The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 48

THE ATLANTA CONSTITt TION Thursday, SfptrmW 25. 'MARTA having trouble sniffing out cause of mysterious malodor By Karen Harris Slajf Writer Some say sewage. Others describe it as the stench of spoiled eggs. But no one knows for sure what's offending the olfactory sensibilities of people who pass through the tower reaches of MARTA's Peachtree Center station. I City pollution officials, state environmental experts, Georgia Power Co.

representatives and Georgia Tech scientists have tried in vain since July to solve the malodorous mystery. Now, MARTA has created a task force and has hired a private consulting firm in hopes of discovering what's causing the rail station to "We're earnestly trying to solve this frustrating Rail Maintenance Director Bud Heineman said Wednesday after his first meeting with engineers from the consultant firm of Metcalf and Eddy Inc. Heineman insisted that sewage is not the source of the noxious odor. But officials with the state Environmental Protection Division and Georgia Tech would not rule out that possibility. "Quite frankly, we're scratching our heads," said Howard Barefoot, who is with the state EPO.

"We haven't been able to nail anything down." Marilyn Black, a senior research scientist at Georgia Tech, described the situation as "a difficult problem," "All I can say is that we're doing various pollutant analyses," she said. The project is still actively going on." What officials do know is that faint traces of carbon disulfide 49 parts per billion have been found In samples from the ground water under the platform at the north end of the station, which is located "The bottom line Is that the ground water has the odor," he said. "Exactly what it 120 feet below the streets. chemical compound is flammable, can have a foul smell, and in sufficient quantities can irritate the eyes and skin. "But it's in such a small amount that we're sure it's not hazardous," Heineman said.

"We've checked the air quality and it has always come up clear." He could not say how the chemical compound, which is not part of the natural environment, made its way into the ground water. Nor could he say whether the compound is the smelly culprit is ana now it getting we don't know." ft MARTA has tried cleanlngfdrjjns In the station and spraying deodorants to help alleviate the offending smell, but such efforts have failed to mask the problem.1 "I hope and I pray," Heineman said, "that with the help of the consulting experts we can solve this Meanwhile, he said, patrons should not be concerned. "It's not going to harm anyone," he said. "It just doesn't smeM nice." Widow finally gets 42-year-old letter Legislators are handing rio-pass, rib-play isstie over to education board 111 5 -7' 4 Wit a i tion," said Mangum, who added that the legislative hearings vtere necessary to inform the "If the state board is prepared to be reasonably firrrt with it they can handle it better than law," said Rep. Larry Walker (D-Perry), another member of the committee.

In early August the state Board of Education backed off from creating its own rule governing' extracurricular activities after Fpster complained the legislative committee was about to begin hearings on the matter. On Wednesday, board" members said they are glad the legislators were about to pass the the ball back to them. "I think that's the logical place for it to be back with the said vice-chairman Hollifi Lathem. "We don't have to run for. office." He said political pressure would fall on politicians deciding the fate of a no-pass, no-play rule; "If they are going to send it back to me, I want theft to keep their hands off it," added board member Larry Foster 'who said the board wants a new rule iti' place for the 1987-88 school year.

It's in our ballpark." With House Speaker Tom Murphy and Lt Gov. Zell Miller on opposite sides of the no-pass, no-play idea, it would be impossible to get a bill through both houses, committee i members said. Murphy opposes anything beyond the GHSA rules, while Miller has supported a Texas-style law. -i Gov. Joe Frank HarFis said he favors a rule not as stringent as the one in Texas but somewhere in between it and the current GHSA rule, "Once the people looked at that thing, I don't think they Would have supported it," Sen.

Gene Walker (D-Decatur), another committee member, said. "I don't think it would have gotten enough votes to get through." By Susan Lacceto Staff Writer Georgia legislators will not draft a law to strengthen rules governing extracurricular activities but instead will make recommendations to the state Board of Education to handle the issue, members of the Joint No-Pass, No-Play Study Com mittee said Wednesday. "I think we'll definitely make recommendations to them," said Sen. John Foster (D-Cornelia), a co-chairman of the committee. "I look for a recommendation in the latter part of October." Members of the special committee examining a possible no-pass, no-play rule have been under intense fire from parents, coaches, principals and superintendents to give a new Georgia High School Association policy a chance to work.

That policy, which went into effect this fall, requires passing grades in five of six courses in the quarter or semester prior to participation in school sports and other extracurricular activities. During the first of four public hearings on the issue, only a handful of people testified in favor of of a no-pass, no-play rule such as the Texas law prohibiting a student from participating unless he passes all courses. The final hearing on the issue is scheduled for Tuesday at 2 p.m. at DeKalb Community College, South Campus. Foster and Rep.

Bill Mangum (D-Decatur), a co-chairman of the legislative study, group, said the committee probably will recommend that the state school board require a student to maintain average; eliminate spring football practice; close loopholes in GHSA rules and shorten basketball "We in the Legislature do not want to get in the business of dictating to the Department of Educa 2ZS was written during World War II but only delivered this month. Merryll Page Rapley reads a letter from her husband, Air Force Staff Sgt Frank Rapley, which Mail from 235 TOD servicemen is found in N. Carolina attic ByBobHarrell Staff Writer SANDERSVILLE, Ga. Mer-ryll Page Rapley reread the letter or about the 200th time, its words 'transporting her 42 years into the fast. The emotion of the moment effected both her voice and her "hands.

"I can't help it," she apologized. "But I don't know of another World War II widow who has just received a 42-year-old letter from her husband. I guess they would get emotional, too." The 69-year-old retired schoolteacher, who never folded the yellowed-with-age V-Iet- -ter. It was written by her husband two months before he died on July 21, 1944, when his plane was shot down by German fighters. The letter was hand-delivered by local Postmaster Lonnie McDonald on Sept.

4. The U.S. Postal Service guided Frank Rapley's letter to its final destination, but circumstances of the letter's earlier journey remain a mystery. The letter was one of 235 found in a mail pouch in the attic of a Raleigh, N.C., house by an exterminator in July. All the letters were written by U.S.

servicemen in the spring of 1944 and were mailed from aboard ship as Air Force Staff Sgt Rapley and fellow servicemen crossed the Atlantic to the North African port of Oran. Raleigh Postmaster Ross Gar-ulski said the exterminator will' not identify the owner of the home where he discovered the mailbag. i "Our only desire is to see that the letters get to their destination, not to blame anyone," he said. Government letters have always brought trauma to Mrs. Rapley.

One dated 26, 1944, was from Ma j. Gen. N.F. Twining, commanding officer of the 15th Air Force. It was a missing-in-ac-tion letter.

Sgt Rapley had volunteered to serve as turret gunner in a B-17 Flying Fortress, despite the fact that he had just landed from a bombing mission. Now his plane was missing over Czechoslovakia. A second letter dated two days later said Nazi fighters attacked Rapley's plane over Steyr, Austria. Two parachutes were seen descending before the plane crashed. For, two years there were more government letters, until June 17, 1946, when a "finding-of-: death" letter confirmed that Ra- pley died July 21, 1944, at Fuer-! kogl-Ebensee, Austria.

The young schoolteacher learned over the years from other fetters that a farm couple took in f-the parachutists. "I also under Stand a farm couple buried Frank, I don't know if they were the- same people, she said. Rapley oody was later disinterred and brought to Sandersville for military burial. After her husband's death, Mrs. Rapley dedicated herself to teaching, mostly first grade.

"Oh, I dated some, over the years," she said. "But I was looking for friends, not a husband. I really feel that my 2 years with Frank was sufficient for a lifetime." Mrs. Rapley looked across the living room to the mantel. Standing in front of it, she and Frank were married by her father, the Rev.

James Page, at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 5, 1942. The Michael Lomax called for a consolidated metro government. UGA lab testing for radiation in imported European spirits WSF This picture of Frank and Merryll serving in World War n. short distance between couch and mantel is filled with family heritage scrapbooks about her hus- band and 'his honors, including the Air Medal.

In yet another government letter, which arrived on Aug. 4, David McLean of the U.S. Postal Service in Washington told of the discovery of the 235 letters, all written aboard the troop ship Caleb Strong out Of Newport News. One letter was addressed to Mrs. ister, the Kev.

Dan McPherson, relatives Bronnie Summerlin, Bes sie Glover and Leda Page, and friends Eugenia Shirley, Bob Garrett and Everett to be with her. "Lonnie the postmaster cave it to me, and I opened it and read it aloud, even though it was fust to me." Mrs. Rapley said. "I was at a loss for words except for those that Frank had written." Rapley wrote that he disliked having his letters read by a military censor. "That isn't so good as far as I am concerned.

The boat is rocking so I can't write neatly. Merryll darling, I love you and hope that we'll be together for good. From what information we can gather, I believe the big inva sion of Europe is on, so I'll be stuck overseas until the war is over." Mrs. Rapley said she couldn'l define the feelings that swept over her as she read the letter. "Then my preacher prayed and, unknow ingly, said exactly how I felt Here was another confirmation of love from a man who had loved his wife and his country." Mrs.

Rapley looks back over the years, when Frank's and the Eovernment's letters caused her oth joy and despair. "This last letter was the best," she said. thank God for it I soared. I guess this finally ends our letter-writing with Frank one up on me." Morgan Falls, Artis warned. Meanwhile, Commission Chairman Michael Lomax used the forum to boost his continuing support for Atlanta area regionalized planning through governmental cooperation and consolidation of Fulton County with Atlanta.

He warned that unless the metropolitan counties got together either with a regional planning authority or a federation of governments, the state may Well impose its own land use regulations. "What I'm asking for is that the Sirivate development community oin the push to get the local jurisdictions talking about common planning and solutions to these broad-gauge problems," he said. sponsor the radiation tests! The center, which iri the past has run tests ranging from dating paintings to seeing if champagnes are fermented in the pottle as claimed, is examining beer, vodka, brandy, wine and rum from Sweden, Norway, Germany, Greeqe, Czechoslovakia and France that are imported into the United States for sale. 1 The tests measure Jevejs of several radioactive Cesium 137, a relatively 'long-lived and harmful material that, has been associated with the Chernobyl accident So far, the tests haven't found anything unusual, Spaulding said. The tests are tojbe periodically for the next two to three years to see if any contamination shows up in future batches of the beverages, center director John Noakes said.

br: If unsafe levels of radiation are found, ATF will order.the products off the shelves, according to the agency. 4 headquarters in the two cities. Medlin said Atlanta was attractive as a regional bank headquarters city because "it is growing rapidly in prominence as an international Medlin also said the initial impact of tax reform will hurt real estate development because it eliminates tax-sheltered investment of the kind that has funded 'much of the construction of recent years. In the long run, ftowever, the tax changes will imprdve he quality of real estate by discouraging development of "marginal" 'projects, he said. Contributing to this story was staff writer Tom Walkef.

ByJoeEarle Staff Writer ATHENS There's booze in one University of Georgia lab, but it's not for tasting. It's for testing. The university's Center for Applied Isotope Studies, a research lab specializing in measuring radiation, is testing about 40 bottles of beer, wine and liquor imported from central and northern Europe to see if the drinks were contaminated by radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in Russia last April. "Because of that cloud from Chernobyl going north and then coming back south, it did spread this debris over quite a wide area," said Jim Spaulding, associate director of the center and head of the beverage testing project "There's a concern that radioactivity is showing up in food products." 1. That concern also applies to grain-based beverages like beer and distilled spirits, Spaulding said, which led the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to And Fulton's governments can no longer afford the luxury of a rural-oriented approach in the latter part of the 20th century, he said.

A consolidated government could be overseen by a chief executive officer to control the various services now provided by the county and nine independent municipalities. John G. Medlin president and chief executive officer of First Wachovia Corp. of Winston-Salem, N.C., and Atlanta, spoke to the 500 developers who took part in the day's program. First Wachovia is a regional bank holding company formed las't year from the merger of Wachovia National Bank of Winston-Salem and First Atlanta with dual Threat of sewer moratoriums not over, Fulton officials warn developers Rapley was made while be was Rapley.

Could she send him Frank's rank and serial number? 1 "I can't describe my emotions," Mrs. Rapley said Tuesday. "Somehow I was surprised and again I wasn't because Frank and I wrote to each other once a day and sometimes twice while he was in service." Finally, the letter came to Sandersville. Not trusting herself to cope with the emotional situation, Mrs. Rapley invited her min- opers could not get occupancy permits.

While the county is spending $5 million to build a 2 million-gallon-per-day temporary plant and finding ways to increase, the capacity in those two basins, another problem with capacity is occurring in the Little River basin between Roswell and the Cherokee County line, Artis Artis also reminded the developers that the county is still facing a critical problem with Morgan Falls landfill, which may shut down in the middle of ,1987. The county has not been able to select another northern site for a landfill due to opposition from residents, and restrictions may have to be placed on By Gary Hendricks Staff Writer Fulton County officials warned developers Wednesday that the Northside real estate boom is continuing to pressure sewage treatment facilities and the threat of moratoriums still exists. "We have been through a mora-' torium and we are not through with moratoriums," Fulton Public Works Director Fred Artis said at the fifth annual Developers Day at the Double Tree Hotel in Sandy Springs. For the first four months of this year, the state imposed a sewer tap-on moratorium in the Big Creek and John's Creek drainage basins where capacity had been exceeded at their treatment plants. That meant devel.