Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph from Colorado Springs, Colorado • Page 17

Friday, April 15, 1977 Electricity Demands Could Go Unmet City Power Unit Could Be Altered or Closed OJA million pallons. OVet I By DICK FOSTER GT Staff Writer City officials are faced with shutting down or substantially altering operation of a problem- riddled unit of the Martin Drake Power Plant if a cease- and desist order from the state allowed to take effert as sshed- uled June 16. City Utilities Director James Phillips said a complete shutdown of the unit would leave the city unable to provide enough electricity to meet demand in the area. The cease-and-desist order was issued to the plant after romplaints of fly ash and other emissions from Drake Unit 6. The same complaints led to a suit against the city filed last week by residents living near the plant.

Tad Foster, an attorney for the city utilities department, outlined the problem to members of city council sitting Wednesday as the municipal utilities board. The state issued the original cease-and-desist order in February. The city was able to obtain a variance earlier this month allowing continued operation of the unit, but the variance expires June 16. That means the city may be ordered to shut down or alter operations at the troublesome Drake unit to cut down on the problem emissions. The state also could extend the variance, allowing the city to proceed with plans to install a new filtering system on the unit.

The city already has awarded a contract for installation of a new experimental bag-filter system on the unit. It is designed to screen particulates and, possibly sulfur dioxide from emi- sions. But the bag-filter system is not expected to be operational until 1978. If the variance is not extended, the city may have to use other means of reducing emissions from the Drake unit. Foster said optional procedures the city will submit to the state include the burning of oil or natural gas instead of coal, or operation of the unit at less than capacity.

Phillips said if the cease-and- desist order is not delayed, the city may have to spend up to 15 million to install new scrubbing equipment on the problem unit. On another matter Wednesday, the utilities board tabled until the first council meeting in May a proposal from the Air Force to purchase nonpotable water from the city for use on the Peterson AFB golf course. In a memo to the board, Phillips said the maximum amount of such water needed by the Air Force could be 736.4 acre-feet, or 240 million gallons, over an eight-month period. The commitment of this water as made by the city would be, in effect, in memo stated. Before the motion was tabled, Mayor Lawrence Ochs said he would prefer the water be saved for some potential industrial use in the future.

I would like the Air Force to pursue all other water sources Ochs said. Moisture STOKELY CARMICHAEL ADDRESSES AUDIENCE AT BELL'S NIGHTINGALE NIGHT CLUB WEDNESDAY Blacks must organize and return to the arms of 'Mother Africa' to attain world freedom, he said Activist Carmichael Back Still Espouses Radicalism Bv GEORGE GLADNEY GT Staff Writer Stokely Carmichael, the indefatigable black revolutionary remembered for his activist civil rights role in the 1960s, is back. And a Colorado Springs au- i hearing him speak Wednesday night learned that he changed every bit the radical. Sample: vicious, backward. racist, stupid system (American capitalim) must be destroyed Whether we want to or net we have got to fight (to overthrow the system and end oppression.) do it all and finish it.

(speaking of the all-African Revolutionary Party, which Carmichael helped organize) are not afraid of anyone, especially the United States. Even Vietnam beat the United If you heard name in a long time, partly because been spending a lot of time in Africa, organizing revolution. He lives in Guinea West Africa. That should help explain another of his assertions made Wednesday, that Africa is the key in shaping the future of the black future and freeing him from oppression throughout the world. He made his marks before a crowd at Nightingale nightclub 601 E.

Las Vegas St. Carmichael confessed that several years ago he was defending the fact that he was a Negro when, as he later learned, a Negro is something that has never existed. Carmichael, like all blacks is an African, he explained, not a Negro, and until Africa is free no black man is free. are Carmichael declared. Africa is our only Much of speech was a lambasting of the American capitalist sytem, described by Carmichael as the cause of a vast and nefarious array of ills, including out-of-sight coffee prices.

What makes the system so bad? Well, said Carmichael, it has produced for America the most technologically developed system in the world, but a sys- that manufactures the cheapest stuff in the designed to last only three yeras, for example, and televisions which are less preferred by customers than sets made by, of all people, the Japanese. Instead of capitalism, Carmichael would prefer that socialism prevail, for under such a system people can concern themselves with things other than accumulating greater wealth than a neighbor. His concluding statment: purpose on earth is to serve work for liberation of the people, the A great weakness of the American capitalist system, he said, is that it is designed to keep humans at the instinct where the strong, by nature, devour the weak. we are not Carmichael pleaded. strong have a responsibility to help the Moreover, he said, the is designed and operates to people keep us from finding the Thus, slavery, for example, is talked of today as if slaves spent most of their time singing and dancing, not toiling, sweating and suffering.

And, Carmichael said, the system takes credit for progress that the Black American has enjoyed. According to the system, it is Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, not forces of the time; likewise President Lyndon Johnson is credited for milestone civil rights legislation while the factor which forced his rebelliousness of forgotten. Carmichael urged is audience to follow the example of people like the Rev. Martin Luther King, a man who forsake wealth to the and Malcom whom Carmichael described as a who became an African He warned that, we are all Kings and Malcoms. we be free.

killed King and Malcolm but it stop a What of Idi Amin, black leader of Uganda and the man Time magazine labelled on its cover as wild man of On that question, Carmichael did not defend Amin, sufficing it to say that South John Vorster and Ian Smith, white leaders, are no less guilty of sin than Amin. He blamed the American press, which he called a rag sheet controlled by for giving Amin an unwarranted reputation as a murderer, blood-thirsty Finall, Carmichael put down fellow 1960s black activist Eldridge Cleaver (a former militant ieader of the Black Panthers and author of on for reneging on his views and coming back today a changed man Jesus Christ as a He compared Cleaver to a dog, explaining that only a dog is known to up its own vomit. Despite abundant rainfall which has nourished city water supplies on the Pikes Peak watershed, the City of Colorado Springs still has received only half the normal amount of moisture throughout the rest of its waershed area. Colorado Springs Water Division Manager Ed Bailey said today that the Pikes Peak watershed had received substantial amounts of new moisture during the last 10 days. The south slope received 20 inches of snow and the north slope 24 inches.

In the Blue River Homestake area, 15 inches of new snow fell. But the Pikes Peak watershed makes up wily about 25 per cnet of the total water supply area. Even though it is running ahead of last year, dry weather over the remaining three-fourths of the watershed area, primarily around the Continental Divide, reduces the impact the plentiful Pikes Peak storage has on the total water supply. the Pikes Peak watershed areas are ahead of normal as far as moisture is concerned, the overall watershed picture for the entire system sill looks to be about 50 per cent of Bailey said. the heavy moisture been receiving continues, of course, that 50 per cent figure can be revised upward.

But at the moment, the total picture is still well below he continued. A utilities spokesman said Thursday that the recent spring rains would have an additional saving effect on the water supplies, since residents could begin lawn work and gardening using less city water for irrigation. The rains have been a tremendous help to farmers and ranchers, and probably have really helped the wheat crop, but that is not the same as the total water storage and supply for the Colorado Springs system, the spokesman said. rainy spell does not make up the total water needs for the he said. Rainfall in the Colorado Springs area so far this month has reached 2 inches, which is more than one inch more than the average April total.

Gazette Telegraph Photo by JOHN MORGAN TOGETHERNESS Morgan Riley does like Mommy does during a mother-daughter dance and exercise class at Emerson Community School. The class is for youngsters age 3 to 6 who want to help their mothers get in shape. Parkway Protest Will Be Presented to City Council By GLENN URBAN GT Staff Writer venient for drivers and there- Candidate Opposes Year-Round School Plan oecicf i By DRU WILSON GT Staff Writer John Godoy, 215 Sandburg Lane, is one of the first candidates for Colorado Springs School District 11 to announce his opposition to the year-round program. Godoy, whose children attend traditional schools at Roosevelt Elementary School and Mitchell High School said he does not believe using schools year-round is economical. Taxpayers are willing to pay for additional schools, he said.

Godoy added that he believes the year-round program day will be expanded to the whole district under the present board, but a better solution might be to have elementary schools with kindergarten through fifth grade and junior high schools with sixth through ninth grades. Godoy said the only way to keep inner-city schools from losing enrollment is busing, but most people do not prefer that because children prefer to attend neighborhood schools. Godoy said he and is and feels that decisions should be made by minded and responsible If the year-round decisions had been made with openness, present problems might not exist, he continued. Many factors are involved in the year-round issue, he said, and he believes someone should ask if some teachers oppose the program but are under pressure from the district. Questions also need to be asked on how it affects the students they reject the idea of going to school in the summer and if they are motivated or he said.

Godoy also stressed the need for better career education and special programs to assist children from all circumstances. Parent involvement also is needed, he said. Godoy favors collective bargaining. is a valuable vehicle and needs he Everyone has the right to be However, he said strikes are not good and that binding arbitration has disadvantages for both sides. In financing education, Godoy said that until a better method is found, using property tax funds is the best method.

A group of Cragmor citizens who are fearful that the Austin Bluffs Parkway will further degrade their neighborhood Dlans to take their protest to the city council. About 40 of them gathered in Battes Elementary School in Cragmor Wednesday night to lear an explanation of plans for the parkway and to explain their worries to city officials. 1 y-elected City Councilman George James, District 1, helped organize the meeting and told the protestors that he would help get them a hearing before the council. Also attending were Mary Kyer, newly elected at-large, and Mike Bird, District 2, and Leon Young, District 3, both reelected in the April 5 municipal election. The citizens are concerned that when the Austin Bluffs Parkway is built as it now is designed that it will help make unofficial speedways out of their streets as more drivers use the streets in their residential district.

Most of the protestors live on Meadow Lane that is scheduled to have an intersection with the parkway which would be controlled by a signal light. They want their street closed tersection would make entering and leaving the parkway con- fore put even more traffic on their street than they have now, which they think is too much. Tey want teir street closed at the parkway end with nothing but an emergency access route between the two streets. The parkway was planned earlier in this decade. A proposed $6.2 million bond issue to finance it and another street was defeated in the 1975 city election.

The concept was back on the ballot this year for $6.2 million, with the other street dropped off the plan, and was approved. It will run from North Nevada Avenue at the intersection of Garden of the Gods Road eastward north of the Bates school and south of University Colorado Colorado Springs to intersect with the planned Union Boulevard extension and then take over part of the Templeton Gap Road as it runs eastward from Flintridge to Meadowland at the edge of the Ranch and Mall of the Bluff shopping centers. David Chaffee, chairman of Northeast Thoroughfare Committee, told the citizens he agreed with them that Meadow Lane should be closed to through traffic and that he would join with them in their protest to the city government. The Committee was formed by the City Council with the purpose of studying traffic problems in the northeast part of the town and make recommendations. The parkway proposal was its answer.

Deke Miller, public works director for the city, explained that his department is unable to close the road because public works was handed the basic plan by the council which nad adopted it at a public meeting. The intersection was in the master plan for the parkway as drawn up by the committee and as offered to the public for consideration when the proposed bond issue was up. None of the four council members at the meeting offered an opinion on how binding the plan is, or that they would try to change it so that the planned intersection was removed from the plan to allow Meadow Land to be a dead end street. The Cragmoor. neighborhood Association offered to take up the problem and to get signatures on a petition to be offered to the council in support of closing the street and dropping the intersection plan.

That developed after Kyer told the crowd that such a petition would have an impact the council. Not everyone agreed. One woman living on the street said, listen, then when we go away, do it their way.