In an interview with the News-Press this week, retiring State Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple, who served in Richmond as chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus for 12 of her 16 years in the state senate, indicated her Democratic colleague State Sen. Chap Petersen is a “tenacious legislator” who “could succeed” if he fights, as promised, for legislation to ban Fairfax County’s recent action to limit new water hook ups in the county to its own water system.

The Fairfax County Board action, which went into effect upon its passage, requires that all new developments, commercial and residential, must draw its water from the county’s system, even if it means the laying of new pipes beside existing pipes operated by the City of Falls Church water system, or those of the City of Fairfax and the Town of Vienna. Whipple offered that he might find “sympathy for small jurisdictions having difficulty with larger ones,” and also might build a compelling case that it is “wasteful to build a set of pipes on top of another,” a matter that, she said, “would also concern the development community.”