Kansas drinking age Committee may study it in summer Inside, p. 3.
The University Daily
KANSAN
WINDY
WINRY
High, 70. Low, 50.
Details on p. 2
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
Vol. 94, No. 144 (USPS 650-640)
Thursday morning, April 26, 1984
Office Jessie Treu of the Lawrence Police Department coxes fingerprints from 3-year-old Brieze Alden at the Douglas Coun-
Fears drive parents to buy insurance
By JILL CASEY Staff Reporter
Across the country, parents are becoming increasingly concerned when they send their children to school.
Their worries often are reinforced by television movies that graphically illustrate one of parents' worst fears that their children will be stolen the day they are born, or perhaps murdered by a stronger
And this fear is becoming a valuable commodity for insurance companies that attempt to "profit from people's panic" by selling policies to cover such incidents, Charles
Sutherland, a publisher with Search Reports Inc., said recently.
Search Reports, based in New Jersey, is a non-profit organization that works with law enforcement agencies and publishes a quarterly registry of missing persons.
ONE ENTITY $PRENEUR in the business of selling insurance for missing children is the Continental Insurance Company, based in New York City. The company offers a package of four policies called the Victim Assistance Plan and another package is the Missing Child Assistance Plan.
If purchased separately from the package,
the Missing Child Assistance Plan, has a $288
annual premium, said Barbara Adamus, a spokesman, for the company.
If a child is abducted, she said, Continental will pay up to $25,000 for private investigator's fees.
Continental has contracted with the Pinkerton Detective Agency of New York, Adams said. Policy holders are given a toll-free number to call when they think their child is missing so that a detective may be assigned immediately to work on the case.
THE POLICY PROVIDES $50,000 to be used as reward money and to prosecute the officers involved in the investigation.
See CHILDREN, p. 5, col. 1
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — In an effort to halt bad loans, the government, for the first time, is instituting a new program that will give private credit-rating firms the names of students, farmers, veterans and others who do not repay their government loans, officials said yesterday.
The program begins in October at the start of the new fiscal year, but Congress approved the new program with the passage of the 1982 Debt Collectin Act. Government officials hope it will stop "deadbeats" from receiving other government loans.
With $18 billion or more in loans already overdue and considered largely uncollectible, Bank of America agreed to release the numbers.
credit information with seven national credit rating agencies.
ALL FEDERAL AGENCY officials, except those in the Internal Revenue Service, can begin inserting information into individual credit records routinely available across the country. They can also instantly scan the credit histories of any individuals or businesses applying for a loan
In addition, the system will allow government agencies to avoid doing business with any third party.
Unpaid taxes are the only major category of overdue debts the government will not report.
Individuals owe about 40 percent of the money that is outstanding in government ledgers, and are responsible for it.
"We're talking about going after the hard core," said an official in the Office of Management and Budget "Approximately six months' consequences are more than six months overdue."
are held by the Agriculture Department and the Small Business Administration.
The government already uses private collection agencies to track down debtors, but officials have not noticed any remarkable improvement over the old system in which government employees report backpacking. Until now, government reporting program beams, non-payments do not affect credit ratings.
"If somebody is borrowing a million dollars and not paying, I tink anybody should be able to know that," said Curt Prins, staff director of the House Consumer Affairs subcommittee.
On eve of Reagan's visit China stresses Soviet ties
By United Press International
PEIKING — President Reagan, shedding his fervent anti-Communist image, arrived in China today on a six-day visit aimed at improving political and economic ties and downplay
On the eve of President Reagan's visit, Chinese officials stressed that they also had good ties with Moscow when they announced that the highest-ranking Soviet official to come to Peking in nearly 20 years would arrive next month for key trade talks.
A Foreign Ministry announcement said First Deputy Premier Ivan Arkhipov will visit China in May for talks that were expected to address the Chinese-Soviet trade and technical cooperation.
His visit has been planned for some time but Western diplomats said the timing of the formal announcement appeared to be China's way of emphasizing that its good relations with the United States did not mean it was aligning itself with one superpower.
Reagan's welcome from Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian was low key. The only visible signs that Peking was getting ready to receive Reagan were the security precautions being taken along the motorcade route, at the guest house where the president will stay and at the his hotel.
The president's first formal meeting was to take place with President Li Xianxian, the titular head of government and a veteran of the Chinese revolution.
Aides said Reagan would invite Li to visit the United States during their 30-minute talk.
A White House official said the talks were not expected to be "all sweetness and light" in view of the special relationship the United States has with two countries no longer have diplomatic ties.
Reagan said no change would be made in policy toward Taiwan, a major sticking point in the American-China dispute.
Reagan is the first incumbent American president to visit Peking since the restoration of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1979.
Student Senate approves budget for organizations
By CINDY HOLM
Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
More than a month of financial controversy ended last night when the Student Senate approved a $66,300 student organizations budget for fiscal 1983.
See related stories, p.p. 6 and 9
The senators dispelled expectations of a long debate by considering only two amendments to the budget and accepting the second amendment in about an hour. The fourth amendment, the one that cannot have balanced
Senate Finance Committee recommendations for the 70 groups that asked for money, the senators increased the allocations to eight The increases left the Senate $8.070 over budget.
During a seven-hour review last week of the
LAST NIGHT, the senators had to cut money from six other groups to balance the budget. The Senate had set a $66,300 budget ceiling.
Student Body President Carla Vogel is expected to sign the budget today for fiscal 1985, which begins July 1.
During last week's meeting, the Senate rejected the Finance Committee a controversial bill that would have imposed new taxes.
See BUDGET, p. 5, col. 3
By United Press International
David Kennedy found dead in hotel; cause is not known
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — David Kennedy, 28, who turned to drugs after the assassination of his father Robert Kennedy, was found dead in a hotel suite yesterday. Medical examiners could not immediately determine whether he died of natural causes or a drug overdose.
"Natural death is very possible." said Rick Black, chief investigator for the Palm Beach County medical examiner's office, following an autopsy late yesterday. "We are leaning toward natural or accidental death. An accidental overdose is still a possibility."
"I think we can successfully rule out the possibility of suicide," Black told reporters, adding that Mr. Kennedy had on numerous occasions checked in for rehabilitation programs voluntarily.
MR. KENNEDY, WHO AS A boy of 13 watched his father's assassination on television, had a widely publicized history of drug use that resulted at one time in a near-fatal heart ailment.
Black said that laboratory tests had been ordered to determine whether drugs were involved in the death, but the results would not be known for four to eight days.
"There was nothing of any consequence on the body," said Black. "There was no skin popping, no needle tracks or anything that the forensic pathologist observed to explain the death." He said previous medical problems "could have contributed to an early death."
WEST PALM BEACH Police Chief Joseph Terlizese said earlier that nothing in the Brazilian Court Hotel room indicated the cause of death.
Hazardous-waste issue sees into Kansas Legislature
By LORI DODGE
Staff Reporter
In early January of 1982, test results confirmed the presence of what residents near the central Kansas town of Wichita had been told they were safe from
Until the day the dump was shut down, residents there had been told they had nothing to fear from disposal of hazardous waste at the dump, Sharilyn Dientz, whose home is a few miles from the site, said recently.
Investigators discovered chemicals in a spring about a half-mile north of the National Industrial Environmental Services site outside Furley in Sedgwick County. It was the state's only commercial dump site.
"There's no way that anyone can convince me that this site can be safe."
On Jan. 18 that year, Gov. John Carlin closed the dump. The controversy sparked concern among Kansans and public officials about how to deal with hazardous waste, and Carlin decided to make the protection of the Kansas environment one of his highest priorities this year.
THE PRESENCE OF low-level contaminants in a spring near the dump prompted extensive drilling tests into groundwater along the site's northern boundary. Those tests showed concentrations of the chemicals there.
Today and tomorrow the Legislature will be debating two key bills dealing with hazardous waste.
One would create a state superfund for identifying and cleaning up hazardous waste sites across the state. The other, approved Tuesday by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Comptroller, will monitor land burial of hazardous wastes.
A House version of the land burial bill, a tougher version than the Senate committee approved, would have banned the practice altogether, except in cases in which a person seeking an exemption from the state Department of Health and Environment proved that land burial would not pose a present or potential danger to health or to the environment.
The hazardous waste site near Furley probably began to release chemicals into groundwater within a year after the site first opened in 1977, experts said. The site is one of the present owners bought it and five years before Carlin shut down the site.
Chemicals invaded water
The chemicals, chlorinated hydrocarbons, were present in low parts per billion, the site's manager, Cliff McDaniel said. About a gallon of the chemicals seeped into the spring each yeah he said.
MCANIEL SAID THAT the amount of chemicals in the groundwater was not much more than the amount found in ordinary city water supplies.
However, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment considered the chemicals dangerous enough to be classified and listed as hazardous, and
"You can find higher concentrations in things you buy up at the drugsstore," said Don Wallgren, an official of Waste Management Inc., the owners of the site.
dangerous enough to mean the site's closing.
Contamination at the dump was measured at about 150 to 200 parts per billion. McDaniel said, "Water vapor is mainly about 100 parts per billion of the chemicals."
Wallgren said that the contamination problems originated in treatment ponds, where acid wastes were poured to be chemically neutralized.
IN THOSE PONDS, acid wastes reacted unexpectedly with carbonates in the soil, he said, producing a more porous route down to the uppermost water zone, which was about 40 feet in that area.
"The previous owners had not identified carbonate zones and thought that they had continuous clay, which contained the chemical chemicals to see down. Wallgren said.
Waste Management has lined the treatment ponds with special plastic liners. They've installed drainage lines and made other improvements.
Scientists have not been able to agree on what degree of contamination is life hazard.
Both McDaniel and Wallgren agreed that the chemicals that contaminated the groundwater near Furley posed possible hazards, because the effects of the chemicals on human beings and the environment are unknown.
"They're not found naturally in groundwater." Wallgren said.
The site has not reopened, though the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment has the power to reopen it anytime.
Disposal woes
THE OWNERS OF the site say they've spent more than $3 million investigating solutions to the problems in cleaning up the site, and they want more.
And they propose, if the site were underground burial of hazardous waste.
Waste Management Inc., the country's largest operator of hazardous waste facilities, bought the site in 1980. The facility provides treatment, storage or disposal facilities.
Waste Management proposes burial for the residues of wastes handled through recycling or incineration. They say that it is a myth that all wastes can be recycled or incinerated to the point where nothing is left to be disposed of.
"They've bought existing sites and they've bought some real lemons," said Frank Wilson, senior scientist at the Kansas Geological Survey.
"The best way to handle them is to mobilize them and place them in burial grounds."
"It's not at all clear where the wastes are supposed to go if burial is banned," she said.
Wilson said Waste Management was doing the best it could to clean up the
See WASTE, p. 7, col. 1
Robert B. Waddill/Kansan
in a farmer's field, 500 yards away from the hazardous-waste disposal facility near Furley, is a device that measures groundwater toxicity.
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