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Thursday, July 26, 1979
Summer Session Kansan
Local search advances for alternate landfill site
City and county officials were told yesterday by the state that their plans for using a southern Jefferson County rock quarry as an alternate Douglas County landfill would not cause any major problems.
Chuck Linn, chief of the solid waste program for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, last week inspected the quarry, which is nine miles wide, in science, and then said yesterday what would need to be done to it approved.
"We looked at the area of the proposed landfill site and discussed what would be required to get under permit. "Lam said. "We are no real problems as far as I can see."
Lim said some work would need to be done on the site. He listed several improvements, which included building a fence around the quarry.
The Health and Environment Department told the city and county in March that the present landfill seven miles northeast of Lawrence was inadequate and posed possible health hazards during wet periods. The state threatened to shut down the landfill if an alternate plan were not devised.
To meet the state's demands, the city and county formed a solid waste advisory board. The board decided two weeks ago to pursue plans to make arrangements with N.R. Hamm Quarry Inc., RFD 3, Lawrence, who owns the quarry, to use it as an alternate landfill site.
George Williams, city public works director and a member of the board, said Linn looked over the quarry to see if it would fit the needs of the city and county.
"We went out there with him to look over the site," Williams said yesterday. "He had never seen the site before and he wanted to look it over."
When the city and county officials contacted the quarry company, they were told that there were two sites available. One could serve as a temporary site, which would be used during wet weather and the other could be used later as a permanent replacement. The team spent two weeks ago that he expected the present landfill to fill up in two to three years.
Williams said the city and county must still work out the details of using the quarry.
"The next step for us is to get together with Hamm's people and set down specifics about who is going to do what," Williams said.
Towboat's crew rides the river
By TONY FITTS Staff Reporter
SUGAR CREEK, Mo.—The captain's
vice cracked over the loudspeaker. "Are you
fired?"
Sam waved his arms over his head from his post at the far end of the fow, signaling that the lines had been cast off. The boat and its tow began to drift away from the bank.
"All gone, all gone," said the captain.
The towboat, the Brownville, has the job of pushing cargo barges up and down naviable rivers of the United States. The boat had just been refuled, and supplies were loaded at a dock in Sugar Creek, Mo., about 45 miles upstream from Kansas City. The destination was Nebraska City, Neb. 216 miles upriver. The trip would take about 40 hours.
The trip began at 7:45 p.m. The boat had to go to a tie-up area just outside Kansas City, Mo., to rearrange its tow and exchange two crew members.
The nine crew members work in 30-day stretches, and then supposedly get 30 days
Some crew members don't come back to the river. One, Sam Jewett, said he might not return to the boat next time. Jewett, who had been on the river for only a few years,
"You really get tired of it when you go toward the end of your 30 days on," she said. "But after a while away, you want to come back."
Frances Day, the Brownville's cook, in
2012. She will be retiring in three years, after
18 years as a chef at the restaurant.
What they come back to is a life different from that on the land. People who work on the towboats spend all their time on the working, sleeping, eating and relaxing.
The day is divided into four shifts, six hours long. Everybody has hours onours to attend school.
When the daily chores are finished, one deckhands can relax. A lot of their time is spent in a work area at the front of the boat, and watching as they pass by the riverbank.
At night, the crew has to work by the light of the boat's two 15-million candlepower searchlights and its running lights. Work on a device does not stop just because it gets dark.
Securing the 195-foot barges is hard work. The deckhands have to tie the tow together with enough steel rigging to keep it from falling and coming apart while being moved.
A lot of the talk as the boat moved up the river, was about getting off.
"When I first got on, you were lucky to get
off after 40 days," Red Heard, junior engineer said. "You'll have 48 days on. you will be off."
Doug Frazee, chief engineer, said later, "There was one guy who wanted to get off real bad. He couldn't take it any more and he told the pilot to put him off right now. 'Are you sure you want off here?' the pilot said. 'Right here,' the guy told him. So the pilot pulled up to the bank and they put him ashore right in the trees.
"The boat went on upriver and turned around. As they were passing the place where the man had gone ashore, the pilot started backing, which was quite a deal, since it doesn't happen very often except in case of emergency, especially when you're going downstream.
"The boat got stopped, and there, sitting in the trees on his suitcase, was that crewman. 'How did you know he'd be there?' somebody asked the pilot. Well, he said, that placed where I let him off is an officer. I know he wouldn't be going too far."
The food is pretty good. The cook has worked in hospitals and rest homes before coming on the river, and her cooking is not fancy, but it is filling.
"Some of us have a figure problem," Frazee said. "The captain really has a figure problem — he usually only cats one day, I eat three, but I try to keep it light."
AUDIOTRONICS 928 MASSACHUSETTS DOWNTOWN
Frazee has been with the Brownville since it was built in 1964, except for two years on the Ft. PIER, the Brownville's sister船. He knows every bolt and pump on the boat.
Frazee said he had enjoyed his life on the river.
"Down where I live, on the Lake of the Ozarks, there are a lot of people who make a pretty good living. There are doctors and lawyers, bankers and even an opera singer. But I'm just appalled at the number of hours that lawyer has to leave for work early in the morning, and he usually isn't home until after dark.
"And the opera singer, he's gone on tours for months at a time. I know I'm gone for 30 days at a time, but I know I'll be home for 5 days after that. And I get paid for all of it."
At the head of the tow, about 600 feet from
the boat, the only sound is the river pacing.
"This job is a lot of strain," Barger said. "Any minute barges up there could be going every which direction. There's a lot of good niots suit because of nerves."
Jackie Barger, the Brownville's captain,
said he made $2,260 a month, with a $6.29 a day bonus for every day spent in the pilot house. An inexperienced deckhand makes $23 a day with a raise of $250 a month after the first 90 days.
But they keep coming back.
Back on the boat, it is always noisy. The noise from the massive dieselis permeates every inch of the boat. The man who have gone down to the sea for a number of years are all hard of hearing.
Rundy Friar, a deckhand who got off just before Kansas City, said, "Out there, on land, people are waiting in gas lines and on water, they are on the river, it's a whole different life."
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