Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 121, Ed. 1 Wednesday, May 21, 1980 Page: 1 of 16
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MICROFILM SERVICE; • SALES C
F.0. BuX 45434 *
.DALLAS ’ IX 7.5235*
Correction
Graduation exercises for the 1980
senior class of Sulphur Springs High
School will begin at 8 p.m. Thursday,
. rather than at 7 p.m. as originally
reported to The News-TelegFam. With
more than 200 seniors winding up
their high school careers, this year’s
class is one of the largest in history.
John Barron, noted author and senior
editor of Reader's Digest, will be the
featured speaker for the event in the
Civic Center auditorium.
Sulphur Springs
VOL. 102—NO. 121.
Wednesday
15 Cents
MAY 21, 1980.
1
£
M
n
Giving directions
Assistant principal Lewis Rogers, with a list of the 1980 Sulphur
Springs graduating class in hand, gave directions to the seniors
as to where to sit Wednesday during the commencement
exercise rehearsal at the Civic Center auditorium. The
graduation ceremony is scheduled to get underway at 8
p.m.Thursday in the auditorium. With 210 seniors expected to
make the trip across the stage Thursday and receive diplomas,
this is one of the largest graduating classes to leave Sulphur
Springs High School.
— Staff Photo
Swimming pool fees raised
City council ponders
outdoor sports plans
Sulphur Springs City Commissioners put
on hold a proposal from the Hopkins
County Softball Association to take over
control of the softball field at Lake Sulphur
Springs, put a request for additional tennis
courts into the study mill for possible
future work and approved an increase in
rates for the swimming pool this year.
Faron Young, representing the softball
association, told commissioners during
their work session prior to the meeting
that the organization wanted to take
responsibility for the field if the city would
provide lights, electricity, bleachers and
parking lot.
He said the 11-team organization would
paint the equipment, keep the field
mowed, control parking so as not to in-
terfere with those using the boat ramps
and pick up the trash.
Young said that there were about 220
members in the group.
Parks and Recreation Director Hugh
Sprague presented an analysis showing
that in 1979,25 lamps had been replaced at
city park at a cost of $208.75 and that the
cost of electricity at the Bell Street Softball
field which was moved to the lake had cost
the city $691.43.
A brief discussion concerning the con-
cessions at the field was held and com-
missioners were informed that the city
normally gets 13 percent of the profits
from tournaments.
Commissoners tabled that item for
further study.
Bob Julian of the Double S Tennis
Association told commissioners that the
city’s tennis courts are presently used by
the high school tennis team, physical
education classes, the public and both the
men’s and women’s tennis associations.
He said about 100 players use the courts
each week and proposed a three-year
expansion program.
Under that plan, three new courts would
be built the first year with re-surfacing of
the present courts to be included in the
second year and improved lighting in thp
third.
Ann Willman said, "It’s the city’s
responsibility to see the facilities
upgraded and improved.’’
Sprague told the commissoners that new
lights for the courts would cost about $4,000
and that 10 months electrical service to the *
Middle School courts had cost the city
$1,496.91 last year.
He said that the cost for replacement
lighting in 1979 had been about $63 and that
for the city to build three new courts
utilizing city employees, the cost would be
$32,500 plus labor.
A three-battery court to be built on a
contract basis would cost the city about
$50,000.
Another member of the local tennis
organization said that if some existing
lighting could be moved to local courts, it
would improve the playing conditions at
present.
Sprague was told to obtain estimates on
the costs of moving the lighting and costs
of re-surfacing some existing courts.
The 1980 budget has no money for
building new courts according to Chair-
man Lewis Helm.
He told those present that the city would
include tennis court construction in the
consideration for next year’s budget.
When asked about the chance of ob-
taining other baseball fields And tennis
courts through a possible grant from the
Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife,
Glenn Wagner, who is heading up that
project commented, "We’ve got about as
much chance of getting those as Sulphur
Springs has of getting a space shuttle."
On a more serious plane, Wagner said
that there were no plans to apply for a
grant to obtain a space shuttle and that
there was no chance of obtaining the pre-
planned baseball complex.
However, he said that the chances for a
jogging and nature trail around Lake
Coleman were excellent as well as for
improvements at Pacific Park.
Wagner said that he would have
finalized plans for the grant ready for the
commission to approve at its last meeting
in June.
Rates at the swimming pool will be. in-
creased to $8 from $7.50 for an individual
season pass this summer and family
passes will go from $25 to $27.50.
The daily rate for students is increased
from 50 cents to 75 cents and for those over
16 who are not students, the rate will be
increased from 75 cents to $1.25.
A change this year decreased the cost
for one group of people.
Senior citizens paid 75 cents daily last
year and will be allowed to swim free this
summer.
Sprague said the fee boost was the result
of increased cost of operation and the need
to update the pool.
The city manager is to work with
Sprague and set the hours of operation as
well as the opening and closing dates.
After a 2^-hour executive session, Helm
said the city has received 25 applications
for the job of city manager and that
commissioners will now begin the process
of screening candidates.
He said an executive work session to
discuss the candidates will be held soon.
News briefs'
Never trust
a forecaster
It wasn’t suppose to rain Wed-
nesday morning, but it did.
It isn’t suppose to rain on Thursday
either, but an umbrella might be a
nice accessory to any ensemble.
The National Weather Service
forecast is calling for decreasing
cloudiness Wednesday night with
mostly fair skies and warm tem-
peratures in the upper 80s on Thur-
sday.
Skies should be partly cloudy
Friday with an isolated chance of late
afternoon or early evening thun-
derstorms over the weekend.
Daytime high temperature readings
should be in the upper 80s throughout
the weekend with overnight lows in
the mid 60s to lower 70s.
The mercury climbed to 82 degrees
Tuesday under mostly clear skies.
The temperature dropped 20 degrees
to 62 overnight for the low reading. At
8 a.m. Wednesday, before the brief
but heavy rains came, the mercury
read 84 degrees. Unofficially The
News-Telegram gauge near down-
town had recorded .19 inches of rain
by 11 a.m. Wednesday.
County oil output
logs slight boost
Hopkins County oil production
posted a marginal increase in 1979
while that for the state continued its
long, slow decline.
The county is credited with lifting
1,621,070 barrels of crude last year, as
compared with 1,600,000 in 1978 for a
daily average of 4,441 barrels.
Total .production since the
discovery of oil in the Sulphur Bluff
field in 1936 is placed at 70,112,557
barrels.
I • • V •
Commission okays
• s ...... ‘ ,r
Front Street plan
By JIM MOOR E-
News Telegram Staff
Take two engineering firms, separate
the two and keep one.
Blend in one bid for a 48-inch bore un-
derneath a railroad and move it west and
cancel a bid for drainage work.
Add in one bid for paving, curbs and
gutters, modify it just a little and then
award it.
Mix well and frost with City Commission
action and the result is the long-awaited
Front Street project.
Tuesday night Sulphur Springs City
Commissioners accepted a letter of
resignation of consulting engineers
Barber-Brannon of Tyler and formally
employed the Longview firm ’of Kindle
Stone and Associates on a work order basis
to complete the project.
I^arry Stone told the commission that the
bore underneath the railroad that was
objected to by Floyd Berry at the last
meeting had been moved.
He said the moving of that 48-inch
drainage provision to Jackson Street
would allow drainage to be connected to an
existing drain pipe that had been located
just north of the Front Street project.
Former City Commission Chairman
J.D. Franklin told the commissioners that
the drainage had been installed there
several years ago in anticipation of the
Front Street project.
‘Tret’s try to get this project moving,” he
said.
Stone said that the drain pipe had not
been used and was believed to just dead
end at a point north of the IAA Railroad
tracks. He said it flows north and even-
tually dumps into Town Branch.
The Lmgview engineer said that by
moving the railroad bore, the additional
water would not be sent down the creek
that Berry had complained about and
would present no additional problems
from flooding.
Community Development Block Grant
(CDBG) Coordinator Glenn Wagner said
that the city should utilize a backhoe to
eliminate stoppage at the inlet on Ran-
dolph Street and that should help relieve
the flooding from the creek between
Randolph and Front Street during heavy
rain.
Wagner said that as the bore beneath the
railroad had been moved, $1,500 would be
available for cost overruns on the Front
Street project due to the drainage
clearance work on that creek not being
needed.
Commissioners went with the low bids
on both the street paving and the bore
beneath the railroad.
NETEX Asphalt and Materials i David
Buster Construction Company) was the
low bidder on the construction work with a
bid of $208,636.95 for two sections of work
on Front Street.
Stone told commissioners that a change
order would increase the cost to about
$214,000 but would be within the budget.
McCoy Construction Company of Tyler
was the low bidder for the installation and
boring beneath the IAA Railroad tracks
with a bid of $10,000.
Wagner said that the Front Street
project was off and running and that
construction will begin within 30 days.
Cooper Lake backers
cautiously optimistic
By JOE WOOSLEY
News-Telegram Stall
At the conclusion of a work session
meeting in Sulphur Springs Tuesday which
involved representatives of the U.S. Corps
of Engineers, Sulphur River Municipal
Water District members and city officials,
a feeling of cautious optimism developed
over the outlook for the Cooper I,ake
project.
There remain steps to be take that in-
volve the curing of five points in a
memorandum of opinions handed down by
a federal judge and other actions, but the
Corps representatives stressed that their
work was on schedule. They emphasized
that they will do what the federal judge
asked them to do so that the injunction
halting the project can be lifted.
The draft of the environmental impact
statement is expected to be completed in
mid-August. The final supplemental EIS is
projected to be completed and turned over
to the Justice Department by the end of
December. The Justice Department at-
torneys then will be expected to carry the
EIS and supporting documents to Justice
William Wayne Justice in federal court.
Eugene Sikes, BobSummitt and Richard
Bell, all with the Southwestern District
Office in Dallas, and Shigeru Fujiwara and
Mike Mocek, with the Fort Worth District
Office, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
expressed confidence in the Cooper Ixike
project.
"This project is a viable one," Fujiwara
declared. “There will be a need for the
water in 1990. This is a well-formulated
project.”
Fujiwara explained that once the project
is cleared, the engineers will follow the
established guidelines which hopefully will
lead to the construction of Cooper Lake —
possibly by 1990.
Walter Helm, president of the Sulphur
River Municipal Water District, expressed
thanks to the visiting engineers for the
update of progress on the project.
The engineers passed out a 54-page
Cooper I,ake Water Supply Study which
listed current supplies and projected
needs.
In addition to Sulphur Springs, Cooper
and Commerce, the City of Irving and the
North Texas Municipal Water District are
hoping to draw needed water supplies
from Cooper Lake. The baseline projec-
tions show that water needs will greatly
exceed current supplies.
Congress authorized Cooper lake in
1955. The project has encountered
numerous delays, topped off by the per-
manent injunction issued Dec. 8, 1978,
which halted further work until the Army
Corps of Engineers cures deficiencies set
forth in the order.
Much of the acreage for the project on
South Sulphur River in Delta, Hopkins and
Hunt counties has been purchased. The
lake is proposed as a multi-purpose
project, providing water supplies, flood
control and recreation.
Dairy outlook 'good'
By bob Pick
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Agriculture
Department analysts say the financial
outlook for the nation’s dairy farmers this
year is fairly good despite declining
demand for their product.
"Cash receipts could exceed $16.5 billion
this year, and dairy farmers’ net incomes
should approximate the favorable
situation of the past few years,” they said
Tuesday in summarizing the USDA’s
Dairy Situation report. *
The projection, supported by a 12 per-
cent increase in cash receipts during the
first four months of the year, came despite
the fact that increasing production coupled
with sluggish demand has kept farm
prices for milk below the new support level
of just over $12 a hundredweight.
Consumers also got some good news in
the report, prepared by the USDA’s
Economics, Statistics and Cooperatives
Service and to be released within two
weeks. The report said rising milk and
dairy product supplies are slowing retail
price increases.
“For all of 1980, retail prices will
probably average 9 to 11 percent higher
than last year,” the report said. In 1979,
the retail increase was 15 percent to 16
percent.
The USDA said milk production during
the first four months of 1980 was up 3
percent from a year earlier. But it added
that commercial use of dairy products
from January through March dropped and
could be expected to remain low.
“With continued large meat supplies,
the economy in a recession and further
Volcano devastation mounts
By DAVID AMMONS
Associated Press Writer
VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) - An
estimated 5,000 travelers stranded by the
shutdown of ash-clogged highways and
airports jammed shelters across
Washington as the death toll from the
devastating eruption of Mount St. Helens
climbed to 10.
Gov. Dixy Lee Ray asked President
Carter to declare the state a disaster area
and officials kept wary eyes on a dam of
mud and debris that stood between the
waters of Spirit Lake and the residents of
cities below the mountain.
Officials listed 98 people were missing
following the blast that a scientist
described as a “unique event” in the
history of Mount St. Helens. And the cloud
of ash that blanketed much of the West and
Midwest with a layer of grit moved today
across the eastern third of the country.
"I feel as though I have just come back
from a trip to the moon,” Miss Ray said
after a helicopter tour over dozens of miles
of flattened trees and mud-devastated
homes.
About 1,000 people had been evacuated
IF,:i
t
from homes near the volcano, while untold
numbers of others found temporary
lodging without assistance and never
checked with authorities, said Ben Dew of
the state Department of Emergency
Services.
The number of known victims of the
blast and mudslides rose late Tuesday to
10 and Cowlitz County Sheriff Les Nelson
said the toll from the Sunday eruption
would climb much higher. He said he
expected a party of eight campers to be
declared dead, since their campsite was
obliterated.
m . ...
declines in real disposable per capita
income likely, commercial use of milk and
dairy products during the rest of 1980 may
remain below the high 1979 levels,”
department analysts said in summarizing
the USDA’s Dairy Situation report to be
released in two weeks.
Milk consumption was down 0.2 percent
during the first quarter and American
cheese use fell 3 percent to more than
offset the 4.5 percent rise in use of other
cheeses, the report said. Cheese imports
also dropped 2 percent.
While the USDA expects 1980 production
to remain above 1979’s 123.6 billion pounds,
the analysts predicted a slower rate of
growth during the rest of the year that
could reduce the overall increase to no
more than 2 percent.
Increased production and declining
demand has already prompted the
Commodity Credit Corp. to purchase more
milk in the first four months of this year
than it did in all of 1979 in an effort to
bolster farm prices, the report said.
January through April purchases by the
CCC totaled 2.9 billion pounds of milk
equivalent, 33 percent more than for last
year, with the April purchase of 1.3 billion
pounds the largest single-month purchase
since 1971.
The supply-demand situation kept farm
milk prices 46 cents a hundredweight
below the support level in April, the
department said. But it predicted an in-
crease to at least that level in the coming
months.
“But any increase above support will be
limited unless commercial use
strengthens more than currently ex-
pected,” the report said.
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 121, Ed. 1 Wednesday, May 21, 1980, newspaper, May 21, 1980; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth823566/m1/1/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.