Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 7, 1978)
_^'. Vi v.. _ he Battalion id Bar 1 to be| Vol. 71 No. 159 before 12 Pages then I metim. Wednesday, June 7, 1978 College Station, Texas News Dept. 845-2611 Business Dept. 845-2611 Inside Wednesday • Batt speaks out against Su preme Court ruling — p. 2. • Utah physician accused of sup plying Hughes with codeine il legally — p. 5. • NBA championship series to night — p. 10. Hill ruling due on bond sale The first rule of Aggieland: ‘Wait* There’s no such thing as being too early to register for summer school classes at Texas A&M. These students (left) learned that Tuesday morning walking to the end of a line of “L thru Rs” that extended from DeWare Field House across Wellborn Road to the West Campus. Yet that line disappeared within an hour. One mechanical engineer (right) uses another engineer’s back to finish another of “those cards” for registration. Battalion photo by Pat O'Malley United Press International AUSTIN — Attorney General John Hill is expected to rule next week in a con troversy over a proposal by the Texas Municipal Power Agency to issue bonds for $150 million to build a power plant. Lawyers for the consortium formed by Denton, Garland, Greenville and Bryan complained at a hearing Tuesday the at torney general’s office has improperly blocked the bond issue. Hearings examiners for Hill said they would prepare recommendations on the case for him to consider by Friday and an ticipated a decision next week. Without an okay from Hill the consor tium cannot issue the bonds needed to construct a $700 million lignite-fueled generator and pay for lignite leases. The attorney general’s bonds division has refused to approve the bond issue be cause of a lawsuit against TMPA by the Grimes County Taxpapers Association. “The litigation filed in Grimes County is without merit,” TMPA lawyer Roy L. Bar rett of Waco argued, Barrett said the taxpayer group lost its case in district court and a court of civil appeals. Although the taxpayers are ap pealing to the State Supreme Court, Bar rett said TMPA was seeking to have the petition dismissed. The taxpayer suit, Barrett said, is being handled by the Grimes County Attorney on behalf of the state. “A county attorney is not authorized by the Constitution to file a suit or to repre sent the State of Texas in a case before the Supreme Court,’ Barrett said. “The attorney general’s office should approve the bonds because at this time there is no challenge to the existence of TMPA,” Barrett said. James Riggs, chief of Hill’s bonds divi sion, said the attorney general since 1928 had followed a policy of refusing to ap prove bonds when there was a lawsuit challenging the validity of the securities. “The attorney general cannot be im pressed by the fact that the Texas Munici pal Power Authority has prevailed (so far in the court suit),” Riggs said. The cities of Garland, Greenville, Bryan and Denton banded together in a consor tium in 1975 to finance a lignite-fueled generating plant. TMPA has encountered increasing op position from landowners in areas such as Grimes County, where farmers fought ef forts to condemn their land to mine lig nite. Skylab is readied for week-long test ampus parking situation to ease up or summer term, acting police chief says By DEBBY KRENEK Battalion Editor K' race for a parking space is H. temporarily. ■ lompetition among students for parking s ces should lessen considerably this ^ timer because there will be ample park- Sifoi the estimated 12,000 summer school jjdents, John R. McDonald, acting Texas MM University police chief said. £ ;lBoubt if any students will even have to 3 ;k across the tracks,” McDonald said, $ (erring to student lots 56 and 61 located 0 l]st of campus across Wellborn Road. © ppDonald said one change in the park- t> ; regulations has been put into effect for pummer to facilitate parking for stu- \ts. A student who has a valid summer iking permit may park in any of the ^juent-designated lots. There will be no rarate parking areas for day students, rm students, males or females. Summer parking permits for students st $12 and are valid until the end of Au- st. Summer bicycle permits cost $1.50, and motorcycle permits $6. These can be purchased at the University Police De partment at the corner of Houston and Jer sey streets. McDonald said he anticipates the worst parking problem this summer to be at the Veterinary Medicine Complex where con struction has limited the number of spaces available in lot 36 east of the complex. “As long as students are not creating a problem such as parking behind one another or in lanes marked loading’ or ‘no parking,’ we will try to be as lenient as possible in enforcing this area,” McDonald said. He encourages students with classes at the vet school to park in lot 64 located across FM 60 east of the vet complex. “Lot 64 has been expanded to accommo date these students and is not far from the actual complex,” McDonald said. Parking in lot 60 across from Rudder Center will not be open to students this summer because it has been reserved for visitors and those who are attending con ferences at the University. Staff parking lots are only open to those with staff parking stickers. Enforcement in these lots will remain strict, said McDonald. “Many of the staff will be taking vacations throughout the summer so even though the lots may not appear to be full, all the spaces will still be taken,” he said. “We have to accept the fact that the park ing situation is bad and will continue to get worse next fall,” McDonald said. “But for the summer at least, I don’t foresee any major problems." United Press International HOUSTON — Scientists are readying Skylab for a week-long maneuver that hopefully will correct the craft’s orbit and prevent it from falling to Earth. Scientists Tuesday instructed computers aboard Skylab to begin charging its bat teries in preparation for the first maneuver Friday morning. Officials of the Johnson Space Center are trying to keep the orbiting laboratory on course until astronauts from the Space Shuttle can push it into a higher orbit with remote-controlled rockets or set it on a safe path back to Earth. If Skylab’s course cannot be altered, the 84-ton, 118-foot hulk could fall back to Earth as early as next spring with much of it being destroyed in a slow re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. “We got the batteries back up and we turned on the CMG (control movement gyro) heaters,” a JSC spokesman said. “They turn those on a couple of days before they turn on the gyro. It takes about 12 hours to get the charge up to maximum. “They’re just monitoring the system and making sure everything operates okay,” the spokesman said. The control center will maneuver the Skylab to a position so that the solar panels on the outside of the craft will point to the sun at all times. On Saturday, the vehicle will be in structed to go on an end-on pattern, the spokesman said. Hard rains spell bad news for farmers; predictions for wheat crop not promising Pipeline initial use rates ipheld by Supreme Court United Press International First it was the extended drought that damaged the Texas wheat crop. And when rain finally came, it was in the form of spring downpours that only caused more problems for farmers and cut their produc tion in half. There is more bad news for farmers. Ag riculture Commissioner Reagan Brown says the current price for wheat is $2.70 per bushel, compared to $1.93 for the same date last year. But he estimates the cost of production of that bushel in Texas is $3.28 for dryland farming and $3.78 for irrigated lands. The Texas Agriculture Department is scheduled to release its first major 1978 assessment of acreage and anticipated har vest Friday, but disclosed Tuesday recent rains across the northern half of Texas have allowed for harvest of 5 percent of the crop, compared to 13 percent at the same time last year and a three-year average for the date of 10 percent. Texas farmers planted 5.8 million acres of wheat last fall and winter, a decrease of 700,000 from 1977. Bill Nelson, executive director of the Texas Wheat Producers As sociation in Amarillo, predicted less than half of the acreage planted will be har vested. “Of that 5.8 million acres, we will harvest about 2.8. The other 3 million has been abandoned to the drought, hail or floods or grazed out with livestock, which in many United Press International WASHINGTON — The Supreme ourt, in a ruling that may cost owners of ie trans-Alaska oil pipeline more than 100 million, upheld 8-0 Tuesday a gov- rnment order limiting initial rates iarged for use of the 800-mile-long line. The ruling means pipeline owners will ive to refund higher rates that the jus- ces had allowed them to collect over a iree-month period while the case was nder consideration. Rhe court had only allowed them to col- :ct the higher rates — an estimated $1.5 lillion more per day, totalling $100 mil- ^on or more — on condition they return be extra money if they lost the case, gghe case involved rates charged to oil iroducers that use the pipeline to trans- >ort crude oil from Alaska’s North Slope to ^he ice-free port of Valdez. It arose shortly fore the line began operation last sum- Late registration continues today Although today marked first day of lasses in the summer school session, the |b in front of G. Rollie White remained ;thy as many students continued late |istering. Late registration will continue until 5 tin. today in G. Rollie White. Students who register today will have to lay a $4 late registration fee in addition to heir regular fees. I Friday is the last day for enrolling in the irst summer session. iSummer school fee collection will also continue today and tomorrow in G. Rollie White. mer, when seven of the eight owners filed proposed initial rates of from $6.04 to $6.44 a barrel with the Interstate Com merce Commission. The ICC has power to suspend a new rate for seven months pending an investi gation of its reasonableness and lawful ness. After protests that the proposed pipeline rates were too high, it suspended them June 28, 1977, and approved interim rates $1.13 to $1.67 per barrel lower and said the companies must agree to refund any amount which the investigation later turned up to be excessive. Faced with the alternative of not open ing the pipeline, the owners acceded. But they also went to court, charging the ICC does not have the power to suspend pro posed initial rates and had wrongly set im posed interim rates without a full hearing. Justice William Brennan, writing for the high court, said Tuesday the ICC was au thorized to suspend initial tariff schedules of an interstate carrier, and has power to set maximum interim rates without an ad judicatory hearing. The seven-month suspension expired Jan. 28. Since then, the companies have been free to keep charging the higher rates pending completion of the rate inves tigation, which has been taken over by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The rates do not affect the final price paid by consumers. But they do benefit oil companies that own and use the pipeline by reducing the amount of royalties they have to pay Alaska and Alaskan natives. That is because royalties are calculated on the basis of the wellhead price, which is reached by subtracting the transportation cost from the market price. Appealing were Mobil Alaska, Exxon, Arco and BP Pipeline companies. Other pipeline owners include Sohio, Union Alaska, Amerada Hess and Phillips Alaska. ‘Must’ve been that high-octane gas...’ A College Station fireman looks over the foreign ear that’s engine burst into flames at a University Drive service station Tuesday morning. The car’s driver, Texas A&M student Jason Lo, told fire of ficials he had just put some gasoline in the car, which belongs to a friend, and started the engine when it burst into flames. Lo escaped uninjured. Battalion photo by Lee Roy Leschper Jr. cases is related to the other three cases,” Nelson said. “Last year Texas made 117 million bushels of wheat. This year, as of May 1, the projection was we would make 58.8 million.” Nelson blamed early drought for most of the damage. “The rains that came, came too late to be of much benefit to the wheat,” he said. “Most of the dryland wheat had been aban doned before the rains came. Much of that that was remaining was damaged by rains or hail. Probably as much as 35 million of that 58 million is in irrigated acres.” Typical of the weather’s role in state ag riculture was rainfall in portions of Deaf Smith County totaling 12 to 14 inches in the last two weeks while other parts of the same Panhandle county never received a sprinkle, according to Juston McBride, county agent at Hereford. He estimated 35,000 acres of Deaf Smith County wheat received damage of 30 per cent due to rain, hail and winds. Another 8,000 acres had 50 percent loss. The wheat harvest throughout the Panhandle is not scheduled to begin until about June 20, Brown said. The agriculture commission said fuel and equipment necessary for harvesting were in good supply, but a spokesman said, “The problem is paying for it. As the wheat ripens from south to north across the state, rains in sections ready for cutting can cause more problems by batter ing down plants, decreasing the yield, or, if showers continue, ruining the grain. “The more moisture it has, the more wheat will deterioriate,” Brown said. The agriculture department said rains within the past week have stopped the har vest around Wichita Falls, where an additional 1.24 inches fell Tuesday. Brown’s office estimated the parity price at $5.27 per bushel. Parity is the amount the price of agricultural goods should have increased compared to consumer goods during a period of several decades. “Those figures include the cost of land, showing it is tough on the younger farmer who is paying for his land, an agriculture department official said. “Our figures show that the price of bread has never gone down (while wheat prices were depressed). The price of raw products has no real relation to rises in food. We’ve never understood how the farmer could be blamed (for bread prices).