UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, March 1, 1997
3A
Kansas sewage bills may rise
State fighting new regulations
By Paul Eakins and Ann Marchand Kansan staff writers
Environmental Protection Agency regulations may increase sewer bills throughout Kansas, unless Kansas legislators set their way.
Legislators are attempting to pass a bill that would keep Kansas towns from having to follow new EPA regulations for the next two years. The regulations would make water in the state cleaner but could increase costs by as much as 25 percent.
The EPA policy, which began in 1994, decreases the amount of ammonia in water put back in rivers from wastewater plants, as well as the amount of strazine from agricultural runoff, said Dave Wagner, wastewater treatment superintendent for the Lawrence plant.
Some legislators have shrugged off the suggested standards for wastewater treatment and have said they are ineffective.
"I think that there are enough questions about what standards we're using that we really need to take a good hard look at the standards," said REN, Troy Findley, D-Lawrence.
Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence,
wrote the bill, Substitute House Bill
2368. The original bill was written by
Rep. Andrew Howell, R-Fort Scott,
and proposed suspending all water
quality standards in Kansas indefinitely.
The bill substitute passed the House Tuesday and will be considered by Senate committees next week.
Sloan's bill also established a commission to review the EPA and Kansas Department of Health and Environment standards and to assess the advantages and disadvantages of changing them. The commission would submit its final report to the Legislature by June 30, 1998. The commission's recommended standards must then be implemented by June 30, 1999.
To implement the EPA standards now, Kansas towns would have to build new facilities that would cost millions of dollars for many towns, Sloan said. The cost for Lawrence would be $10 million, so the bill should be passed and more research should be done, Wagner said.
"We hate to build a $10 million facility, and then the scientists come back and say, 'You know what, we really didn't need to do that.' Wagner said.
Mike Wilden, Lawrence city manager, said the standards would be expensive for citizens, with sewer bills increasing 10 percent to 25 percent to pay for the new facilities.
Small towns would be hurt the most because they don't have the money to pay for new plants, Wildgensaid.
The EPA regulations could hurt the University of Kansas and the student population as well.
bills were to increase, and the University could not get additional money from the state, the money would have to be taken from other University expenditures.
For 1997, the University budgeted $197,040 for sewage bills for campus facilities, sald Mike Richardson, director of facilities operations. If the
A 10 percent rise would make the charges increase to $216,744, and a 25 percent increase to $246,300.
Rent also could be higher for students living in residence halls, said Kenneth Stoner, director of student housing.
"If we get increases in utilities, the only place we can get that is from students' room and board." he said.
Stoner said it would be difficult to estimate how housing costs might change, but if no other factors made up for the increases, students would pay the difference.
Based on figures for October 1996, Stoner estimated that the housing department paid $91,049 for sewage treatment at the residence halls over a nine-month period.
If the costs increased 10 percent, the costs of treatment in the residence halls would increase to $100,154. A 25 percent increase would raise the costs to $13,812.
Despite the costs, the EFA believes the state should follow the guidelines and has threatened to sue if the bill is signed by the governor, according to a news release from the office of U.S. Pat. Roberts, R-Kansas.
Rowena Michaels, director of the office of external programming for the Region VII EPA office, declined to comment on the threat but said EPA officials had been asked to testify before the Senate committee on energy and natural resources.
EPA wastewater regulations could increase sewer costs by 10 to 25 percent.
Cost of regulations
Sloan,however,said the EPA
would not have a solid case against the state because the Kansas Department of Health and Environment tightened its wastewater standards in 1994, but the EPA has not yet approved them.
"There's a legal and ethical problem for the EPA: How do you criticize a state for not implementing what you didn't approve in three years?" Sloan said.
Rep. Laura McClure, D-Osborne,
said that regardless of the EPA or the
Legislature, Kansans had a right to
expect clean water. She said that
improving wastewater treatment
plants would save money in the long
run, but short-term costs would rise.
“It’s far less expensive to keep something out of the water than to take it out later,” McClure said. “Without water, there’s no life.”
Foreign students striving for unity
By Umut Bayramoglu
Konsep staff写
Kansan staff writer
More than 1,500 international students are on campus, but lack of unity between their individual groups results in lack of representation in the Student Senate and on campus in general.
Irvin Jerez, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, senior and vice president of the International Student Association, said it was crucial to have unity between different groups on campus.
"There is close to 2,000 international students on campus, and we need to get more involved," Jerez said.
Jerez said they had been holding meetings for the leaders of international groups and had reached 15 international groups so far.
"There are numerous organizations," he said. "The decision to come together and form a unity depends on all the leaders of these groups."
Jerez said one of the main goals of the meetings was to get a representative for international students in the Student Senate.
Beatrice Selomulyo, Jakarta, Indonesia, junior and president of the Indonesian Student Association, said international students needed a representative for their opinions to be heard.
"All we have is a student seat right now, but we need someone to represent us," he said.
"It's sad, you know. International students are a part of KU, too," she said. "Even one representative would be good."
"If we communicate more, we can get involved with different organizations' activities," he said.
Another benefit of forming unity among international groups, Jerez said, would be getting more support for programs.
Jue Wang, president of Chinese Students and Scholars Friendship Association, said that working together would be to the advantage of international student organizations.
"If we can get together,we can exchange ideas for programs and activities," he said.
Jerez said ISA also was working on putting together an International Awareness Week in April.
Wang, Kaifeng, China, graduate student, said that an awareness week would let American students know about the contributions of international students.
"We as international students contribute to the University financially and academically," he said. "Some Americans realize that, but some don't."
Selomulyo said she thought the meetings among the international student leaders already had helped their group.
"We are planning on playing basketball with the Taiwanese Student Association," she said. "If we did not have those meetings, we wouldn't have that."
Dead fish compilation keeps researchers busy sorting
Collection is among largest in the nation
By Mike Perryman Special to the Kansan
Kate Shaw fumbles a four-inch, brown-gray fish in her hands as she tries to wrap a paper label around its slippery body. She dips it in a series of alcohol solutions and places it in a jar on a shelf in the University of Kansas' Natural History Museum.
The fish, a Midwestern darter, is only one of 400,000 fish specimens dating back to the 1880s that are preserved in the Ichthyology Department collection on the second floor of Dyche Hall.
The University, hopelessly landlocked in Kansas, has to find creative ways to acquire marine specimens. Often, it means swapping fishy samples.
the university is important for other universities that are conducting research.
The collection is one of the largest among U.S. universities and ranks between 16th and 25th in the nation. Although it is known nationwide among ichthyologists, the collection is like a well-hidden secret at the University, Shaw said.
The large and diverse fish collection at
Not all universities have extensive "dead" fish collections, and they often have to refer to KU's collection to borrow or exchange specimens for research.
In return, KU's museum receives marine fish from the Atlantic coast from Harvard.
Shaw, who received her Ph.D. from the University, is in charge of acquiring, sorting, labeling and maintaining the specimens.
The biology department benefits greatly from the ichthyology program, Shaw said.
Tenthology's tradition or systematics and collection at KU attracts some excellent graduate students from around the nation." she said.
Systematics is essentially the gathering, organizing, arranging and documenting of information involving the collections.
"They go through our program and eventually become part of the field of excellent researchers. That looks good for KU." Shaw said.
Mike Ghedotti has been in the ichthyology graduate program for four and a half years.
Researchers, like Shaw and Ghedotti, organize specimens by determining the characteristics that are similar among them. By comparing the similarities, the researchers can trace genetic relatives and ancestors of certain specimens, and then better understand the path of evolution.
Shaw and Ghedotti said that taking care of the collection was time-consuming. The collection is always changing, and it requires a lot of maintenance.
The department is constantly exchanging specimens with other universities for research, and ichthyology curators E.O. Wiley and Walter Dimmick, both fish researchers at KU, gather specimens worldwide.
Wiley is teaching a course in systematics and phylogenetics this semester.
Dimmick is an expert in DNA sequence and analysis and taught evolution for three years at KU. Because he is in Africa on a research expedition, Dimmick is not teaching this semester.
Dimmick, who is beginning his fourth year as co-curator and head of DNA research in ichthyology at the museum, recently received a $275,000 grant from
the national Science Foundation for his Ethiopian studies. From January until March, he will be working with a Russian colleague at the Genale River drainage in Ethiopia.
Many of the fish in the collection are gathered locally. On Fridays, after Shaw and graduate students such as Ghedotti return from collecting fish specimens from the Mill Creek drainage in Kansas, the ichthyology program engages in "fish sort."
Fish sort is an opportunity for undergraduates planning to enter the field of ichthyology to use the museum.
Undergraduates involved in ichthyology and students just interested in fish go to the museum on Friday to help sort and label the newly acquired specimens.
While sitting at tables breathing in the distinct odors of dead fish and formaldehyde, students study and sort through hundreds of brown, gray, yellow and orange fish specimens.
The fish sort is just one example of how the collection has served education at the University, Shaw said. The collection is useful for the University, but it serves a larger purpose, she said.
"They serve as a repository for that information," she said. "They are essentially safeguarding the heritage."
Andrei Urasov / KANBAM
Two people in the ichthyology department sort and label dead fish for the University's collection. KU has one of the largest fish collections among universities, ranking between 16 and 25th in the nation.
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