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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 12, 1974)
'a with at thefij ant forth feel the ^ ? ad toitj, n S ganiei 5s. Sat® Pportimit poiler. tj; >eitwih| 1 trips to ick r Showcase growth’ Iclangers warned in strip mining talk I % By ROSE MARY TRAVERSO Reclamation attempts of strip mined land in Montana, Missouri and South Dakota, among other states, have amounted to “showcase growth, ” said Ed Dobson, at an En vironmental Action Council meet ing last night in the Bryan Library. Dobson, the northern plains rep resentative of the Friends of the Earth, is being sponsored on his tour throughout the state by the Sierra Club. “Getting something to grow in there isn’t the hard thing—Mother Nature will reclaim anything in the long run. The point is how long it will be before a man can make a living off the land,” Dobson said. Dobson, who has researched strip mining throughout the United States, Germany and England, has not seen any of the strip mining sites in Texas. "Every strip mining site is differ ent,” he said. However, he cautioned Texans to watch the mining’s effects on ground water and be sure that the lignite is worth those effects. Dobson suggested legislation re quiring investigations into the po tential environmental aspects of strip mining before mining is begun. “If Texas is going to have a reg ulatory law, you have to watch those loopholes—they might be big enough to walk a dragline through,” he said. There has been no way to replace water retention and surface hydrol ogy in reclaimed land, Dobson said. Other environmental hazards of strip mining are acid drainage into water sources, sedimentation caus ing flooding and preventing fish spawning and an increased rate of landslides in mountain areas, he said. Model reclamation areas have needed heavy fertilization and irrig ation, not required for good agricul tural yields before the mining, he said. Most of the mineral resources in the country are too deep to be strip mined, Dobson said. “We should keep the capital development un derground,” he said. Dobson said deep mining is deteriorating—570,000 lost jobs last year from closing of underground mine projects—because cheap strip mining methods prevent competi tion. “Deep mining is more danger ous because they cannot afford to compete and stay safe too,” he said. The future resources will eventu ally have to be deep mined, Dobson said. “The best thing to do is keep it healthy and clean today.” Dobson warned strip mining may attract more power plants into the state which would carry energy re sources to areas in the east. This has occurred in Montana and the Dakotas and is a threat to the clean air standards in these areas, he said. These power plants should be back east where the energy is used. Solar and wind power need “a shot in the arm,” Dobson said. The leases of the Brazos County landowners who are allowing strip mining require “grading, seeding and fertilization” but will probably not result in restoration of land to a useful state, Dobson said. “I hope you get good grazing land and maybe even some good agricul tural land here in Texas,” Dobson said. “This has not been the out come in the other states I h^ve studied.” Final board installments are due today. Students must pay $127 for the seven-day board plan or $114 for the five-day board plan. A charge of $1 will be made for every day the payment is over due. Cbe Battalion Vol. 68 No. 41 College Station, Texas Tuesday, November 12, 1974 County could up employe salaries Ignoring the rain—hoping for a break Students waited in the rain Saturday for the Ag gies to get the break that would win the game. That break never came. The Aggies fell to the SMU team, 18-14. See related story page 7. (Photo by Jack Holm) By GERALD OLIVIER Staff Writer The County Commissioners Court approved the budget for fiscal year 1975 at its monthly meeting Monday morning. The new budget contains sub stantial salary increases for almost all county officials. A 10 per cent across the board increase in the salaries of county employes, cou pled with increases of $4,500 for County Judge Bill Vance, $6,000 for County Attorney Roland Searcy and $3,000 for the county tax-assessor collector, county clerk, the four county commissioners, the sheriff and the county auditor make up the i bulk of a $663,330 increase over last year’s budgeted figures. Vance stressed that the salaries for next year are not set in this budget. These figures are max- imums which may be allocated by the court in January, Vance said. I Controversy arose at last week’s public budget hearing over the large percentage increases in the county attorney’s and judge’s salaries. Commissioner Walter Wilcox questioned the increase in Searcy’s salary, but withdrew his objection when reminded by Vance that salaries are set in January. The court included $1,500 for the Retired Senior Volunteers Program in next year’s budget. The commissioners heard a re quest from John Godfrey, county probation officer, for the court to endorse legislation for the creation of a statewide adult probation prog ram. The program, Godfrey said, is ad vocated by probation departments across the state and would establish a nine-member commission to coordinate probation efforts. Commissioners were concerned that creation of the proposed com mission would take revenues now received by the county from the adult probation program. These re venues are currently used to help support the more costly juvenile programs, Vance said. The court delayed action on the proposal until their December meeting to give commissioners time to study it. The court also delayed payment of fire protection expenses to Col lege Station until an explanation of a bill for fighting a recent boxcar fire can be obtained. The fire occurred two miles out side town, but the city submitted a bill for $14,015 for expenses incur red in 283 miles of travel. A representative of Honeywell Associates submitted a proposal for preventive maintenance on the heating and cooling systems in the courthouse complex. The proposal, costing $21,936 per year, would cover a regular monthly maintenance program plus the re placement of any part of the system which might fail. The age of the sys tem was cited as the major reason for the high cost of the plan. Vance said the plan amounted to an insurance program for the county. He said the county now as sumes all risk of breakdown. He asked the firm to submit a proposal involving regular maintenance, but not the replacement provision. Rudder interior costs told Design company to get $300,000 By JIM PETERS Staff Writer By the time the University Center is completed next summer, nearjy $3.3 million will have been spent on interior furnishings alone. The cost of the furnishings only represents a portion of the esti mated $28 million expenditure for the massive complex, but it is the feature that has attracted the most attention. William Pahlmann Associates Inc., an interior design firm based in New York City, was awarded the furnishings contract by the Texas A&M Systems Board of Directors. The firm’s fee will amount to about $300,000 when work is completed, or about 10 per cent of the total cost. Executive Vice President A. R. Luedecke said. Pahlmann, a Texas native, at tracted the attention of board mem bers with residential and commer cial decoration he has done throughout Texas. He was responsible for all the furnishings in the Center, from the lavishly appointed Board of Direc tors Wing to the decor lining the concourses of the Memorial Student Center and the Rudder Tower and Theatre Arts complex. Much of the furniture selected for the complex is imported, generally from Mexico where Pahlmann lives. Other pieces bear shipping tags from Sweden, where the aTm em bossed cafeteria chairs were spe cially made. “You get a certain flair when you buy from Mexico,” Pahlmann sug gested. That “certain flair,” he said, is of the utmost importance to the Southwestern motif he selected for the complex. “We’ve bent over backwards to get the unusual. I got everything I could on Texas history,” Pahlmann siad. “After all we re out here on the plains. Nowhere is the “Southwestern style more apparent than along the first floor concourse of the uncom pleted Memorial Student Center. There, two dozen cowhide benches line the long hallway, dwarfed by the panels of etched glass depicting Texas wildflowers which surround the cafeteria. The benches, of which there is an additional dozen in storage, are nearly identical to some Pahlmann designed for a New York depart ment store. “This is cow country,” Pahlmann stated, “so I figured why not use cowhide covers?” An average one-and-a-half South American steer hides were used for each bench. Each of the “naturalistic” brass legs on the benches (fashioned to resemble tree limbs) cost $125, Pahlmann estimated. The cost for an individual bench was $470, exc luding shipping and storage. Pahlmann’s furnishings budget, however, covered “moveable furni ture” only. Such things as light fixtures, car peting and window glass fell under the general construction contract for the complex. Before Pahlmann was hired two years ago many of the interior de sign decisions for the Memorial Student Center were being made by the building architect, W. R. Dede Matthews of Bryan. The etched glass panels sur rounding the cafeteria, for instance, originally were scheduled to be clear, with plastic plants to be placed behind them. Pahlmann disapproved of that scheme and forwarded the 60 panes to Bronx, N. Y. where the etchings of wildflowers were done at a cost of $19,000 (including round trip ship ping to the Bronx), Luedecke said. Skeptics have noted that no bluebonnets are in evidence on the panels. Pahlmann insists there are. some on one of the panes. Not all of the furnishings were cast in a Southwestern plains mold. Roman busts. Oriental rugs and silk screens, marble fireplaces, paintings of heroic soldiers and other assorted fixtures fill the pseudo-columned chambers of the Board of Directors annex. Ceramic lions and statues of al leged Greek, Buddhist and Ameri can Indian influence fill the an terooms and lobbies of the Rudder Theatre Arts Center. The furniture is distinctly formal in the second floor corridors sur rounding the banquet room areas in the MSC. “I couldn’t put cowhide up there,” Pahlmann stated. “After all there comes a time when the girls like to wear formals.” So instead of South American steer hides, the $605 sofas, $428 benches in that concourse are up holstered with a blue checkered fabric, while the $128 apiece coffee tables are finished with a high gloss varnish. Two “marbelia” murals, which resemble a peanut-butter and jelly- like smear, were added to the walls to continue the formal decor. The murals, two $1,000 coffee ta- (See MSC, page 6) T oday. Inside Oil Crisis Pg. 3 Executive committee Pg. 3 Better Business Bureau Pg. 6 Prosecutor to get White House tapes Mall construction gets underway Construction began this week on the north campus mall. The mall will be located in front of the Chemistry Building, between Ross St. and the Library. Presently, the work crews are clearing trees and leveling the area. The project should last a year, Charles Brunt, construction manager, said. (Photo by Glen Johnson) WASHINGTON (AP) — The Ford administration has signed a tentative agreement giving the spe cial Watergate prosecutor ready ac cess to tapes and papers left by Richard M. Nixon. The new ar rangement amounts to a repudia tion of an earlier agreement giving Nixon custody of the materials. The new pact would prohibit de livery of any of the documents or tapes to former President Nixon until the prosecutor is satisfied they are not needed in his investigation. The agreement supersedes the written understanding unveiled at the time of Nixon’s pardon by Presi dent Ford. The new agreement, submitted to U S. District Judge Charles Richey Monday, was signed over the weekend by presidential coun sel Philip Buchen, the heads of the Secret Service and the General Ser vices Administration and special prosecutor Henry S. Ruth Jr. Richey is hearing several chal lenges to that original agreement, and his approval is necessary for any modifications. In papers filed later Monday, Nixon’s Washington attorney, Her bert J. Miller Jr., pleaded that Richey uphold the original agree ment in its entirety. He criticized the new deal struck between the White House and Ruth as “depriv ing Mr. Nixon of any opportunity whatsoever to protect the presiden tial privilege of confidentiality.” The special prosecutor’s office had no role in the Sept. 6 pact bet ween Ford and Nixon. Under the original understand ing, the Nixon materials were to be forwarded quickly to the former President in California. And, unless Nixon cooperated, it would have forced the prosecutor to resort to court action any time he wanted to examine a tape or document. Weather Continued fair and mild Tuesday and Wednesday. North-northeasterly winds 10-17 mph. High today 69°; low tonite 44°; high tomor row 70°.