Hattiesburg American from Hattiesburg, Mississippi • 3

TATE LOCAL 3A Thursday, September 24, 1987 Hattiesburg AMERICAN Columbia group wants Dowdy to help EPA delays cleanup See page 1A Court says no to mom By Gannett News Service The Mississippi Supreme Court on Wednesday denied the emergency request of a Bay St. Louis mother to review the case giving custody of her daughter to the child's father. The state's high court denied without comment Wednesday the request of Dorrie Lynn Foxworth Singley, seeking an emergency appeal of a decision by Judge Sebe Dale Jr. in Marion County Chancery Court. Dale gave custody of Singley's daughter, Chrissy, to the child's father, Timothy C.

Foxworth of Columbia. The court also refused to grant Singley indigent status in pursuing her legal appeal of Dale's decision. Singley alleges that Foxworth has sexually abused their daughter. Foxworth denies the claim. Singley disappeared with her daughter shortly before an Aug.

25 contempt of court hearing. By JOE ATKINS Gannett News Service WASHINGTON U.S. Rep. Wayne Dowdy, has been attacked by a Columbia environmental group who says Dowdy has done too little too late about a chemical dumpsite that could affect the town's drinking water. Dowdy, whose 4th Congressional District includes Columbia, was criticized by Jennings Gilmore, who heads the Columbia-based Stop Toxic On-site Pollution (STOP) organization.

"He's not doing anything," Gilmore said Wednesday. "When he wants to address the issue, he needs to address the people. I'm not impressed." Dowdy said he will meet with EPA officials next week to discuss the growing concern over potential health hazards in the town's drinking water and soil near the old plant, which blew up in 1977. The site is on the nation's Superfund cleanup list. found no imminent health hazards in Columbia's drinking water.

After buried industrial waste was found on the site in 1984, government studies revealed some contamination of surface and groundwater in and around the plant site as well ss benzene contamination in the city's water supply. Amid shouts and boos from residents Tuesday, EPA regional spokesman Hagan Thompson of Atlanta and other EPA officials said the contamination only affected raw water and was filtered out before it reached residents' taps. The contamination also came from sources other than the Reichhold site, officials said. On Wednesday, Thompson defended the agency's handling of the controversy. "We don't tell them not to worry," he said.

"We say 'don't worry right Thompson said Columbia residents face potential dangers from "A typographical error," Thompson said. "That was in the raw water, not the drinking water not in the water the people drink." "This has caused a tremendous amount of confusion," Dowdy said. "I'm sympathetic with the local people. too, would be scared. I would be upset and concerned.

I hope they'll react rationally and calmly, one, to get to the bottom of it, secondly, not to ruin Columbia's reputation. We don't want to make Columbia the Times Beach, Missouri, of the South. Times Beach suffered from such serious chemical pollution that in 1983 most of the town's residents evacuated. About 5,000 people reside within a one-mile radius of the Reichhold site, including residents who are attributing maladies ranging from cancer to skin rashes to the plant area. The city's water wells are 100 feet deep and 1,250 feet from the site.

State roundup Convicted killer gets new hearing ii fa II U' 1 JACKSON (AP) The Mississippi Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered a hearing to determine whether Howard Neal was denied his right to testify in his own behalf before he was convicted and sentenced to death for the capital murder of his niece, Amanda Joy Neal, in Lawrence County on Jan. 24,1981. The high court also ordered new proceedings for two other death row inmates a new hearing for Richard Gerald Jordan and a new trial for Danny Ray Davis. Neal raised the question of his right to testify in arguing that he did not have effective legal representation during his trial, but the court said the point could also be considered as a separate issue. Presiding Justice Armis Hawkins (and Justice Reuben Anderson said they wanted to remand the Neal case to Lamar County Circuit Court so the sentence could be reduced to life.

Hawkins said Neal had the mind and personality of a small child. The trial was moved to Lamar County on a change of venue motion. Justice James Robertson, writing for himself and Justices Lenore Prather and Michael Sullivan, said he felt there should also be a hearing on whether Neal had ineffective legal counsel, as he claimed, at his trial. The majority ruled he was not entitled to a hearing on this point. Jordan, convicted twice in the 1976 capital murder of Edwina Marter, a Gulfport banker's wife, won a new sentencing hearing after the U.S.

i .1 1 the Reichhold site and that is why the agency wants to move in and clean up the remaining industrial waste. An official with the consulting firm that wrote the EPA report said contaminants on the site and in adjacent aareas include toluene, phenol, pentachlorophenol, arsenic, total xylene, a non-hazardous dioxin, mercury, copper and ethyl benzene. Dowdy claimed today that the EPA is confusing residents. For example, he indicated, the EPA report incorrectly stated the concentration of benzene per liter in the raw water tested at 7.5 milligrams, when the actual level was 7.5 micrograms still above the 5 micrograms limit for drinking water. A milligram is equal to 1,000 micrograms.

Benzene is a cancer-causing raw material used as a solvent by the chemical and drug industries as well as a gasoline additive. 1 I 1 fci It i in AP photo But others complain of traffic problems near the white postal building and say it needs more space. Alderman Bart Tomlinson, whose mother-in-law owns a 3-acre site being considered by the postal service, said he has collected 500 signatures in favor of the move. Bryan Pease of the U.S. Postal Service's real estate division in Memphis, said the service has wanted a building about twice as large as the present building and a site about six times as large for postal trucks and on-site parking.

The estimated $1.3 million move would end mail drops on the street because some mail trucks cannot negotiate the limited space around the office, Pease said. He said the division checked 14 possible sites and chose a final location in early August, but a final sale has not been approved. Pease said the present building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, could not be renovated without damaging its original architecture. The site, bounded by two streets, a pizza shop and a mini-mart, doesn't offer much room for expansion, Pease said. "The only people who are against it are those people who have been here 100 years," said move supporter Junior Mitchell, who owns a laundromat, video rental shop and package liquor store near the new site.

"Progress is something people have been trying to fight here ever since there was a Holly Springs," said Mitchell, 52, who added that other businesses and homes were moving in the direction of the site. 0 1 Train derailment damages tracks HOUSTON (AP) Five cars of a Southern Pacific train heading to New Orleans derailed early today, causing damage to two tracks, officials said. No injuries were reported in the derailment, which occurred about 2 a.m. west of downtown Houston, located in north Mississippi, near Interstate 59, officials said. The train, which was coming from Los Angeles, had 95 cars and four locomotives, said Southern Pacific spokesman Jim Johnson.

There were no hazardous materials on the train. There were reports that sulfuric acid leaked from one of the cars for a while, but Johnson said he had no information about such a leak. One track was scheduled to be cleared late this morning, but the other track would probably not be back in service until about 5 30 p.m. today. The cause of the derailment was under investigation, Johnson said.

DREAM plans drug abuse workshop DREAM (the Drug Research and Education Association in Mississippi) will host 10 regional workshops for drug abuse prevention and education during the months of October and November, including one in Hattiesburg. "Mississippi Gets Smart: Solving The Prevention Puzzle" is the title for the one-day workshops. -Representatives from schools, businesses, law enforcement, local government, civic organizations, medical professionals, parents and others concerned about drug abuse are expected at the workshops. The general public is invited. Participants will have the opportunity to Identify all the various segments of a community that should be involved in drug abuse prevention and learn how to pair them with proven prevention techniques and projects.

Information about the highly successful "Be Smart, Stay Smart, Just Say No!" project for 1988 will also be presented. The local workshop will be held Oct. 20 at the Jackie Dole Sherrill Community Center in downtown Hattiesburg. Cost is $5 and includes lunch. It will begin at 9 a.m.

and last until 3 p.m. Space is limited to 100 participants per workshop. For registration, contact DREAM at Suite 1991 Lakeland Drive, Jackson 39216; telephone, 362-9329 or 1-800-23DREAM. Anderson paintings discovered OCEAN SPRINGS (AP) Workers who stumbled upon old steamer trunks and boxes when clearing space also uncovered more than 100 paintings by renowned Mississippi artist Walter Anderson. "I was rather shocked," said Anderson's daughter and curator Mary Anderson Pickard.

"I thought we already had all of dad's works." The value of the 116 new discoveries is not yet known. Painted on the backs of wallpaper panels, most of the watercolor works are apparently studies for later Anderson block prints. Others are landscapes and paintings of local foliage and a variety of animals. Though he declined to estimate the worth of the paintings without seeing them, Alexander Nyerges, executive director of the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, said they will certainly add to the Anderson legacy. DA-elect gets death threats GULFPORT (AP) District Attorney-elect Glenn Cannon, who is being guarded around the clock by Highway Patrol troopers, say he has received death threats.

The protection began Sunday, Cannon said, and the threats began in July. Cannon said the threats were telephone calls "in relation to life insurance. They said I needed burial insurance and I needed it in a hurry." Cannon said callers during his campaign against incumbent Cono Caranna said "they would blow my head off." He said he received the calls at his home and office and that a caller phoned his house recently and hung up as soon as someone answered. Building banned in Brooklyn area The EPA was to have started removing drums of chemical waste from the site today but called off the operation when Gilmore's group threatened to blockade the site, physically preventing cleanup crews from coming in. EPA on-scene coordinator Kelly McCarty said earlier in the week that plastic would be used to prevent dust at the site from drifting into adjacent residential areas.

The cleanup was to have lasted two months. EPA officials and representatives of the Mississippi Board of Health and the Bureau of Pollution Control got a hostile reception from nearly 1,000 Columbia residents at a town meeting Tuesday when the officials tried to calm the residents' fears. The officials said a new EPA study Supreme Court vacated his third death penalty. The court said Jordan should have been allowed during the sentencing phase of his second trial to present testimony about his socially useful conduct in prison. In the Jordan case, the Supreme Court said in an opinion by Presiding Justice Roy Noble Lee that the trial judge was too restrictive during testimony about mitigating factors that should have been considered.

This included testimony that Jordan wanted to work on generating electricity through wind tunnels. Under the most recent federal guidelines, Lee said, such testimony was relevant in capital cases. Jordan was convicted of obtaining the name of a Gulf National Bank official by telephoning to inquire about a loan, posing as an electrical inspector to gain entry into his house, kidnapping and shooting his wife, then demanding $25,000 ransom for her return. The court, by a 6-3 margin, overturned the capital murder conviction and death sentence of Davis in the 1985 robbery slaying of Ralph May, a retired Tate County man whose body was found in a garbage dump near Coldwater. The majority said in an opinion by Justice Reuben Anderson that one juror had previously been a state witness and should not have served in a death-sentence case, and that the defense had not been allowed during the sentencing phase to talk about an earlier prison term he had served.

and other documents required by the district to show proof of residence. Those records and the registration papers were initialed by Thames Principal Durward Rushton, and she was told everything was in order. Rushton said similar cases had cropped up throughout the district because of the reorganization process. "There have been instances where children are enrolled in one school and in verifying addresses are found to have ended up in the wrong district," Rushton said. "The zones are new to all of us this year.

Obviously it was an oversight." Hill, who recently had moved to Hattiesburg from Oxford, said while district administrators were apologetic, she still was upset about the juggling act her children were put through. "Everybody said they were sorry, but they're not half as sorry as I am, because it's my kids that have had to suffer," she said. Newman claims to have built a machine that defies basic principles of physics by producing more energy than it consumes. He said if elected he would push the technology used in his machine to solve problems related to energy, the environment and the economy. The U.S.

Patent Office has refused to grant a patent on the machine. He said he is running under an independent Truth and Action party. In discussing his platform, Newman said cooperation and a "to the heart of the matter" approach are how government should solve the nation's problems. NADINE CALLICUTT stands in front of the U.S. Post Office on the town square in Holly Springs.

She is one of the town residents who are protesting moving the facility to the outskirts of town. You can't move our post office, some people say Mother irritated with local schools By TIM DOHERTY AMERICAN Staff Writer Last Thursday Patti Hill of Hattiesburg received a phone call telling her that her two children would not be permitted to attend classes at Thames Elementary the next day. "They'd been attending classes for three weeks, and then they're thrown out of school on a day's notice," Hill said. "They said I lived in the wrong district." Hill lives at 405 Williams which according to the court-ordered desegregation plan that divided the Hattiesburg Public School District into two attendance zones, means her kindergarten and fourth-grade children are supposed to attend Woodley Elementary. "That's where they're at now, and I don't have any problems with that," Hill said.

"My only gripe is that they waited three weeks before they did anything about it." Hill said that when she registered the children for school, she took utility bills, immunization records HOLLY SPRINGS (AP) A plan to move the post office from the town's historic square has sparked this north Mississippi town's first sign-carrying demonstrations since the civil rights era. Many of the protesters, from the ranks of the Garden Club and the Bells and Books Club, say they've never participated in such activities before. But the proposal to move the 51-year-old post office to a two-lane highway on the outskirts of this farming town "needs a drastic response," said Nadine Callicutt, 80. "We're not going to give up," said Callicutt, a first-time protest organizer. She helped gather 2,000 petition signatures against the move and formed a placard-toting picket line Sept.

11 outside the office. City officials set a town meeting for Sept. 29 with postal officials. Rep. Jamie Whitten, and Sens.

John Stennis and Thad Cochran, all D-Miss, have asked the postal service to outline reasons for a move. "Why should the federal government, which has spent millions of dollars revitalizing the downtown, pull out of a cornerstone of downtown?" asked pharmacist Bob Lomenick, who also opposes the move. Lomenick said many elderly residents walk to the post office or park around the tree-lined square, making a letter drop part of a daily routine. He said the square, which surrounds the red-brick Marshall County Courthouse, has been central to the cotton farming center of 7,500 since it was founded 150 years ago. Newman wants to put energy into presidency Legislature gives the Health Department the authority.

Redding said Brooklyn is a low-lying, flat area with poor soil that will not support a septic tank-type sewer system. "What concerns all of us is the existing conditions with raw sewerage flowing in ditches. But we don't have a solution for homeowners or commercial businesses," Redding said. While a sewer utility district was formed, funds have not been found to construct a system. Odom said the ideal solution lies in the Brooklyn Water District joining with the sewer district to construct a sewer-disposal system.

"That would solve the problem in Brooklyn. But the water group apparently is not interested in becoming a sewer utility district also," Odom said. Brooklyn's supervisor, Dave Tullos, said some Brooklyn residents have told him the cost of a sewer system would be several million dollars, which would requireits users have to pay as much as $80 a month for the service. "That's when many decided they were not interested," Tullos said. By NIKKI DAVIS MAUTE AMERICAN Staff Writer New construction will not be allowed in the Brooklyn area until an adequate sewerage collection and disposal system is constructed, but it will be up to the Health Department to enforce the ban.

The health and environmental conditions in the south Forrest County community were outlined today by Glen Odom of the state Bureau of Pollution Control in a report to the county supervisors. "We are asking that you use whatever authority you have to prevent any new construction unless it is approved by the Health Department," Odom said. Supervisor President Lynn Cartlidge said the county cannot halt construction because it does not have a zoning system. "We could enact countywide zoning. But the voters have said they do not want the county zoned," Cartlidge said, suggesting the Health Department could halt the contraction.

B.R. Redding, assistant director of the Bureau of Environmental Health, agreed with Cartlidge. Redding said a 1987 law passed by the NEW ORLEANS (AP) Joseph Newman of Lucedale, inventor of a controversial energy machine, says he is running for president to save a world that is doomed unless the nations begin working peacefully together by the year 2000. "Children born today, 12 years from now, they will be burned," Newman told a news conference Wednesday. However, he wouldn't say when, how or why that would happen.

"The next war that will occur will be caused by religious hate," said Newman, 51..