A2322
v *105:no.14X
11
MONDAY
105 YEARS AT TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
June 21, 1999
Volume 105 • Issue 155 • 6 Pages
College Station, Texas
opinion
• Credit-card regulation offers
debatable solution to dangers
of student debt.
PAGES
State
today’s issue
sports
Battalion Radio
Tune in to 90.9 KAMU-FM at
1:57 p.m. for more details on the
MSC Film Society’s screening
of Cool Hand Luke.
• A&M junior pitchers
Casey Possum and Chance
Caple look to the future.
PAGES
ite proposed for landfill
BY SUZANNE BRABECK
The Battalion
razos Valley’s community offi-
fi^ls and citizens have been work-
■ together for the past five years to
iwelop a new landfill for the area
because the Rock Prairie Landfill
J serving Bryan, College Station and
pr Brazos County will fill to capacity in
the next five to six years.
■Officials said it would not be
^^*t-efficient to drive to the next
closest landfill in Austin and they
it would be inconvenient. The
Brazos Valley Solid Waste Manage-
mlnt Agency [BVSWMA) estab-
a Citizens Advisory Commit
tee (CAC) to ensure both citizens
and officials agreed on the site of the
saw new landfill.
ana JThe CAC is comprised of com-
X)!0 r "'
munity representatives, including
environmental groups, business
representatives, concerned citizens,
geologists and educators. The main
duties of the CAC are to understand
issues related to landfill site selec
tions and potential impacts, to eval
uate areas for potential landfill de
velopment and to select acceptable
search areas, to identify and evalu
ate specific sites for consideration
and to recommend to the BVSWMA
Board a specific site for develop
ment.
Michael Carleton, an engineer for
HDR Engineering, Inc., which also
helped in the development of the
Rock Prairie landfill, said many un
desirable criteria for the location of
the landfill have been defined by
federal, state and local regulations.
Carleton said a site in the south
ern portion of Brazos County near
the junction of State Highway 6 and
FM 159 is under negotiation with
the owners.
He said a benefit of the site is the
fact it has few land owners which
have control of the desired 626
acres.
“The proposed facility will not be
just a landfill,” Carleton said. “The
preliminary design for the facility
will include options for recycling
and composting, with two signifi
cant buffer areas between landfill
activities and the property bound
ary. ”
The Peach Creek Development
company, which owns the land, and
BVSWMA have a ‘good neighbor’
agreement which is a joint plan en
suring the safety and aesthetic val
ue of the new landfill, which will en
sure a peaceful coexistence among
the citizens and the facility.
“There will be landscaping of land
adjacent to major roadways to screen
the day to day operations of an active
landfill and joint development of util
ities and transportation improve
ments in the area,’’Carleton said.
One-half of the 626 acres making
up the desired site for the landfill
will be needed for disposal purpos
es. CAC has proposed cooperative
land uses of the remaining territory
such as park areas and long-term
green spaces for public use or agri
culture.
Ed Peel, chairman of the CAC,
said in order to ensure the safety of
the area, certain precautions have
been planned. Questions can be ad
dressed to: www.bvswma@cicol-
lege_station.txus
Completion timeline
Property procurement: 3 to 6 months
Permit proposition: 12 to 16 months
Texas Natural Resource Conservation
Committee Review: 6 to 9 months
Public hearings: 3 to 12 months
Construction: 12 to 15 months.
Area safety precautions:
Screening of waste for unacceptable materials
Providing public access and controlling use
Exercising local control over costs
Restricting liquid-waste disposal
Maintaining access roads and route to the site
Maintaining the final cover
Maintaining the site for a minimum 30-year post
Providing a dependable, long-term solution for
solid-waste disposal.
Undesirable features in a potential site:
• Airport zones
• Floodplain areas/wetlands
• Seismic impact zones
• Recent geological faults -
• Unstable geologic conditions
• Endangered species
• Significant historic archeological sites
Community celebrates Juneteenth
TERRY ROBERSON/The Battalion
LEFT: Amadou Thiam of Senegal performs the “Dance of the Warrior” at
Freedom 2000, a Juneteenth celebration at the Lincoln Center in College
Station Friday.
ABOVE: Senior speech communications major Eric Durham reads the poem
“Born to Give Birth” Friday in the MSC Flagroom.
BRADLEY ATCHISON/The Battalion
Last Friday Texas A&M students and faculty members celebrated June
teenth, the celebration of the announcement of the end of slavery in
Texas. On June 19,1865, Union army general Gordon Granger landed in
Galveston and told the slaves of the freeing of the slaves in East Texas.
Juneteenth was celebrated in commemoration of the end of slavery for
115 years before Texas declared it an official state holiday in 1980. Today
it is celebrated worldwide.
Officials warn
of e-mail virus
BY STUART HUTSON
The Battalion
Computer experts said The
Worm.Explore.zip computer virus
has joined the ranks of the Melis
sa and Chernobyl viruses causing
damage to thousands of comput
ers during the last two weeks.
Randy Friemel, a programmer
analyst for Texas A&M’s
Computing and Information
Services (CIS), said Worm.Ex
plore.zip spreads between com
puters through e-mail or file
sharing (through a network or
by disk) and then slowly de
creases the amount of data a
computer’s hard drive can store.
Friemel said this causes prob
lems while running programs and
within functions such as printing.
If these problems are not checked
into, the end result may be the in
ability to use Windows98 and
Windows95 at all.
According to a report from the
Computer Emergency Response
Team (CERT), a federally funded
research and development center
at Carnegie Mellon University, the
Worm.Explore.zip virus has al
ready hit tens of thousands of
computers at major companies
such as General Electric and Mi
crosoft. This virus could become
as widespread as the Melissa virus
which affected more than 100,000
individual computers.
Friemel said one of the reasons
for the recent increase in comput
er viruses is because computers
have become more user-friendly,
allowing people with minimal
computer experience to design and
implement viruses.
“Powerful and easy-to-use pro
grams like visual BASIC make it so
easy to write programs that you
don’t have to be a computer sci
ence major to be a hacker,” he
said.
He said another reason is the in
creasing power of computers.
Dr. Bart Childs, head of A&M’s
computer science external relations
department, said one of the major
reasons for the increase is the wide
spread use of Windows98 and Win-
dows95 operating systems, which
are the only operating system most
of the current viruses affect.
Childs said the speed at which
new programs are developed and
put out on the market leaves them
with computer bugs, possibly
leading to security risks.
Friemel said he attributes the
large number of Microsoft-specific
viruses to the fact the Windows
operating system has been in use
for so long, virus programmers
have learned to manipulate it.
Friemel said he has encoun
tered relatively few problems with
viruses at A&M. At his past job as
a programmer analyst for Univer
sity of Texas at Austin he said he
see Virus on Page 2.
%
NEWS IN BRIEF
C^PAS, TROUPE
J o hold auditions
MSC Opera and Performing
lan^rtl Society (OPAS) and the
a tv : razos Valley TROUPE will
efb'olci auditions from 6 to 9
(59' .m. today through Wednes-
eig 1 ay for Broadway Cabaret, the
.ant n h u a I community theater
p-s ft review of the upcoming OPAS
'sda'.aason.
tea ; Selections will be chosen
om Broadway-style shows
■^o. jch as Annie, The King and I,
.east id j|-, e Music of Andrew Lloyd
'ebber.
it,5' Sarah Nash, program coor-
BoZ‘ ; nator for OPAS, said in a
oiid -ess release the organiza-
, th e on!s are looking for a variety
Sever- people for the upcoming
:Ji. ?apon.
“There is a variety of music
in the show, and they will be
looking for lots of good voices
and other people to perform,”
she said.
Auditions are open to the
pubic and will be held in
TROUPE’S playhouse in Post
Oak Mall.
Performances of Broadway
Cabaret will be July 20 and 21
at the College Station Confer
ence Center. Tickets are avail
able at the MSC Box Office.
Ph.D. candidate
receives award
Ming-han Li, a Ph. D. student
in the College of Architecture, has
been chosen to receive First
American Bank’s new scholarship
for international students.
For his final master’s de
gree project Li created a com
puter generated master plan
for revitalizing downtown
Bryan. He provided his find
ings to the city planning de
partment. Harlow Landphair, a
professor of landscape archi
tecture, nominated Li for the
scholarship.
Landphair said in a press
release Li’s project exempli
fies the cooperative effort be
tween the local communities
and A&M.
“To stimulate more com
munity participation in the pro
ject, [Li] conducted a work
shop ... to present the project
to city officials and local com
munity leaders, which has
been a tremendous help for
our historic downtown Bryan,”
he said.
CS Utilities set to power annexes
BY SUZANNE BRABECK
The Battalion
Areas annexed by the city of Col
lege Station will have their utility
providers switched to College Sta
tion Utilities as the city unveils its
new facility for its utility cus
tomers.
Kelly Chapman, public relations
and marketing manager for the city
of College Station, said today the
city of College Station will begin
providing electric service to all ar
eas annexed by College Station
since 1994. Two hundred accounts
will be affected by this change.
The new utility building will be
located at 310 Krenek Tap Road. All
utility customer services will be
handled at the new building instead
of city hall. The mailing address is
P.O. Box 10320, College Station, TX
77842. Business hours are 8 a.m.
to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The new facility will have the
following services available for
payment in addition to the standard
procedures: personnel at the front
counter, four drive-through lanes
and a night deposit box for after
hour transactions.
Chapman said to ensure a
smooth transition for the customers
who will be affected by the change,
BTU and College Station Utilities
will work together simultaneously
to remove BTU’s meters and install
the College Station meters so that
their service will not be interrupt
ed.
It is estimated it will take 12
weeks to complete the change.
Unless legislation changes, resi
dents in Texas will not have a
choice for their utility service.
Customers involved in the
change will not have to open an ac
count or place a security deposit.
Account information will be trans
ferred from BTU to College Station
Utilities, which is publicly owned.
“When College Station annexed
the area, the cities of College Sta
tion and Bryan had a long-standing
contract that stated College Station
Utilities would serve all electrical
customers within College Station’s
city limits,” Chapman said. “Since
the time of the annexation, this
contract has been in a legal process,
which has now been finalized by
the Public Commission of Texas.”
JLL.O