The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, April 26, 1979, Image 11

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

    amilies remain
tMdespite dangers
oftaW
hinisi
an a year,
ad discn
hone
Anwj r
ter M e(i
kVas PosiiJ
resident.,
c
out it. Hk |
mttc
wartz tlai I
coast dial J
) your |
ra
N
Jcing ain
sold uj
ssidents.
Proved ||
Real Esta|l
rs be adlj
only irtiml
ions of J
)mmissi«l
n. Lindojl
alesmenJ
er offlooil
coast.
- who wen I
centlyajjl
took so® [
United Press International
IAGARA FALLS, N.Y. - Their dreams are shattered. Their
neighbors have gone. Their lives are in danger, yet they stay because
y have nowhere else to go.
[Nearly nine months ago. New York State ordered the evacuation of
3 families from two streets bordering the Love Canal in the south-
st comer of America’s honeymoon capital.
Now, four families remain.
I They live on 99th Street in what now is a ghost town surrounded by
an 8-foot-high, green metal fence. All the other homes on 97th and
th streets are boarded up, lawns and hedges are unkept and there is
dence everywhere of the state’s $10 million chemical cleanup effort.
Health dangers caused by leaching chemicals from the former
looker Chemical and Plastics Corp. landfill on the Love Canal site
prced the state to relocate residents and buy the homes.
For those who remain — they have lived there from 18 to 30 years —
be state offered too little money for them to re-establish themselves
elsewhere.
“My husband will not be getting a pension from his job,” said
Gertrude Mason, who has lived beside Love Canal since 1949, shortly
ter she and her husband, Alfred, married.
“We planned to use the house as income property. It has three full
bathrooms and three kitchens,” she said. “We could rent at least one
Apartment and maybe two.”
Mason, 56, has skin cancer and a nervous disorder that qualifies her
)r a federal disability pension. She said the state offered $42,000 for
ber pre-Civil War era home.
‘It’s a unique home,” she said. “We spent four months looking for a
smparable home and couldn’t find one. A builder told us it would take
at least $100,000 to duplicate it.”
In back of the house is the state’s remedial construction project.
“I don’t like the fence,” she said. “I feel like a caged animal. I can’t
entertain anymore. My friends and relatives fear contamination. It’s
ruining my life.”
Mason thinks her skin cancer is related to the chemicals stored in the
.dump site Hooker abandoned in 1953.
“I never laid out in the sun. I don’t like the sun, ” she said. “No one in
|my family ever had skin cancer. I think it came from handling the
[chemicals.”
Like the Masons, the Peter Urbans, have lived there for more than
[ 25 years.
“Since my husband is retiring this year from Union Carbide, I don’t
; think we will be able to get another mortgage,” Urban said. She wants
! to move, but her husband doesn’t.
"When we moved in, there was nothing here. We were among the
first residents in this housing development.”
When Hooker abandoned the dump site, it turned the land over to
the city of Niagara Falls. The housing development and a school were
built.
“I want to move,” Urban, mother of five, said. “I don’t think its fair
for our 16-year-old daughter, Laurie. She doesn’t have any friends
here anymore. She has taken a lot of harassment from kids outside the
fence.”
Urban isn’t sure if her bronchial asthma — or her children’s ailments
that include deformed knees, an eye that never matured, and ner
vousness — are related to the chemicals.
The state offered $36,000 for the Urban house.
Her neighbor, Barbara Takobi, is moving in June. She also had her
tires slashed and a padlock on her back fence gate broken.
“The state didn’t offer us enough money,” said Jakobi, who lives
with her four children, a German shepherd and two dachshunds.
“They offered us $31,000. Other houses like ours go for about $40,000.
I didn’t have any choice with all these chemicals.”
Jakobi has had breast surgery and has been hospitalized twice for
nerves. A daughter, Jackie, 21, was hospitalized for nerves, and
another daughter, Connie, 15, is anemic and needs blood transfusions
for the condition.
“I’ve lived in this house for 18 years. It’s been hard,” she said. “I’m
the only one that works. I have no money in the bank. But we finally
found another house.
Federal, state regulations differ
THE BATTALION
THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 1979
Pagel
Contraceptive laws cause problems
United Press International
AUSTIN — Staff members at
health clinics are caught between
federal law — allowing them to dis
pense contraceptives and perform
abortions on teen-age girls without
parental consent — and state law,
which forbids such actions.
Rep. Hugo Berlanga, D-Corpus
Christi, said Tuesday the clinics
were within federal laws and
guidelines but not within state sta
tutes.
Berlanga said Supreme Court rul
ings and federal guidelines require
clinics that receive federal funds to
perform abortions, dispense con
traceptives and treat venereal dis
eases of minors without requiring
the clinic to obtain the consent of the
minors’ parents.
Under current Texas law, how
ever, parents must be informed and
give their consent for children who
are 17 years old or younger to obtain
an abortion or contraceptives.
Minors can be treated for venereal
disease under Texas law without pa
rental consent.
Berlanga said the difference in
state and federal law is causing prob
lems for some clinics and many
physicians who are unsure of their
legal defense if they respond to a
minor’s request for aid with some
forms of family planning. His bill
would change the state law to allow
minors to receive contraceptives
without parental permission.
“It’s really absurd,” Berlanga said
of the current state law. “We’re
treating kids after the fact.
“It’s absurd to say that after a
teen-ager becomes pregnant the
clinics can give her prenatal care and
tell her what to do about the baby,
but after she has that baby they can’t
give her contraceptives to keep it
from happening again.”
Berlanga said he personally op
poses abortion and believes the bill
would not only help doctors and
teen-agers, but would drastically re
duce the number of abortions in
Texas by preventing pregnancies.
The Corpus Christi legislator em
phasized the bill would prevent
minors from obtaining an abortion or
sterilization without their parents’
knowledge and agreement.
“We re not cutting into the family
structure. I have great faith in the
family structure,” Berlanga said.
“But as witnesses at the subcommit
tee hearing said, if a family doesn’t
have control over their children by
the time they are 14 or 14 — if they
haven’t accepted their values by
then — then what makes them think
they can in the next two years?”
He said most objections to the bill
came from people who were con
cerned about particular contracep-
Now you know
United Press International
Crossing the English Channel is
fiften difficult, but Louis Bleriot did
it in 1909 without getting his tail
feathers wet. The pioneer French
aviator flew from Calais to Dover in
37 minutes in a monoplane of his
own design, becoming the first per
son to visit Britain by air. A Bleriot
IQ, sister ship to the monoplane,
gsurvives in the Henry Ford
luseum in Dearborn, Mich.
United Press International
The first woman golfer in history
vas Mary Queen of Scots. She
played several rounds just a few
days after her husband was mur
dered.
WE
BUY
ALL
BOOKS
I T^ie BOOK Store
8-5:30 “Shop Us First”
tive products that might be dis
pensed.
“I’m not interested in the products
— that’s up to the doctors to decide, ”
he said, adding the bill was sup
ported by the Texas Medical Associa
tion, school counselors, parents and
teen-agers, themselves.
The young legislator said he intro
duced the bill after a Planned Par
enthood clinic in Corpus Christi told
him of growing numbers of teen-age
pregnancies and the difficulties in
trying to control them without giving
minors the opportunity to use con
traceptives.
Dr. Susan Hoick of the Texas De
partment of Health told a House
subcommittee that studied the bill
that 45,595 babies were born to
Texas teen-agers in 1977 with 1,074
of them bom to girls 14 years old or
younger.
She said statistics show approxi
mately one of every nine girls in
Texas, between 15 and 19 years old,
becomes pregnant each year.
Hoick said while the total number
of births to teen-agers has decreased
since 1971, the number of births to
girls younger than 15 has increased
85 percent since 1966.
“In Texas, there are currently an
estimated 119,000 sexually-active
unmarried teen-age girls not usirg
contraception regularly and at higk
risk for becoming pregnant,” Hoick
said.
Berlanga said the bill, which is stii
in committee, would easily pass tlie
House because “the statistics speak
for themselves.”
WANTED
THESE BOOKS!!!
Loupot is buying all your used books right now, but some books we really NEED so we’ll buy them at
a PREMIUM PRICE!! (over & above our reg. 20% in trade)
WE RE PAYING A PREMIUM PRICE FOR THESE TEXTB00KS:
ACCT. 229
ACCT. 230
ACCT. 329
AG. ECO. 344
AGRO. 301
BIO. 351
MATH. 308
MGMT. 363
MKTG. 321
(HISE)
ijBjjTrr;... iiTTIS!
BIOCHEM. 410
B.C. 253
B.C. 335 ^..2i
AERO. 312
AG. ENG. 222
C.E. 204
C.E. 205
C.E. 365 (lambe)
m
E.T. 105
E.T. 240
E.T. 309
C.S. 203
ECON. 311
IND. ENG. 412
PHIL. 240
M.E. 212
M.E. 222
M.E. 323
(Mention this ad when you bring in your books)
Trade your used books for the books you’ll need this fall, beat the book rush and if you need a different book later we’
give you a full refund the first 2 weeks of the semester!!!!
LOUPOT’S BOOKSTORE
WE WANT ALL ENGINEERING AND BUSINESS TEXT BOOKS
Northgate - Across
from the Post Office
Deposit $10,000 today
and walk out with
$10,463 in 182 days
It’s simple. Just deposit $10,000
in our money market certificates
today and withdraw $10,463.48
at maturity. Deposits of $10,000
are a minimum but larger amounts
are acceptable. We pay the highest
interest allowed by law, 9.295%
annually, for the week beginning
4-26-79. The maturity of the certificate
is 26 weeks, and the rate is subject to
change at renewal. Your deposit is
insured up to $40,000 by the FDIC.
Federal regulations prohibit the com
pounding of interest during the term of this
deposit and require an interest penalty for
early withdrawal. Your cash value insurance
can be invested in our money market certifi
cates without terminating your insurance.
Call our toll free number 693-1414, and we
will do the rest.
Bank.
HEARNE, TEXAS
College Station Bank - Pending
693-1414
(future location 1501 Texas Avenue)
Member FDIC