Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • 13

Bl star Wyoming Saturday, January 3, 1 987 Star-Tribune, Casper, Wyo. if i if Iff it' is 'A p. Private nears deal to buy -t m-ptf If 1 3 Id i iiu ii fit r-i 5 i i if i 11 1 Jill ii i A I i i fv '11 t-I Mil WW I 7: 1 y. pen land Indiana man eyes Jeffrey City site R1VERTON (AP) Spiro J. Kouvakas, the Indiana man who wants to build a private prison in Wyoming, says he's reached agreement with officials of Western Nuclear Inc.

on a price for two plots of land in-Jeffrey City. Kouvakas, president 01 Kouvakas Enterprises of Crown Point, Ind. and Jerry Morris, president of Western Nuclear have settled on prices for a 60-acre Jeffrey City site and the Three Crossings Ranch, both of which are owned by Western Nuclear. The amount Kouvakas paid for the land was not disclosed. Kouvakas said he would be coming to Wyoming soon to start planning the $20 million facility that will house as many as 300 inmates and employ about 100 people.

He said the purchase contract has not been signed yet because several paragraphs of the document are being redrafted. The proposal to build the prison has brought largely positive reaction from state officials. State Rep. Dennis Tippets, R-Fremont, has said he will support legislation to help the facility get under way if needed. Gov.

Ed Herschler, State Treasurer Stan Smith and State Penitentiary Warden Duane Shill-inger have commented that the idea of building a private prison in Wyoming is an interesting one. They say the concept should be studied as a possible solution to overcrowding in the state's corrections system. But Secretary of State Thyra Thomson has said she is skeptical about plan because Kouvakas has not demonstrated to her that his firm has the money or the knowledge to successfully run such an institution. Kouvakas said he only spoke briefly with Thomson and did not have time to explain the project to her fully. He said he will to explain some of his plans for the new prison when he visits Wyoming.

i Star-TribuneRick Sorenson Torrington woman dies on U.S. 20-26 SHOSHONI (AP)-A Torrington woman died Friday morning when she was thrown from her car as it rolled over about 1 1 miles east of Shoshoni, according to the Wyoming Highway Patrol. A patrol spokeswoman said Phyllis Carter, 74, died at about 10:30 a.m. after her vehicle left U.S. Highway 20-26 and rolled.

According to patrol reports, Carter was driving her vehicle westbound on the highway when it drifted off the right side of the road. It struck a roadside reflector and Carter overcorrected in steering the vehicle back onto the road, putting it into a sideways skid. The vehicle then left the left side of the road and rolled over several times, ejecting Carter, reports said. The fatality is the first in Wyoming for 1987. Kerr blocks sale of power company CHEYENNE U.S.

District Court Judge Ewing Kerr last week issued a preliminary injunction which further blocks the proposed $1.66 million sale of Garland Light Power to Pacific Power Light Co-, opponents of the sale say. The sale is being contested by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Inc. of Denver, which presently contracts with Garland to provide wholesale electricity. Garland customers are pushing the sale because they say rates are lower than those Garland must charge while purchasing Tri-State power. Jerry Demel of Denver, a spokesman for Tri-State, said Friday that the injunction maintains the status quo until a March 12 hearing before Judge Kerr.

On Sept. 26 the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver had issued a preliminary injunction blocking the proposed sale. Demel said that on Nov. 25 the 10th Circuit Court remanded the case to Judge Kerr for a decision. Extension wanted on B-T plan comments RIVERTON (AP) The public comment period for the Bridger-Teton National Forest's management plan should be extended by 30 days, forest officials say.

Forest spokesman Fred Kingwill said nine organizations and communities, including Dubois, have requested more time to analyze and comment on the document. If adopted, the extension will push the end of the plan's comment period back from Feb. 6 to March 6. The Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, National Wildlife Federation, Wyoming Wildlife Federation, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Jackson Hole Alliance for Responsible Planning, Jackson Hole Area Chamber of Commerce and the Wyoming Outdoor Council have all filed written requests for the extension, Kingwill said. Personal goal-setting taught in workshop LARAMIE The "Break-Out 1987" workshop at the University of Wyoming Jan.

10, is "designed to explore new options in developing personal and professional goals," according to a UW news release. The workshop is open to the public and runs from 10 a.m.-l:30 p.m. in the School of Extended Studies in Beta House on Fraternity Row. A $26 registration fee includes a break, lunch and hand-. outs.

Activities include guided imagery, art, movement, writing and theater games. The workshop uses mind, body and emotion to dispel habitual behavior and self-defeating attitudes, according to the news release. I For information, call 766-2124. Lots of room While snow sweeping across northwestern Wyoming improved ski conditions at Jackson Hole, Targhee and Sleeping Giant, this solitary skier was still flying down slopes covered with man-made white stuff at Hogadon over the holiday weekend. See story on Al.

supports bison hunt by next fall State officials open old time capsule CHEYENNE (AP) State officials, like children anxiously tearing open Christmas presents, on Friday sifted through the contents of a time capsule set into the wall of the Supreme Court and State Library Building 50 years ago when it was dedicated. Among the contents stuffing the copper-lined box were state documents from 1937, newspapers of the day, official and family photographs, and phonographic records that couldn't immediately be played. "1 suppose it's typical of what people put in cornerstones," said Wyoming historian T.A. Larson of the contents. "It's an indication of what interested people at that time." An essay placed in the capsule in 1937 by then state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack Gage described Wyomingites' interests at the time.

Among those interests were color movies, television, advances in transportation, federal grazing laws, the state's 2 percent sales tax, liquor laws, and the federal social security program, Larson said in highlighting Gage's essay. The state's residents also were concerned about drought and grasshopper infestations, the civil war in Spain and floods in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys, the historian said. Wilbrecht said an environmental assessment would have to be prepared for a hunt on the refuge. Corsi said once the program was approved, permits to hunt would be free unless the Legislature set a fee to obtain them. "That's something the Legislature might want to address," Corsi said Friday.

All Wyoming game license fees are set by the Legislature. Wilbrecht said he is concerned over what he perceives as a iack of planning for bison management by the agencies. "There have never been any long-range objectives worked out for this herd," he said. "There has got to be a long-range plan." But Corsi said he feels that sport hunts of the animals, combined with the use of a new technique to vaccinate the animals against the disease brucellosis, will be a good solution for problems caused by the herd. and the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the refuge, could oppose such an arrangement on the refuge, said John Wilbrecht, the refuge manager. "I think there will be some real national opposition to having a so-called sport hunt on the National Elk Refuge," he said. "My initial response is that to call that a sport hunt is really stretching it." Public protest has surfaced to a sport hunt allowed in Montana, where officials have allowed hunters to shoot the animals as they cross out of Yellowstone National Park. Barry Schranck, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official in Denver, said any plan to hunt on the refuge would have to survive a severe test on the federal level.

"If everything went smoothly, it is possible it could be done in a year," he said. "But it is not an easy process because it is more than just a local issue." herd could become a public relations nightmare for the agency. Moriarity raised the possibility of adverse national publicity if Game and Fish personnel shot the bison. The nation's television screen might display "somebody in a red outfit with blood all over them," he said. Wyoming game wardens wear red shirts.

Supporters of a sport hunt, speaking during a public meeting in Jackson, had said that allowing a sport hunt could generate up to $2,000 for the state. The Teton bison herd has grown to more than 100 animals in recent years, causing concern among officials who the large herd is a threat to public safety. The animals also create problems for the refuge because they conflict with the elk herd that feeds in the refuge during the winter. Although the department now supports a sport hunt, the public From staff and wire reports JACKSON Wyoming's Game and Fish Department has decided to support a sport hunt of bison on the National Elk Refuge by the fall of 1987. Department officials said they changed the position they had voiced earlier on such an arrangement after hearing public opposition to a plan calling for game wardens to shoot the animals.

''Our preferred alternative was for us to kill them, but the public told us that they don't like our preferred alternative," said Rex Corsi, department game chief. "So we had to go to another alternative." The problem with the bison, which move off Grand Teton National Park into the refuge in winter, was discussed by the Game and Fish Commission at its October meeting. Commissioner Ed Moriarity of Jackson warned then that managing the Teton bison Insurance woes force UW into state's liability pool ability policy, which covered doctors and ancillary personnel such as nurses and pharmacists in the family practice residency centers and the student health service. UW was finally able to obtain coverage from the Doctor's Company, but the policy did not cover ancillary personnel and the premium was expected to double bv 19S9-90. Joining the self-insurance program will allow UW to cancel its existing policies with private companies for auto liability, directors and officers insurance and medical the other state agencies in the state's self-insurance pool.

UW expects to cut its premium costs substantially by joining the program, UW financial officer Dan Baccari said. "But the main advantage in the self-insurance program is that we will know we will be able to obtain coverage," he said. "We spent a tremendous amount of time this past year trying to secure medical liability coverage," Baccari said. "It will now be a lot simpler matter, and our personnel resources can be put to other, better uses." liability, Baccari said. Liability policies protect the insured when a negligent act by a UW or state employee results in injury to a private party.

But UW will continue to rely on private insurance companies for property and casualty insurance, which protects against property losses from hazards such as fire. Baccari said. The state program is only for liability coverage. At UW, the property and casualty insurance accounts for about two-thirds of the premium for the institutional policy. UW's premium will be determined by state insurance experts based on the amount of insurance purchased and the probability of losses, he said.

Baccari said UW did not immediately move to participate in the pool last year because UW had been able to renew its institutional policy in March for $740,000, a premium increase of only 14 percent. But later in the year, Baccari said. Insurance of North America informed UW that the company would not renew UW's medical li- By PHILIP WHITE Star-Tribune Laramie bureau LARAMIE Rapidly increasing premium rates and difficulties in obtaining full medical malpractice insurance coverage have forced the University of Wyoming to join the state's self-insurance program for liability coverage, a UW official said this week. The self-insurance program was created by the 1986 Legislature after the state was unable to obtain liability insurance coverage. The law gives UW the option of joining.