Crisis or Problem. Energy Still Means High Prices
By CRAIG STOCK
Kansas Staff Reporter
President Richard M. Nixon has said the energy crisis has been reduced to the energy problem.
But to many consumers the crisis by any other name is still a budget buster. The increased costs for various petroleum products have affected almost everyone.
In increases of 30 to 40 per cent in gasoline prices during the past year have hit commuters especially hard. People living in warmer climates, who propane, which heats their homes, double in the past year. Shipping costs have increased because of rising fuel costs, and customers have had to pass the delivery costs on to their customers.
The price of propane gas has increased by as much as 250 per cent in some areas during the past year, according to Monte Milstead, manager of Moderngas, Inc., a local propane company that is because his company was in contact with the consumer it often was blamed for the high cost of propane.
In a recent series of interviews, local businessmen, farmers, commuters and other energy consumers told of problems they have encountered because of the energy crisis.
"Everybody thinks we've got windfall profits," he said. "It's making it very difficult on us and other gas dealers."
Milstead said that Moderngas, Inc., didn't control prices and that price increases to Moder-
ngas were just passed on to the consumer.
The average heating bill for his customers is $100 to $125 a month, Milstead said.
"Some are as high as $225 a month," he said. "The majority of people simply can't afford it."
Two members of that "majority" are Milton and Rose Hurebrink for RFD 5, Lawrence. Mr. and Mrs. Hurebrink are retired and their monthly income is the monthly Social Security checks.
Mrs. Hurreblrink said that a fillup for their propane tank cost more than $100 and that a tank lasted only about three weeks in cold weather. The Hurreblrinks have cut off heat to some rooms of their house and keep their fireplace going constantly in
order to stretch the propane supply, she said.
"If this tank runs out before summer weather we just won't have the money for another one." Mrs. Hurrelbruk said.
"I don't think it had to happen," she said. "There's some reason to a good deal of high insurance, the oil companies or somebody."
She said she didn't understand the energy crisis and the huge increases in the prices of propane, gasoline and food.
The increased cost of energy is only one of the areas of concern Roberts family of RFD 4, Lawrence, Charlotte Roberts said food and clothing prices were also putting a strain on the economy.
She said their last tank of
propane cost $110 for 300 gallons.
In January 1972 a 400 gallon filtration
cost $87, she said. A tank of
water costs about four or five
weeks; she said.
"You know the price has gone up a lot, but you don't want to find out how much it costs per week or day," she said.
Robert Biggs of RFD 2, Lawrence, said the propane cost increases hadn't affected him because he used natural gas to heat his home. Biggs said that some of his employees were hard hit by the prices and that propane bury in the house was all of his employees $$ a day.
Other rural residents interviewed said the high costs of energy had caused tightening of grid and elimination of wasteful energy use.
High diesel fuel and fertilizer
prices are the biggest concerns for his farming operations, Bigsby said. Diesel fuel is used by farmers to operate machinery. Many types of fertilizer are made from petroleum and natural gas, and the high costs and short supplies of ferments are according to many farmers.
Fertilizer prices have tripped in some areas in the past year, Bigsay said, and as a result he hasn't been able to get all the fertilizers delivered, which will be reduced because of the fertilizer shortage, he said.
Commuters have also felt the financial squeeze from the energy crisis. Gasoline price wars are a thing of the past, and gasoline prices have reached past the 50 cents a gallon mark.
Richard Smith of RFD 4,
Lawrence, commends to work in
Kansas City six days a week. He
sold his old car and bought an
economy car a few months ago.
Switching to an economy car is
the only way he could afford to
commute to work, Smith said.
Smith said he was planning to move to Kansas City so he wouldn't have to commute. After the move, Smith's wife, Nancy, a University of Kansas student, will have to commute to Lawrence for school. But Smith said his wife would only have to commute (four or five days a week) to keep savings in the number of miles the family would drive each week.
See CRISIS Page 3
The University of Kansas—Lawrence, Kansas
84th Year, No.110
Jayhawk Roger Morningstar at Yesterday's Send-Off Rally
Kanxan Staff Photo by BILL KERR
Mud Creek Plans Sharply Disputed
Bv BOB MARCOTTE
Kansan Staff Reporter
Representatives of local environment groups last night urged city and county officials to quit insisting upon chan-der protection along Mud Creek.
But local officials reasserted their support for channeling the creek and their
opposition to an alternative plan now recommended by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which would leave the creek in the vicinity of the place a levy to the south of the stream 1
The conflicting views were given at a special meeting attended by about 30 persons, including representatives from the Corps, members of the city and county
Docking to Confer Today With Strike Leader Rose
By BETH RETONDE Kansan Staff Reporter
KANAS S CITY, Kan.-A meeting with Gov. Robert B. Docky to discuss grievances of striking service employees of the University of Kansas Medical Center has been scheduled for this week according to union leader Lloyd Rose.
William O. Rieke, executive vice chancellor for the Medical Center, said last night that he was satisfied such an agreement had been worked out and that he thought most of the striking employees would return to work.
During a meeting with members of the union yesterday afternoon, Rose urged the strikers to return to work by this month. The unions desire to settle the dispute.
Rose said there was some opposition by the workers to the proposal to return to work before union members met with the governor.
Rose said he would explain to the governor the workers' salary position and the details of the dispute. The workers had been on strike for three days when the meeting with Docking was arranged.
He said officials at the Medical Center thought there should be more
commissions, the Kaw Valley Drainage
Lawrence and Grant Townships from
Lawrence and Grant Townships
George C. Coggins, professor of law,
and president of the college, leave the
campaign business behind.
The workers struck the Medical Center Tuesday because they were unsatisfied with response to their demands for a 25 per cent across-the-board pay increase. The Kansas Board of Regents had earlier approved a 5 to 10 percent raise but that proposal has been stalled in the state personnel director's office.
Burns had issued a contempt citation against Rise for violating an injunction, issued in January, prohibiting the workers from striking the Medical Center because they struck the center for four days in January during the same wage dispute.
recognition of the workers in their salary demands.
The meeting with Docking was suggested earlier yesterday by Wyndotn County District Court judge Earl Wendell during a contempt hearing with Rose.
Commissioner Jack Rose said it appeared to him that even the Kansas City office of the Corps is not in complete harmony with the Department of the Army in Washington D.C. over the decision to abandon the planned plan in favor of the alternative levy plan.
"Can not or will not?" Mayor Nancy
hambleton then interjected. "This is where
we are."
Charles Brennan, assistant vice chancellor at the Medical Center, said that the dietary department was still hurt the most by the strike. On the first day of the strike, Brennan said the dietary workers reported to work up. Yesterday 95 per cent failed to show up.
"As far as I know the decision was based not on environmental but cost considerations," Rose said, adding that there is a "tendency to throw the problem between Kansas City and Washington, depending on who you're talking to at the time."
The Medical Center has used volunteers during the strike to fill in for the strikers.
Dean Schuster, a Corps representative at the meeting, said his office had been instructed by the Department of the Army to abandon the original plan for flood protection along Med Creek that was agreed to by city, county and drainage district officials in 1989. Later studies in the area showed that flood insurance and have greater adverse environmental impact than the alternative plan. Schuster said.
Schuster said that his office had originally recommended to the Army that the original plan be made in compliance with the plans that had been made by the city and drainage district. Those commitments included purchase of right of way along a highway, acquisition as provided under the original plan.
"WE AT THE CORP level could not go with another plan unless Congress told us
"It doesn't do anybody any good." Coggins said, "to rehach the merit of channelization or advocate it," Instead, he said, local officials should consider plans
that have a better chance of being approved for federal funding.
But Mayor Hambleton noted that local officials had already purchased right of way and fulfilled their obligations under the original plan before the Corps changed its mind. She said it was the obligation of local government "to at least challenge this another time."
"The name of the game is to get the project," she said, adding that her impatience was because the original plan had neared actual construction before the Corps changed its mind. "Some thing must have been right somewhere along the line," she
Ray Ashton, coordinator of public education at the KU museum of natural history, submitted a written proposal to Mayor Hambleton urged that local officials
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Plea to Withhold Report on Nixon Denied by Court
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Court of Appeals refused yesterday to withhold a secret grand jury report on President Nixon's role in Watergate from the House
The court set a 4 p.m. Monday deadline for submitting the material to the committee "to permit petitioners to apply to the Supreme Court."
The six judges on the appeals court noted that "it is of significance that the President of the United States, who is described by all parties as the focus of the report and who presumably would have the greatest interest in its disposition," had made no objection to the district court's order that the report be delivered to the
Attorneys for H. R. Haldenman and John D. Ehrlichman, two of the watergate cover-up defendants, had opposed giving the House the grand jury's report on grounds that if information from the report leaked out, their clients might not be able to get a fair trial.
John Bray, an attorney representing Watergate defendant Gordon Strachan, said he would have to study the court's findings before deciding whether to carry the case.
I think we have challenged the trustees Monday.
All three attorneys said they would make their final decisions.
John J. Wilson, attorney for Haldeman, said, "We haven't decided what to do."
But Wilson's partner, Frank Stricker, said, "My thoughts are this is the end of the line . . . I have we think exhausted all reasonable channels for judicial review."
one of the six judges, George E. MacKinnon, dissented in part from the majority. HE SAID THAT THIS HISVIEW OF the materials convinced him that 'the grand jury should have been able to determine whether there was
The appeals court said that the grand jury characterized the material as bearing unproven into possible grounds for impeachment of the President.
A deadline of yesterday had been set by U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica, who originally ordered that the report be given to the House Judiciary Committee for its review.
In arguments before the court earlier in the day, Assistant Prosecutor Philip Lacovara said the material included "an index which lists events involving the defendant." The case also involves a new investigation.
The court's decision came just hours after Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski announced that he had subpoenaed additional documents from the White House.
In ruling on the grand jury report, the judges referred to the argument that a future trial may possibly be waived by premature evidence. They described it as "at best a
But the court said it wasn't ruling on that ground.
The defendants "will be free at trial" to raise the claims if they feel damaged by disclosure, the court said, adding that it would be premature to make their plea.
The grand jury report and a large sackful of documents and tapes were handed to Sirica on March 1 by the grand jury that indicted seven former Nixon White House
AN ACCOMPANYING LETTER recommended that the judge turn the material over to the Judiciary Committee. The judge held a hearing and then ordered that the
To do that, the judges said, "is not sound policy" and added:
The appeals judges said they were being asked to employ "our extraordinary powers" to stop the report because Sirica would preside over the cover-up trial.
"It almost goes without saying that this is not the kind of abuse of discretion or disregard of law," under which its authority was conceived.
MacKinnon, in his dissent, said he would allow the committee to have access both to the testimony that accompanied the grand jury report and to the entire grand jury report.
"The prosecutor . . . has indicated that he is knowledgeably and intentionally taking a calculated risk that the transmission of this evidence with the risk of its premature disclosure may make it impossible for those induced to receive a fair trial." MacKinnon said.
He called that a hazard.
The subpoena served by the special prosecutor's office gives the White House until Monday to comply.
Jawzwiik wouldn't reveal what was requested but said "it obviously relates to one of the areas we are investigating." Another spokesman said it did involve the investigation into a case where a suspect was killed.
That indicated that the subpoena was in the area of other investigations by the three grand juries—political contributions, the ITT matter, the milk fund case, and the 18% settlement. The subpoena had been made by the prosecutor.
AT THE WHITE HOUSE, Deputy Press Secretary Gerald L. Warren said the subpoena was under consideration as for the likely response declared; "I did not receive a reply."
Asked what items Jaworski wanted, he said, "I do not have any specifics on the suboena."
Landlords Earn Praise, Protests
Editor's Note: This is the last of a series on low-income housing near the University
By LINDA WEINSTEIN Kanaan Staff Reporter
It's common knowledge that Lawrence tenants and landlords don't see eve-to-eve.
More than 50 students who rent apartments and rooms in old houses near campus in a recent series of interviews that the school conducted, showed financial and social needs but that it also caused health and safety hazards. Some student teachers said the housing was too crowded.
"You see students paying relatively a great deal for very little. I think students realize they're taken," Edward P. Dutton, associate professor of social
Ed Covington, city minimum housing inspector, said it was his responsibility to inspect inferior housing in Lawrence to find and repair the buildings. He must be order the landlord to repair the
"We're trying to protect the neighbor who wants to keep an property," he said.
house to comply with city minimum standards.
He said that some of the inexpensive housing offered to students was run-down and was causing the city to become unsightly.
One student who rents an apartment from
would $d$ sleep in a bedroom, said the city was inconsistent in its inspections. He said that in one house, the city would require reparals for a housing code violation and in another house, the city would ignore a similar violation.
Covington said he wasn't trying to cause landlords trouble by inspecting their property and by requiring that repairs be made.
"I disagree with the city on some of it," he said. "For example, I have a basement and I've had people in there for years, and the city says I have to cut the windows bigger, which means I have to dig out part of the foundation."
Negley said Negley's apartments were over-priced.
Another said, "You've got to keep naughty him to make renais."
re's all right. The old man works hard,
not another. "The rent's ok. He doesn't
have to pay."
Daniel S. Ling, associate professor of physics, and Daniel economy, in another study, studied how housing explained what he thought about the housing he offered to students but he did not.
Five weeks ago, six of Ling's houses were rendered uninhabitable by the city of Lawrence. Even though many of Ling's tenants said their apartments were bug-infested and dilapidated, they still say they thought Linu was a good landlord.
"I can say one thing for Ling, he doesn't bother us, and we don't bother him," one student who lives on the 1200 block of Ohio Street said.
counter good landlord, according to his
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