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Wednesday, February 23, 1977
University Dally Kansan
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tprompts on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Kansas or the School of Journalism
Dam projects needed
The disclosure that Jimmy Carter will cancel funds for 19 water projects in 18 states until safety and environmental hazards can be gauged has caused a wave of furor from politicians and resources officials in those states.
Carter's reason for dropping the funds from his 1978 fiscal budget, which begins in October, has its merits. But the administration's announcement, as officials in the 16 states involved have said, is a display of poor judgment and bad timing.
The announcement came early before 11 governors and representatives of six other states, including Kansas, met in Denver and later endured a task force to speed up federal aid for drought-stressed areas in Western Kentucky and states. Carter recently recognizes the seriousness of the drought; he sent Secretary of Interior Cecil Andrus to the Denver meeting.
UNFORTUNATELY, THE decision on the dam funding leaked out of Washington before the President can make an announcement later in the week.
One dam that would be affected is the proposed Auburn-Folsom South Central Vally Project in Northern California, a region where the drought is the most serious. California produces 25% per cent of national's food supply, per cent of its exports. A prolonged drought there could very likely result in higher food prices nationwide.
The seriousness of the drought extends to the Midwest, as well.
Small towns throughout Kansas and Missouri are major suppliers of water to farmers who daily have to haul water to their cattle. Because of three consecutive
dry summers, however, those farmers have had to haul more water than in past years.
Those small towns, and even some rural water districts, have had to shut off their supply to farmers because of dwindling available water for their other customers.
UNDER CARTER'S PLAN, the Meramec Lake Park project in Missouri and the Grove Hill project in Kansas would be among the affected dams. These projects are considered primarily recreational projects, however.
Colorado in the past has allocated water supplies to California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. But because of a below-normal snowfall this winter, Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm is pondering how his state will meet those allocations this year.
Many of the dams, as Secretary Andrus said last weekend, are controversial ones that have Carter concerned. This would include the Meramec project in Missouri, where residents near the dam have voiced their opposition. Carter's proposal, as one might guess, has left opponents of dams delighted.
AN OPPONENT OF AN affected Louisiana dam said, "Maybe this is an indication that we have somebody in the White House who cares a little bit about some of these things."
Larter's concern with environmental and safety standards is full of good intentions. He needs to review those intentions. He should provide funds to Western projects such as the Auburn Dam, and eliminate waste projects that are primarily recreational.
Recreation we can do without for the moment. But continuing problems of drought and irrigation will have their effects in the years ahead. We need the water.
By MERLE GOLDMAN
Natural gas crisis needs study
Guest Writer
The United States is now passing through its second energy crisis, one whose effects have been more severe than those of its 1973 counterpart. Then, Americans suffered from high prices and long lines at gas stations as they heated their homes during one of the coldest winters in recorded history.
The new crisis has also brought a new problem, energy unemployment. Workers' livelihoods are now subject to the vicissitudes of the pipeline as well as supply and demand. The basic difference between the old and new phase of employment crises is the resource in short supply. Then it was oil and gasoline; now it is natural gas, an energy source that beats half of the homes in the United States and provides energy for 40 per cent of U.S. industries.
wrong if it patterned its long-term policy on the measures it has hastily taken during the crisis.
ALTHOUGH WE could be sure that gas stopped flowing in pipelines in the last few weeks, this fact is no reason to suddenly conclude that all the gas is not coming out of the continent is about to disappear.
knowledge about gas supplies is taken from statistics gathered by the American Gas Association, a group organization for natural gas producers. According to the AGA, consumption went above the finding of new natural gas reserves in 1968 and the soaring prices has since depleted supplies by 25 per cent. If current rates of consumption continue, the AGA predicts that the United States will have to pay for only about 10 more years.
SO SAYS THE major source of information about gas resources. And the gas companies' cries for permanent deregulation seems justified. But the House Interstate and Congressional committee on Oversight and Investigations conducted hearings last year which could if well-known, greatly damage the credibility of the AGA. The committee, headed by John Spencer, a geologist employed by the AGA to make objective assessments of available gas supplies had ignored an AGA definition of a "proved," that is, readily exploitable, gas sources and accepted the estimates the gas companies gave them.
Most government surveys of natural gas supplies have also based their estimates on gas companies by gas companies. The FFC and
Federal Energy Administration both failed to use the subpoena power granted them when they investigated available supplies.
AT THE BOTTOM of the gas crisis is an unsolved mystery, a question of how much gas is available and how many gas companies are in reserve. Until now we have largely accepted the gas companies' interpretations of what is a "proved" gas field. Because measuring gas uses expensive and uses technology, gas companies are the only ones who have been willing to collect data on a large scale. But the fact that the Supreme Court said in 1968 that the FPC could increase the regulated price of gas when the AGA said that it was unable to pay the cost of new discoveries makes the companies' claims of shortages a little suspect.
estimates about how much natural gas is available remain in a knot of statistics that it seems only experts can unravel. If Carter is truly a "people's president," he will make sure that experts with the people's interests in mind, ones who are not afraid to use the power of technology in their mystery, are asked to investigate the supply of natural gas.
Americans have been primed for a long-term energy crisis. There is no doubt that one is coming if we continue current warming, because servation is needed now and in the future. But we should never let our enthusiasm for conservation substitute for the need to reduce greenhouse gas when an energy crisis is real and when it is manufactured.
THE GOVERNMENT'S immediate reaction to the crisis has been a call for conservation. President Carter asked Americans to turn down their heaters and Congress to permit public access to interstate pipelines to states in the Northeast and Midwest. To facilitate the flow of gas, Carter has also temporarily suspended the Federal Power Commission (FPC) regulations that have down the price of gas flowing across state lines since 1954.
Carter's swift response to the crisis deserves praise. His call for conservation emphasized the need to support the American way of life. His request for deregulation was an effective way to quickly increase the flow of natural gas and reduce energy costs. Carter administration would be
Merie Goldman is a senior majoring in journalism.
Pot argument ridiculous
committee in opposition to the decriminalization bill.
"I am concerned with what has happened to America. This committee should consider that young parents are in the education as a sign of their坠 abandoning concern for their welfare. I know of two patients who smoked one and one psychotic condition that took six months to cure."
-Harold Voth, a Menninger Foundation psychiatrist in hearings before the House Federal and State Affairs Committee. Feb. 15, 1977.
"But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas," "But, this is Kansas." J. Thomas Ungerleider said after hearing the testimony of Voth and others who opposed the bill. "This is America 100 years ago. It is fun of it to come to Kansas."
If Voth's testimony is representative of what the Kansas Legislature has done, Rep. Mike Glover's bill that would reduce penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana will pass and become law July 1.
It embarrasses me that our state legislators had to be subjected to such testimony, and embarrassed in doing so. Their testimony was representative of that given to the
his testimony, which has nothing whatever to do with reducing penalties for murders of sources of murjana, was: Where did the teenager who smoked two joints of murjana and ___ was or asked about an ack month gets the stuff?
and go back in time 100 years."
The only question of importance raised by Voth in
IT ISN'T surprising that Ungerleider described the testimony he heard in opposition to Glover's bill as "discriminatory" and "ridiculous he had heard on the subject. Based on what Voth and others who testified said, how could one think they were even talking about the committee was considering?
It must have been expensive.
WHAT I HOPE the legislators are asking themselves is whether it is just to put a person in jail for a year and fine him $2,500 because he had an ounce of marijuana, the maximum law possible under state law.
Brent Anderson Editorial Writer
And, if that question isn't easy enough to answer, I please copy it for a second conviction of simple possession
of marijuana: a possible $5,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.
he has been argued that rarely, if ever, has the maximum penalty for a possession of marjuanja That argument is as ridiculous as Voth's, if not more so.
The time is right to pass Glover's bill, which would reduce penalties for possession of two ounces or a maximum of marjuria to a maximum fine of $100. If smoking marjuriana is a prohibited questionable, a maximum fine of $100 seems a bit more appropriate.
IT WILL probably be shocked to some that a shy, conservative down to earth woman gets high about as often as he eats lobster, would favor a bill reducing the penalties possession of marijuana one of授牌 by Glomer.
If there's an increase in psychotic cases after the bill passes, Voth can say, "I told you so."
Let's abolish February
SCRABBLE, Va.-Dan. Patrick Moynihan, the junior senator from New York, is considering a bill that may secure his place in history. At the request of his Buffalo office, so the story goes, he is thinking of a bill to abolish February.
Because this is a piece of humane legislation I have been promoting for 25 years, the senator's initiative naturally impresses me as sound. President Carter may get modest land for riding on it, while White House staffers and 400 advisory committees, but the Moynihan Act, if it is written into law, will prompt jubilation across the frozen land.
MOYNIHAN, IN his own audacious fashion, would begin
by abolishing February straight-out. Reportedly he'd add one week to April, two weeks to June and one week to September. He'll be one more day for New Year's Eve. The birthdays of
James J. Kilpatrick
tel 1977 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Washington, Lincoln and Harrison would be relocated by appointment of the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House. Senator's Day would fall on May 19. It sounds too good to be true.
The effect of all this would be to give the country a running start on spring. Right after January, we'd be into March, and March is a month we can live with. March has a good name. It comes highly recom- mentable, and it's also a hard speak a harsh word about March. How much snow do they get in Buffalo in March? A durn sight less than they get in February, that's for sure.
and Virginia suburbs of Washington, these country capitalists are hawking door to door at 50 cents a log.
© 1977 NYT Special Features.
HERE IN RAPPAHANNOCK County, Va., up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, we haven't had anything approaching the hardships of Buffalo, Cincinnati and Fargo, but it has been hard for us to do so dinarily, we get a ew inches of Christmas card snow, and I write a pretty country piece about the pines in ermine and the vanilla frosted fields, and the pine trees are away. This year the snow has hung around like a bad case of snuffles. The water pump froze, a pipe burst and the tractor congealed and wouldn't start. The birds have been learning to eat, but in their hearts aren't in them.
There is nothing good to be said for February. The month is beyond redemption. It is dark in the mornings and dark in the afternoons. The firewood gets wet and the kindling won't ignite until it gets hot, and they won't stay out. For three weeks the collies tracked in snow. Then we had a two-day thaw, and they tracked in mud.
THERE IS BUT one thing to do, and I'm doing it. I am taking two weeks' vacation and heading for Savannah, Sea Pines and New Orleans. The immediate consequence will be that the cherry trees in pannahook County, temperatures in the 60s, crocs on the lawn, and bluebirds on the wing. The cherry trees will start to bud in Washington, and the committee is getting ready to commit. When I get back, February will be gone, and believe me, it won't be missed.
Carter can do with his $50 rebates. He can send 'em to the Northern Piedmont Electric Cooperative, Box 325, Culpeper, Va. Or to Mr. Alvey at Pyrofax Gas. Or to the fuel oil folks.
AT LEAST THE electric power hasn't gone bloody—it hasn't gone bloody so far—but that's the best thing that can be said for electric power. The electric bills are horrendous. In our neck of the woods, everybody knows what Mr.
You wouldn't believe the firewood situation. The wood dealers have become the merchant princes of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They consult with a real estate agent only. A few years ago, you could get an honest cord of wood for $20. Now, as a favor, they offer a pickup load for a hundred bucks. A hundred bucks! That was the price one肩o would quote, wife and wife, he wasn't especially eager to sell it here in Rappahannock. In the Maryland
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