investor-owned utilities, based on an opinion written by another lawyer for the Corps who reviewed the same 1947 law.

This post has been updated.

More than three days after inmates at Virginia’s only super-maximum prison began a hunger strike , state officials acknowledged the situation for the first time.
Red Onion State Prison in Wise County. Va. (AP photo, David Crigger/Bristol Herald Courier)

Department of Corrections Director Harold Clarke said in a statement Red Onion State Prison officials are monitoring the seven inmates who have refused nine consecutive meals as of Friday.

Clarke said the state does not consider the situation a hunger strike unless an inmate misses nine consecutive meals or declares he is on strike verbally or in writing. Once a strike is confirmed, medical staff begin monitoring.

On Tuesday, prison officials declined to comment on the hunger strike. Late Thursday, they issued a statement but immediately asked for it to be recalled. On Friday afternoon, Clarke made his first statement.

The Senate will take a key procedural vote on a gender pay equity bill when it returns from recess next month, and the Virginians battling to join the chamber in 2013 are squabbling over the measure.

Timothy M. Kaine (D) has made clear he supports the Paycheck Fairness Act, which is designed to update the 1963 Equal Pay Act. Fellow former governor George Allen, the likely Republican nominee in the race to succeed retiring Sen. James Webb (D), won’t say how he
George Allen won’t say how he would vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act. (AP Photo/The Progress-Index, Patrick Kane)would vote if he were in the Senate now, though his campaign says he is clearly the better choice for women.

”It’s unfortunate that Washington is playing politics — there is no question George Allen supports pay equality for women,” said Allen spokeswoman Emily Davis. “He will stand as the strongest advocate for women struggling to keep their businesses and households afloat under the failed economic policies Tim Kaine championed in Washington.”

Gov. Bob McDonnell signed, without vetoes, changes to the state’s two-year budget that ends June 30.

Gov. Bob McDonnell (Tracy A. Woodward — The Washington Post)McDonnell (R) submitted 17 amendments to the state’s current budget. The General Assembly acted on them last week.

The budget will allocate $67.2 million to transportation, increase funding to local and regional jails to pay the costs of housing state prisoners, and restore cuts of $10 million for higher education.

It does not include a change that lawmakers said would withhold $150 million already approved for the authority overseeing construction of Metro’s multibillion-dollar planned extension to Dulles. That failed because of a wording error that would have withheld funding not just from the rail project, but also all of state government for the current fiscal year.

McDonnell said he will act on the next two-year budget, which was delayed for weeks, in the days ahead.

Abortion rights advocates planned to speak out against proposed permanent regulations for clinics Friday, when Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R)’s administration had been expected to release them.

The administration said that release of the proposed regulations, which would replace emergency rules that went into effect Dec. 31, has been pushed off until next week.

It is unclear how significantly the proposal will differ from the emergency regulations, which treat abortion clinics as ambulatory surgery centers and require that they meet hospital-type regulations. Some of the toughest in the nation, those rules include mandates on the size of exam rooms, the width of hallways and the number of parking spaces, as well as requirements for inspections, medical procedures and record-keeping.

Now the Virginia Board of Health is developing permanent rules, which will not be adopted until after the public has been given an opportunity to comment.

Abortion rights advocates planned to speak out Friday outside the Manchester Courthouse, following a hearing on charges from a March 3 protest on the steps of the Capitol.

More than 30 people had been arrested after refusing to vacate the Capitol steps to protest a bill that would have required most women seeking abortions to first undergo a vaginal ultrasound. They’ve dubbed themselves the “M3 arrestees,” a reference to the date of the arrests.