The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, February 21, 1978, Image 1
The Battaoon Vol. 71 No. 102 10 Pages Tuesday, February 21, 1978 College Station, Texas News Dept. 845-2611 Business Dept. 845-2611 Inside Tuesday Coal talks flounder, America freezes, p. 2. P.E. course stresses exercise and diet, p. 7. Aggies lose to Sam Houston 75-68, p. 9. si in j tArmy scraps lake plans at Millican By GARY WELCH Battalion Staff Original plans for Millican Dam, which ovioed for a large recreational lake just e miles east of College Station, were ef- * e *Bctively scrapped last month by the U. S. ' v eftiiArmy Corps of Engineers. "•I The Corps of Engineers abandoned the ptislaRe after almost 18 years of controversy tratejovti the proposed dam and reservoir. Ar- <M«]guments for the lake have ranged from illwiiBcreational benefits to flood control. ephiBoups opposed to the lake have cited iorytn grge lignite coal deposits, high construc- issocit tion costs and damages to wildlife as rea- kascoisons not to build the dam. skeii Bit appears that opposition groups have ilottollm, at least for the present. lingtaBrWe have determined it wasn’t feasible basleMto build at that site,” said Jim Hair, chief of the Corps of Engineers’ program de- I News analysis jlopment branch. But the Corps of Engi- ers is now examining six possible sites ging from 10 to almost 50 river miles stream of the original site. Shifting the posed lake sites upstream insures that jne of the lignite deposits in the area will covered by a future lake and rendered less. ignite has proved to he Millican’s ;est stumbling block since the site was sen in 1960. Whenever analyzed from Host-benefit point of view, the predicted Jue of the lignite alone has consistently outweighed any possible benefits that Id be expected from the lake, ilthough the precise value of the soft lisdifficult to determine while it is still itizens in the ground, some estimates have gone as high as $3 billion. Still, the value re mains controversial. “Placing a value on lignite is like placing a value on a gold mine,” said Jim Herbert of the Corps of Engineers. With the pres ent concern over energy in the United States the lignite could become extremely valuable in the future, he said. On the other hand, the coal vein could be much smaller than expected and be worth much less. To determine the extent of the lignite deposits, Congress appropriated $179,000 in 1976 for a Corps of Engineers study of the site. All other Millican studies were suspended until Congress could make a decision on the dam site. The study was submitted to Congress in Oct. 1976. Congress determined that the lignite was too valuable to cover up with water, so the original Millican site was abandoned. Other monetary costs were considered in the decision to reject the Millican dam site. Oil and gas reserves in the area, virtually unknown until two years ago, are being tapped at an increasing rate. Since the cost of the dam project would include buying the land to be inundated, the project’s price has gone up considerably because the prices of oil- and gas-laden land is very high. “Payments made to landowners would be at going market prices,” Herbert said. “I think it is mostly privately-owned land.” Cornelius van Bavel, a member of the local Environmental Action Council, said covering the land would be unaffordable because of the high prices that woidd now be demanded. “The potential value of the land is run ning at thousands of dollars per acre,” he said. “The whole thing is irrelevant anyway,” van Bavel said. “It’s an oil field, and you don’t put an oil field under water.” Projected construction costs for the dam now stand at $189 million. Hair said. An nual inflation rates are pushing costs up constantly, so any delays mean cost in creases. Non-monetary costs also played a large part in defeating the Millican project, and will probably be just as difficult to over come for any future dams on the Navasota River. These costs are qualitative instead of quantitative and are difficult to evaluate for a cost-benefit analysis. Covering the land with water will de stroy many wildlife. Van Bavel said it does not matter where the lake is located be cause the habitats would be destroyed anyway. Mitigation lands, which are set aside somewhere in the state replace the inun dated habitats, are often inferior to the original land and thus considered in adequate. Even if the mitigation lands are adequate, they can never actually replace the flooded habitats. Environmental groups have also been concerned about the sediments that would build up behind the dam. Trapped sedi ments would not travel downstream and eventually out into the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, natural shoreline recession at the mouth of the Brazos River would be accel erated. Col. Walter Wells of the Brazos River Authority said the Brazos River has enough of a sediment load to keep shoreline recession close to normal. 'un RE group hays proposal By JEANNE LOPEZ After four weeks of studying a suggested list of proposals, the College Station Citizens’ Capital Improvements Committee voted Monday to present to College Station voters an $8 million bond issue this May. The purpose of the Capital Improvements Committee is to decide what im- )rovements will receive priority in the May 6 bond election. Voter approval is still leeded to enact these proposals. Committee members approved a $7.7 million water and sewer utility im- nwements proposal that would enable College Station to drill three water wells ind transfer the water to reservoir tanks and distribute it throughout the city. The city will also tie the Northgate sewer line to a separate line for treatment at he North Creek Outfall plant. The sewer line that is currently shared with Bryan is inadequate and often iverloads. Last October the College Station City Council proposed upgrading the >resently shared line to overcome the overload problem, but the Bryan City council rejected the idea and suggested a merger of the two cities. However, both :ities failed to reach an agreement and will sever utility agreements in January .979. A $300,000 street maintenance program was approved by the committee. The iind would be annually supported by approximately $150,000 from a general city Hidget. Extension of Kyle Avenue to Dominik Street also received committee approval. The $230,000 reconstruction of Kyle Avenue will alleviate the flow of southbound :raffic on Texas Avenue, said Elrey Ash, city engineer. The committee approved a $1.7 million proposal for the acquisition and de velopment of park lands. Approximately 143 acres of land would be bought by College Station for future development. Presently owned city parks would be urther developed. A 50-acre tract is sought for acquisition as a future athletic complex in the ioutheast section of College Station. The area is bounded by Texas Avenue, Highway 30, and the Highway 6 bypass. Another 50 acre-tract is proposed in the Southwood Valley area along with an dditional 10-15 acres for a smaller park. The 14-acre Holik park tract located south of the Dexter Drive and Holleman rive intersection is also proposed for acquisition. Fifteen acres of land bounded y Highway 60, Highway 6, and Highway 30 are sought for park acquisition. Committee members rejected a suggestion from the College Station Fire Chief long Landua to purchase $347,000 worth of fire equipment. Landua proposed he purchase of a ladder truck, rescue pumper, and a grass fire truck at last week’s ppital improvements meeting. Members agreed that the 3-6 year life of the quipment would make it a “questionable item to be financed by a bond.” Committee Chairman Gary Halter said he will prepare a report of the im- Jrovements and present it to the College Station City Council next week. The »uncil will then hold a public hearing to hear citizen comment on the commit- £e’s suggestions. It’s only vanilla... OF Duke (right) is polite enough not to extend his from Kerrville tongue as Mike Tynes eats an ice cream cone. brother John. Tynes is a freshman electrical engineering major and Duke is owned by Tynes’ Battalion photo by LaDonna Young Independent pushes violence marks coal talks, strike - TJ d enate closes doors to hear persistent drug charges By KENNETH R. CLARK United Press International An independent coal operator capitu lated to the United Mine Workers Monday, offering a contract that officials said may provide the first crack in the stub born impasse between the union and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association. The first break in the bitter violence- packed walkout by 160,000 coal miners came with approval by the UMW bargain ing council of a pact with the Pittsburg and Midway coal Co. —a non-BCOA indepen dent. The contract covers 700 workers in western Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas, who still must vote to accept it. President Carter has been poised to intervene in the strike in one of three ways — invocation of the Taft-Hartley Act, fed eral seizure of the coal fields or binding arbitration. With the Pittsburg and Mid way settlement, however, the White House expressed hope for a thaw in frozen negotiations. Presidential press secretary Jody Powell called it “an interesting development 1 CP By NICHOLS DANILOFF United Press Internationa) WASHINGTON - The Senate closets it- gjbehind closed doors today to hear a rt from the Senate Intelligence Corn ice on persistent charges that high manian officials aided and abetted | trafficking. ponents of two pending treaties trans- ^Jing control and operations of the Vma Canal to Panama by the year 2000 W the drug issue would prove damag- I enough to sway undecided votes to side and defeat ratification, put some Senate sources said Monday P report would conclude the drug ngs had no effect on the outcome of the y negotiations. n. Birch Bayh, D-Ind., chairman of f jntelligence panel, was to deliver the port which also was expected to conclude 41 the bugging of Panamanian officials by H intelligence sources, a surveillance eration administration officials con- Ped last fall, did not affect the negotia- DS. About a dozen senators were briefed Monday by the committee staff in prepara tion for the secret session. Sen. Charles Percy, R-Ill., a treaty sup porter, said after the briefing the drug issue was a legitimate concern but should not obscure the long-term benefits the treaties would serve. Sen. Robert Dole, R-Kan., a treaty cri tic, said after the same briefing: “My con cerns are pretty much the same. ” Dole has argued that if the drug allega tions are proved true, doubt is cast on Panama’s ability to act as the guarantor of the Panama treaties. “I still don’t think we have all the infor mation, ”he told reporters. “Maybe there is more to be seen. Hopefully, the Senate will see fit to make it public.” A UPI inquiry turned up a raft of new allegations about the “Panama connec tion.” Many of these allegations were de veloped by treaty critics, but have not been denied by administration officials. Among allegations uncovered by UPI: —Alexis Watson, who worked as a spe cial undercover agent, testified to House investigators and told a Miami news con ference Feb. 10 about illicti drug trans shipments at Panama's Tocumen Interna tional Airport and in the Free Zone of colon with official connivance. —A second Panamanian witness, who requested anonymity, told House inves tigators that Panamanian leader Omar Tor- rijos discussed with former California As semblyman Bill Brophy in the early 1970s the profits which might be made by selling Colombia cocaine in California. But there was no indication Torrijos ever acted on this discussion. UPI could not reach Brophy or otherwise corroborate the re port. —Raw intelligence documents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and ob tained by UPI reported on a variety of drug-smuggling operations between 1971-1975 which allegedly linked Torrijos and his brother Hugo. Hugo Torrijos is currently chief of Panama’s national which all parties should assess seriously.” UMW officials also hailed the pact. “BCOA should begin to realize their pos ition is deteriorating,” said a union spokesman. “There is no way UMW could settle for anything significantly less than this contract.” While their leaders maneuvered in Washington, militant miners applied mus cle in the field. Late Monday night, more than 200 min ers in Ohio attacked a non-union mining company that had shipped 15 loads of coal during the day. The miners blocked a highway to the plant, hurled rocks over turned trucks before they were dispersed by state police and sheriff's deputies. In West Virginia, newsman Jerry Sander of WSAZ-TV in Huntington surrendered film he shot of miners overturning empty coal trucks in Lawrence County after about 350 miners confronted him and demanded it. In Alabama, a coal truck was disabled by a gunshot through a rear tire, and in Virginia a homemade bomb was found near the gate of the Paramount Mining Co. near Josephine. State police said a faulty battery kept it from going off. Gene Oiler, president of UMW Local 1886 in Meigs County, Ohio, applauded the violence. “I do condone it,” he said. “They went\ out to shut down these non-union places. These non-union people take a chance being out on the road during a nationwide coal strike.” In Indiana, school officials prepared to trim hours in chilly classrooms as the energy famine brought coal supplies near the 40-day mark, mandating a 50 percent reduction in electricity use by schools. Delco Electronics Division, which em ploys 11,000 workers in Kokomo, Ind., said it will announce “inevitable” production cutbacks and layoffs Thursday. In Kansas City, the Missouri Public- Service Company said it will require all its industrial customers to reduce electric con sumption two days a week, starting next week, to conserve nearly exhausted coal supplies. “There’s always a damn good sediment load in the Brazos,” Wells said. However, recent figures have shown that the shoreline is receding 13 feet per year, an unusually high rate. The Corps of Engineers has previously stated four major benefits expected from Millican or a similar Navasota River reser voir. Recreation would be the main benefit. Fishing, boating, and other open-water recreation has been planned extensively for the lake. Money from outside commercial inter ests would satisfy a second proposed bene fit termed “area redevelopment.” It would involve improving the economic well being of the area with public and private recreation expenditures. Flood control and water supply benefits are considered secondary to recreational opportunities but are still important. Wells said that to fully use existing lig nite deposits, water from the proposed reservoir would be needed to cool electri cal generating plants powered by lignite. Since lignite must be used immediately before it undergoes internal combustion, the plants would have to be near the ex traction site. Because of the tremendous cost in volved, any dam projects near the Millican site are probably. Not only are the eco nomic costs higher than any foreseeable benefits from the dam, but qualitative costs are also high. The demand for energy in the United States may be too great to allow a water project to get in the way. Though the pro posed benefits from a lake would enhance both the economic and social well-being of this area, the dam will probably never ma terialize. MSC Council elects officers for next year Officers were selected Monday for the 29th Memorial Student Center Council and Directorate. Ron Woessner, a junior forestry major from College Station, was chosen vice president of administration. Lynn Knaupp is the new vice president for programs and Marc Young was voted vice president for finance. Both are junior political science majors. Teresa Beshara, a sophomore manage ment major, was selected director of projects and Rebecca Taulman, sopho more microbiology, was voted director of operations. Ann Landis, a junior psychol ogy major, is the new director of public- relations. Woessner served this year as director of operations and Directorate representative to the Council. Knaupp held the MSC di rector of projects position and Young was vice chairman for finance of the Student Conference on National Affairs. Beshara and Taulman were council assistants this year, and Landis served as chairman of planning for SCONA. “I think we have a good mixture of ex perience and motivated, imaginative people,” said Ray Daniels, MSC president-elect. “I am looking forward to working with all of them.” Council officers will assume their duties after the April 8 MSC Awards Banquet. Economic program gets union support By DREW VON BERGEN United Press International BAL HARBOUR, Fla. - After supporting part of President Carter’s economic pro gram — including limits on the three- martini business lunch — while criticizing other aspects, the AFL-CIO Executive Council turns its attention today to trade legislation. In the second day of their week-long, mid-winter meeting, the 34 council mem bers also will hear from Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP. Organized labor has been especially crit ical of U.S. corporations shifting produc tion to other nations to take advantage of low wages and special tax breaks. The AFL-CIO points to a recent Labor Department report showing about 550,000 Four die in plane crash United Press International LUBBOCK, Texas - A light plane apparently trying to land at a small airport crashed in the median between the north and south bound lanes of a highway Monday, killing four men in their early 20s. The dead were not immediately identified. No one on the ground was injured. Officials said the plane had touched down at the Town and County Airport and then skidded off the icy runway. Raymond Rauls, 22, who saw the crash, said the pilot managed to pull the nose of the plane back into the air but that even as it climbed “it started falling apart.” Rauls said the pilot tried to make a shallow turn to get back to the runway but the plane hit a high power line and crashed. The aircraft came down in the median of a highway about one block south of the city limits. The fire department was called to the scene to pull the bodies out of the wreckage. There was no fire. Officials said it took about an hour and a half to remove the bodies. American workers lost their jobs as a direct residt of such action, and plans to support special legislation aimed at stemming that tide. In Monday ’s two-hour session, the coun cil adopted its own $29.5 billion economic- stimulus program, disagreeing with the Carter administration over a proposed $8.4 billion business tax cut for fiscal 1979, but going along with it on such items as wiping out income tax deductions for state sales and gasoline taxes. The council also decided to support the administration in efforts to limit business deductions for meals, popularly referred to by the administration as the “three-martini lunch.” In giving its support, however, the coun cil recommended a three-year, phase-in period to prevent job losses in the food service field. “We re opposed to a certain number of citizens of this country having the right to have a three-martini lunch, or a two- martini lunch, or waht have you, and have the taxpayer pay for it, ” said AFL-CIO President George Meany. But Meany would not back President Carter 's plan for deceleration of wages and prices. "All of these ideas are a step toward con trols, wage and price controls, and we are opposed to control, period, ” Meany said. “No matter what form they may take.” The council also was opposed to in creases in the Social Security tax and said it would like the tax rolled back from its cur rent 6.05 percent to 5.85 percent. Next year, the tax is scheduled to increase to 6.13 percent.