Valley Morning Star from Harlingen, Texas • Page 4

December 4, 1975 Coal Slurry Pipeline Transcends Eminent Domain NEW YORK bitter struggle has developed between the railroads and slurry pipeline advocates over a potential $1.7 billion-a-year new coal hauling business. The conflict is being waged in intermittent hearings before the House on Interior and Insular Affairs and a Senate interior subcommittee. The pipeline advocates are seeking a federal right of eminent domain to buy rights of way. But there is vastly more at stake. Only one coal slurry pipeline presently is operating in the United States, moving coal from the Black Mesa mine in Arizona to a power plant in Nevada.

Curiously, this pipeline is owned by the Southern Pacific parent company, which says it was built because a new rail line would have been impractical in the area The first coal slurry pipeline, running from Consolidation Coal Co's Cadiz, Ohio, mine to a Cleveland power plant, was shut down after several years because it no longer could compete with railway unit trains This pipeline is used nt to haul garbage from Cleveland to remote disposal sites. The two projects steking federal eminent domain rights now would extend from the Gillette mine in Wyoming to White Bluff, and from coal deposits in northwest Colorado to a Houston power plant. Eminent domain is the right to condemn and buy land whether or not the owner wishes to sell. In the past, the power to grant eminent domain has been reserved to the states except for natural gas and electric power lines, This is true even of highways partly financed by the federal government Advocates of coal slurry pipelines claim coal is analogous to gas or electricity The railroads say that is nonsense because gas and electricity can only be hauled by pipeline and cable line while like oil, can be moved by rail, truck or barge. The pipeline advocates say state eminent domain will not be sufficient because the railroads will refuse to allow coal slurry pipelines to cross their rights of way and state legislatures cannot be dependend on to force them to do so.

The Senate passed a bill last year to give federal eminent domain rights to coal slurry pipelines and such bills are pending in both houses now. but the railroads have mounted a strong Burglary Suspects Nabbed DONNA Hector Lozano, 19. and two juveniles, both 16, have been charged with burglary after an alert police officer, Lt Ed Ponce, noticed lights usually on overnight at the Western Auto Store on U.S. Highway 83 were out Ponce called owner James Gilbert, then police went inside here they rounded up the three suspects and about $1.800 worth of merchandise which had been gathered up. Police Chief Fernando Castaneda said.

Lozano was in Hidalgo County Jail Wednesday when he was unable to post $15,000 bond on the burglary count and $1.500 on a charge of resisting arrest The two juveniles were placed in detention Officers making the arrest in addition to Ponce were Sgt. J. Lopez. David Mireles, Carlos Reyna of the Donna department and Deputy Sheriff David Mora The suspects had gathered up such thing as nfles and atches when police arrived on the scene Youths Quizzed In Burglary Try WESLACO Two teenagers have been questioned in connection with an attempted burglary of a vehicle on the Weslaco High School parking lot. Lt Oscar Sanchez reported Wednesday Although the investigation was continuing and charges been filed.

Sanchez said questioning had resulted in the return of a two-way radio stolen from the parking lot Nov. 25. The two-way radio was taken from a vehicle driven by Kathy Fuller of Progreso, a student Both the attempted burglary and the theft of the two-way radio occurred at nighttime. Sanchez reported Questioned were a 16-vear-old student and a 17-year-old dropout. Sanchez said the two boys were spotted on the parking lot bv a police patrol unit.

The school district recently red a daytime security guard for the parking lot because of vandalism and hefts HARLINGEN OPTIMIST CLUB Friend of the Youth campaign to defeat them. Also a near scandal broke out in the Senate committee when it was brought out that Bechtel Corp of San Francisco, which is seeking to build a $750 million coal slurry pipeline to be financed through Lehman the New York investment banking house, had been paid $418,000 by the federal Energy Research and Development Administration for an unsolicited study of the question which plumped mightly for the pipelines. About the same time, conclusions of a study by researchers at the University of Illinois under auspices of the National Science Foundation were emphatically against slurry pipe- Cattle Problems Reported Two additional cases of apparent cattle mutilations were reported to the Cameron County Office Tuesday afternoon and another in the Santa Rosa area was reported Wednesday. This makes a total of six such incidents reported to the office in recent weeks One of the cows was found on the ranch of Joe Barrera of Bayview It was the fourth mutilated cow found on the Barrera ranch. The second cow was found about 10 miles west of Brownsville and belonged to Juan Saldana of El Ranchito.

In each instance the tongue had been removed and organs in the anal region of the body remov ed Sheritt Gus Krausse said evidence that some sort of tranquilizer had been discovered and samples have been sent to Texas University at College Station for analysis. Some of the earlier cattle mutilations in the area have been attributed to animal attacks. No details were available concerning the cow found in the Santa Rosa area Two Arrested On Drug Charges In Harlingen Harlingen police arrested two men early Wednesday and charged one with unlawful possession of marijuana and heroin and the other with unlawful possession of marijuana Jose Morales Hernandez, 27, of Houston was placed under a $1,500 bond for possession of marijuana and a $4,000 bond for possession of heroin Joe Saldua, 22. of Richmond, as placed under a $1,500 bond for possession of marijuana Both men were also charged with public intoxication and each was fined $22 50 corporation court They were arrested when police answered a disturbance call on the 500 block of West Jackson According to police, the heroin was found wrapped in a one dollar bill in billfold while he was being booked into the city jail The arrest was made by Patrolmen Gonzalo Rios and Walter Stout lines on both economic and ecological grounds and favored hauling steam coal to power plants by rail or barge. The coal slurry advocates base their case partly on the view that, with production of coal expected to double by 1984, the railroads are not likely to be able to handle that much traffic.

Considering the present weak financial condition of the rail carriers, they say neither freight cars nor locomotives will be available in sufficient numbers. They also say coal slurry pipelines can be built more cheaply than new rail lines, a fact the railroads concede. And they contend that finely ground coal in liquid form, flowing con- AFTER THANKSGIVING SALE LARGE GROUP LARGE GROUP Valley and Selby Shoes Red Black Navy, Brown, Camel Audition, Natural Bridge, fashion Craft Black, Brown, Navy, Camel and other colors. Values to $35.00 Values to $22.00 NOW 419" NOW 14" LARGE GROUP OF SHOES LARGE GROUP OF KED GRASSHOPPERS Values to $35.00 Sizes 4 to 11 in Navy, Red, Brown and Other Colors Values to $10.50 NOW NOW SHOES HARLINGEN (NEAR LUBY'S) tinuously from the mine, is essential to the rapid conversion of the power industry from oil to coal. Moreover, the Bechtel study claims coal slurry can be moved in pipelines at an average cost of 2 4 cents per 1,000 miles for one trillion of energy daily against 4 cents by rail.

It also contends pipeline transport would be more reliable than transport in railway unit trains. The railroads deny all the pipeline claims except that new pipelines would be cheaper to build than new rail lines. But they say nearly all coal could be hauled on existing rail lines and it would take much less steel and much less capital to expand the rolling stock and even to improve roadbeds than to lay slurry pipelines. They also say the contention that slurry can be moved more cheaply than solid coal in trains or barges is absurd and accuse the Bechtel report of being totally wrong about such costs. The University of Illinois study takes much the same view as to costs of moving coal by rail or pipeline.

The Illinois study says the most undesirable feature of coal slurry pipelines would be their enormous use of water, which can be ill afforded in the regions presently under consideration for slurry pipelines. It takes about 250 gallons of water to move a ton of coal. This would mean upwards of six billion gallons a year for a 25- million-ton-a-year coal piepline. The Bechtel study says only enough water to irrigate a ranch. But the Association of American Railroads and the Illinois group say it is a very large amount of water and that a slurry pipeline would turn it into a residual ink that could not be pumped back into rivers.

To pipe it back to the mine for re-use in slurry transportation, they say, would add 40 per cent to overall cost of the slurry transport. The Illinois study also said a break in a coal slurry pipeline or a power failure would force the release of vast amounts of polluting coal paste on the ground. The study said a single break conceivably could cause the loss of a million tons of coal and tie up a pipeline and power plant for 12days. On the other hand, the Bechtel report claimed there would be less air pollution from slurry pipelines, which are buried in the ground, than from open coal cars. The railroads also said coal slurry pipelines would be inflexible and useless for other hauling while railroad diversity and capacity of tonnage is limited only by the traffic offered.

Chairman Lewis Menk of the Burlington Northern testified on Nov. 7 that expansion of coal hauling is the only hope of staving off nationalization of the railroads. He estimated the potential increase in this traffic at $1.7 billion by 1985. The Illinois group also said expansion of coal haulage by the railroads would generate three times as many new jobs as the building and operation of coal slurry pipelines could Al H. Chesser, president of the United Transportation Uhion, urged defeat of federal eminent domain for coal slurry pipelines JCPenney Great sale prices.

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