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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014
PAGE 3
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University, county talk alternative energy potential
TOM DEHART
news@kansan.com
As of the 2013-14 academic year, students are paying a $1 sustainability fee to the University with their enrollment. The fee is not included during the University's summer session.
jeff Severin, director of the Center for Sustainability, said that the access to renewable energy on campus is important to the development of research on campus.
"We are proposing an additional raise to that fee, because I think there is student support and interest in having more things on campus," Severin said. "I mean, that was the original intention of that fee, that we could invest in solar and potentially wind energy."
Besides pursuing and researching alternative energy, the University has been trying to stress the importance of energy conservation, and to reduce the waste of utilities, bringing energy consumption down.
"If we're doing solar research to try to sort of advance that in other places, demonstrating that we are using it here is pretty valuable," Severin said. "To some degree, I feel we, as an institute of higher learning,
have the responsibility to sort of advance more sustainable practices and be a leader in that way."
in Lawrence, the University plays a role in researching renewable energy. Wai-Lun Chan, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, received a sum of $550,879 over five years to research low-cost, renewable energy and to also educate others about the use of renewables.
George Werth, a campus energy engineer at the Center for Sustainability, said that the solar production on campus is low, and that the campus only generates about 6 kilowatts of solar energy out of the approximate peak load of 20,000 kilowatts being provided by other sources on campus and by Westar Energy.
The use of alternative, renewable energy resources in eastern Kansas has been a topic of discussion in Douglas County in recent months. Talk has centered on building a potential wind farm in southwest Douglas County and grants being provided to University faculty for research. Both solar and wind energy have benefits and costs associated with them that Kansans have evaluated in recent years.
A moratorium was recently passed regarding the development of a wind farm in the southwest area of Douglas County to evaluate a potential wind farm's efficacy in the area. Evaluators are measuring wind speeds using anemometers to determine the consistency and strength of wind. Rep. Tom Moxley, R-Council Grove, said placing a wind farm in eastern Kansas is not as cost-efficient as in western Kansas.
"The physics of a wind-farm speak to its efficiency." Moxley said. "A marginal rise in the wind speed makes a terrific difference in a wind generator's ability to create electricity. So with today's cost structure, wind generators in eastern Kansas are just not very efficient."
Transmitting the wind energy from western Kansas across the state to eastern Kansas raises concerns regarding cost.
"The wind may not be as strong here as it is in western Kansas, but the cost of transmission of the power that comes from that equipment also carries a cost," said Craig Weinaug, the Douglas County administrator. "Being closer to wind power as needed lowers the cost of transmitting that power to another location."
GEORGE MULLINIX/KANSAN
A moratorium was recently passed regarding the developent of a wind farm in the southwest area of Douglas County to evaluate a potential wind farm's efficacy in the area. The use of alternative, renewable energy resources in eastern Kansas has been a topic of discussion in Douglas County in recent months.
Placement of the wind farms in Douglas County has caused some citizens close to the areas to voice their opposition to the county commissioners regarding development, Weinaug said.
- Edited by Austin Fisher
MAIN POINTS
Douglas County is evaluating the efficiency of a wind farm's potential energy in southwest Douglas County.
The University plays an important role in the development and understanding of alternative and renewable energy.
Besides renewable energy, eliminating energy waste and bringing consumption down is an effective method on campus, and in Lawrence.
Military school lawsuit settled on eve of trial
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WICHITA, Kan. — On the eve of a federal trial, a Kansas military school's attorney said Monday that issues have been resolved regarding a lawsuit filed by 11 former cadets who claimed the school's practice of giving higher-ranking cadets the power to discipline younger ones encourages physical and mental abuse. No details were immedi-
No details were immediately released.
"The issues in the case have been resolved and the case is being dismissed," John Schultz, attorney for St. John's Military School in Salina, wrote in an email.
The court confirmed that the trial scheduled to begin Tuesday before U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum in Kansas City, Kan., had been cancelled. The attorney representing the students did not return messages for comment.
The former cadets — who hail from California, Florida, Tennessee, Colorado, Texas and Illinois — filed a lawsuit in 2012 alleging that higher-ranking students, called "Disciplinarians," abused younger students, even in the presence of faculty members. The plaintiffs claim negligent failure to supervise, intentional failure to supervise, as well as both negligent and intentional emotional distress.
The 126-year-old Episcopalian boarding school in the
central Kansas town of Salina has long denied a culture of abuse exists.
A trial would have provided a rare public airing of recurring abuse allegations against the private, quasi-military program.
Plaintiffs have long contended that at least nine other abuse-related lawsuits have been filed against the school since 2006, but an Associated Press examination of federal and state court filings found at least 14 lawsuits filed since 2003 by cadets and their families. All were settled without trial.
St. John's has noted that each student is required to sign an anti-hazing pledge and has cited its efforts to curb abuses by installing surveillance cameras and conducting regular bruise checks of students.
Other alleged incidents were: a Tennessee student claiming his stomach was forcibly branded as a rite of initiation; a Texas boy who says he was urinated on in the shower; and an Illinois boy who says he suffered a fractured eye socket after being kneed in the head by a higher-ranking cadet.
ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO
Among the plaintiffs was a boy from Auburn, Calif., who says he was tormented by adults and students after suffering two broken legs in separate incidents during the four days he attended the school in August 2012.
in this June 27, 2012 photograph is the entrance to St. Johns Military Academy in Salina, Kan. An attorney for a Kansas military school says the issues brought in a lawsuit in which 11 former students alleged abuse have been resolved. St. John's Military School attorney John Schultz said in an email Monday, March 2, 2014, that federal case is being dismissed. The court confirmed that the trial scheduled to begin Tuesday in federal court in Kansas City, Kan., has been cancelled.
DROPPING A CLASS CAUSING MADNESS? Pick a winner everytime!
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