Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / Feb. 21, 1991, edition 1 / Page 4
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ffliwUN5WKlC#?K0N Edward M. Sweatt and Carolyn H. Sweat t Publishers Edward M. Sweatt Editor Susan Usher News Editor Doug Ruttrr ?nd Terry Pope Staff Writers Johnny CraJg Sports Editor IVggy Earwood Office Manager Carolyn H. Sweatt Advertising Director l'iinberley Adams & Cecelia Gore ^Advertising Representatives Tammle Galloway & Dorothy Brennan Typesetters WUUam Manning Pressman Brenda Clemmons Photo Technician Lonnle Sprinkle Assistant Pressman Phoebe Clemmons and Frances Sweatt Circulation PAGE 4- A. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21. 1991 Summer's Worries Have Started In Mid -Winter When the Fourth of July holiday approaches, employees of the Brunswick County Water Department will be sweating again. It won't be due to the summer heat but rather a fear that wa ter lines in the South Brunswick Islands will go dry. Last year, July 4th fell on a Wednesday. Engineers say had it fallen on a weekend, the peak usage for water might have emp tied the elevated water tank at Sunset Beach, thus threatening the a^ea with a disaster had a huge demand been placed on fire hydrants there. Residents and tourists were using water almost as fast as it could be pumped to the most southern regions of the county. 'l"his year, July Fourth inches closer to a weekend, falling on a Thursday. Officials are already worried and it is still winter. The present trunk line that serves the southern portion of Brunswick County has been described as a thin straw trapped between the lips of a giant. Water can only flow so fast, no mat ter how much pressure you place on one end of the straw. The good news is that a capital improvement project to the water system set to begin this year will add an additional trunk line to the Seaside area. That will help pump more water to the densely-populated southern community. Presently, plenty of wa ter reaches Shallotte, but from there it must feed Ocean Isle, Sunset Beach and Calabash off of one line down N.C. 179. The new $3.8 million-plus line will boost the water flow. It will route a new line down the U.S. 17 bypass of Shallotte and N.C. 904 to Seaside. That should ease a lot of headaches and worries come tourist season, but the county still has one long, hot summer to go before it can reap the benefits. Under Phase III and III- A of the capital improvements pro ject, residents of Shallotte Point will also receive county wa ter ? after years of pleading. It's a game of catch-up for the water department, but 1991 is starting to look like a promising year. Donating Blood Can Be Quite An Experience Every once in a while, the newspaper runs announcements about up coming blood drives sponsored by civic or church groups. Every time I see one of these notices, it makes me think of the two times I donated blood. I was in high school the first lime. The Red Cross came to our school and set up shop in the gymnasium. Nurses lined up rows and rows of hospital beds. When it was my turn to give blood, I laid down on one of these beds and a nurse stuck a needle in my arm. It was somewhat painful at first, but the pain went away when the blood started running out of my arm and into a plastic bag. Before I knew it, the donating part was over. The bag was full of blood. A nurse pulled the needle out of my arm and put a bandage over the hole. The real fun started when I tried to get up off the bed. I suddenly felt light-headed and dizzy. 1 sat there on the edge of the bed for a while, before rising slowly and walking gingerly to the table where the nurses had doughnuts and or ange juice. I took a seat at the table and ate doughnuts and drank juice until most of the cobwebs worked their way out of my head. My arm hurt and I was tired. I had paid my dues. I vowed never to donate blood again. A couple years later, the Red Cross came to Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, where I was a freshman. Those nurses had obviously followed me there. 1 had no intention of donating blood again. Nothing was going to get me on that hospital bed. Nobody was going to draw blood out of my arm, or so I thought. However, being a college freshman and living four hours from home is hard enough without alienating yourself from your new-found friends who just happen to be fired up about donating blood. So I reluctantly agreed to give blood. It was a classic case of peer pressure. I donated that bag of biooa, but this time I felt great There was no {win, no dizziness, no lingering effects. I think I donated in record time. The nurse pulled the needle out of my arm, and I hopped up from that table without missing a beau I was jumping around and eating cookies while my pals were lying there on the hospital beds with blood trickling out of their arms and their faces turning an odd shade of green. I'm not the only one who has a story to tell about donating blood. You remember my old roommate, Mark. He's the one who talked me in to buying his old surfboard and then skipped town and moved to Wilmington. No, he doesn't wash his clothes at my place any more. He just comes down ever so often to eat my food and play my guitar. Anyway, Kevin and I found out through a very reliable source that Mark passed out after giving blood last year. Needless to say, Mark was the brunt of some good-natured ribbing after that escapade. These stones shouldn't scare anyone out of donating blood. The fact is, giving blood is easy, and it's something that just about anybody can do. The Calabash Elks Lodge, in conjunction with the American Red Cross, is holding a blood drive this Saturday from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the lodge. People ages 17 to 75 are welcome to donate. There's no telling where this blood will go after it is collected. It might be used to help American troops overseas. If you ask me, there's no better way to support the military than to give blood that might be needed to save a soldier's life. Thanks, But No Thanks To An Incinerator It sounded like an industry coup at first The town of Navassa in northern Brunswick County had changed its zoning ordinance to al low a multimillion dollar facility to locate there. The five businessmen who were partners in the project planned to purchase an 18-acrc tract in an in dustrially zoned area adjacent to the CSX rail yard. The business would be physically small, but it would hire about 30 people and add to the town's tax base. But talk turned to reason. Now Navassa officials are trying to shut the door on the project that would have brought the county its first medical waste incinerator. A wel come mat had been rolled out, but town officials are now hoping they can legally withdraw the invitation. When Navassa residents learned what would actually be burned in side the plant, they started a petition that now has the names of about 150 residents who are begging the town to keep the incinerator away. Residents there fear that should something go wrong in the opera tion and maintenance of the medical waste incinerator, then their town and surrounding Leland area would live under the horror of a spreading cloud of infectious diseases. Hospital medical waste incinera Terry ^ ^ Pope tors bum anything from human anatomical wastes such as tissues, organs and body parts; human blood wastes and blood products; needles, swabs and absorbents contaminated by infectious blood; contaminated animal carcasses and bedding from research labs; dialysis wastes that were in contact with the blood of patients undergoing hemodialysis; discarded medical parts and equip ment; biological wastes and discard ed materials contaminated with blood, excretion or secretions from humans and animals; urine samples; and culture dishes. The number of commercial incin erators is expected to rise across the United States. More stringent regu lations on infectious waste disposal will affect what types of medical wastes can enter landfills, thus mak ing the smaller hospital incinerators costly and unprofitable to operate. That's why businessmen with an eye on the future arc looking for out-of-the-way places to build larg er, regional incinerators to handle larger volumes of medical wastes more efficiently. In the next decade, the demand for them will be great. Medical wastes are burned at in cinerators before the ash or debris is dumped into landfills. After inciner ation, the remaining debris should have no trace of the infectious dis eases and the volume is 90 percent smaller than before incineration. At the proposed Navassa plant, an esti mated six to eight trucks would de liver hospital wastes daily to the plant in sealed bags packed inside sealed cardboard boxes. According to a handbook issued last month by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, the concern about how infectious wastes generated by hos pitals is being disposed of has in creased rapidly due to the fear of the spread of viruses such as ac quired immune deficiency syn drome (AIDS) and hepatitis B. Remember how contaminated medi cal wastes were found drifting ashore along some eastern seaboard beaches? Hospital waste incinerators, it states, may emit a number of air pollutants depending on the waste being incinerated. The pollutants in clude acid gases, toxic metals, toxic organic compounds, carbon monox ide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and pathogens and viruses. The combustion gases that arc produced by incineration are vented dircctly to the atmosphere or to the atmosphere after treatment in an air pollution device, the handbook states. But when operated properly and when air emission standards arc held to acceptable levels, residents who live near the incinerator should not be in any danger. However, a lot is riding on the shoulders of the plant operator. I wouldn't want to live next to one. In November 1989, the Navassa Planning Board amended the town's zoning ordinance to make way for the incinerator. Since then, town of ficials discovered that to make such changes to the zoning ordinance re quires approval from the N.C. Division of Coastal Management, a change the town now wants to stop. At the town's request. Coastal Management has halted its review of the zoning changc. The town vows it will not issue a building permit. That multimillion dollar plant, al though it would have been a fat source of tax revenues for the town, is looking less attractive every day. ...and thieves all the time! LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Flap About Hankins' Credentials Is Slockett's Nonsense To the editor I wonder what is really behind Bob Slockett's efforts to prevent P. R. Hankins from continuing as Brunswick County's school superin tendent? He claims it's because Mr. Hankins didn't literally submit his superintendent's credentials to the school board at the meeting. Since his credentials had been on file for some years, he assumed they had seem them, if desired. P. R. first became a school princi pal in the middle 50s in Brunswick County. To get that position he had to present credentials. I'm certain they are placed in a file in the de partment designed for that purpose. I doubt whether any certificate is literally sent to the board for exami nation at their meetings. For P. R. Hankins to even be act ing or a temporary superintendent when the previous one was fired, his credentials had to be on record. I have verified that they were. Each certificate has been on file every time he earned one from principal to supervisor, to assistant superin tendent and finally superintendent It was natural for P. R. to assume his credentials had been verified to the board and could literally be seen if desired. Mr. Slockett and I are both Re publicans. I can assure you that if he runs again I shall campaign against him. I even made an ap pointment to meet him at his home when I first heard about his non sense, to discuss P. R. P. R. was my boss for the last six years I taught here. I was in a posi tion to see how he worked and his competence. Having taught in two other systems previously I have some background from which to judge. I have been able to confirm that he is doing exactly as I suspected he would. He's a hands-on person, not one who just sits in his office and makes decisions. He goes out and observes what's going on in the schools. Since I retired I have been in volved in several charity organiza tions. I think it was about five years ago that I organized the Brunswick County Animal Welfare League to raise donations to help people be able to afford to spay and neuter their animals instead of hundreds of unwanted animals having to be killed each year. I've always been able to take a sample of our certificates, along with the paper needed to get them printed. After P. R. became superin tendent, I discovered one has to fill out a form to be approved before getting printing done. That just goes to verify that P. R. will know everything that is going on in the schools and that they will be done right and with no waste. Teddi Neal Bolivia Cats Are One Of Our Protectors To the editor: We hear much of protecting the environment for future generations and protecting wildlife. Cats are one of our protectors. They need our protection. They catch rats and mice. What will our environment be like with an over flow of rats and mice? Giving cats rabies shots is okay, but how many persons have you ev er known to be bitten by a cat and died? Only one in my 73 years. How many children will be hurt when animal control officers pick up their pet cat? Not everyone has the money to pay to have their cats given shots and some are not tame enough to be collared and tagged. Cats can be useful in our every day life as well as a lot of pleasure to children and grown-ups. Let's not bite the hand that feeds us. I am not against animal control officers rounding up sick and un wanted animals. I think they do a fine job. Evelyn M. Bell Bolivia Talk About Getting Lucky! Do you ever get discouraged about not making the kind of progress you'd like on some pet project? It's been that way with my family tree. It's one of those want to do, not have to do things, so it gets a less than top priority. Time for re search, or to even plan research, seems to come in spurts. When op portunity appears ! follow, without questioning. So it was last Thursday night. Don was going to a meeting in Wilmington. I decided, on impulse, to skip some chores, drop him off, then run by the Mormon Church ge nealogy library. I would have less than an hour, but that's better than no time at all, I've come to realize. Trips into town come far and few between. The Plan: To 1) begin checking to see if any known persons of my lines had been entered in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) so as to avoid duplicating re search that has already been done and 2) through those listings, per haps make contact with other indi viduals working on the same lines. I was having surprisingly good luck with the Arnolds, kin on my mother's side, when behind me a Susan J Usher 1 ^ **sdi A woman entered and quietly asked for assistance. "What lines are you working on?" the reply came. "Usher and Love," she said, caus ing my ears to perk up and my head to spin around. "That's MY line!" I interjected excitedly. "Who are you?" the woman asked. And 1 told her. She saw the connection immediately ? William Usher. Who was she? A distant cousin on my father's side, who lives at Ogden and works at Belk's in Wilmington. This was only my third visit to the Mormon Church library; it was her first What an incredible coinci dence. You may recall the Thanksgiving weekend trip to Duplin County I wrote about. It seems Mary Frances Usher Hobbs was bom on that old Arm and Usher homeplace, and was there with her two children when it sustained severe damage during Hurricane Hazel. She had main tained the old cemetery until the poison ivy got too bad, she said. Mary Frances knew stuff I didn't know, much of it oral history that had been pulled together by an aunt of hers many years ago and passed on, without formal documentation. Like me, she has has been trying to work on the family history in bits and pieces. We chatted like crazy, exchang ing information until they ran us out of the library after closing time. We traded telephone numbers and mail ing addresses, promising to trade more data and keep in touch. I know now the name and birth place ? Stradbally. Queen's County, Ireland, of my great-great-great grandparents, William and Ann Shields Usher, who came to North Carolina before the American Revolution. Even belter, I've found another companion to share this trek back in time. Once again, just when a nudge of encouragement was needed, some thing happened to keep me plugging.
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
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Feb. 21, 1991, edition 1
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