(Draui^auntg West Craven Highlights Vpu's From AIoiik The Hanks Of The Meuse PHONE 244 0780 OR 946-2144 (UPSP 412-110) [ppr NAtCNAl NiWSMPfH VOLUME 12 NO. 40 OCrOBER 26. 1989 VANCEBORO. NORTH CAROLINA 25 CENTS EIGHT PAGES Fisheries director says state in need of salt-water licenses MOREHEAD CITY — Members of the Marine Fisheries Commission and Division of Marine -Fisheries staff will conduct n public meeting in Washington tonight to discuss a ^oposed coostal waters licensing system. The meeting, one of 12 scheduled throughout the state, was an- nouncedinst week by William T. Ho garth, director of the Division of Marine Fisheries at n workshop at division headquarters in Morehead City. The meeting will be 7 p.m. tonight in the Superior Courtroom of the Beaufort County Courthouse. Other area meetings will be in Morehead City, Manteo, Elizabeth City and Hatteras throughout the week. The state needs a licensing pack age, in part, to get data on the amount of fish caught, the fishing effort and effectiveness of various fishing methods, Hogarth said. _ *We don’t know how many people slilt-water fish,” Hogarth said. Licensing alternatives to be dis cussed include a license to sell, com mercial vessel licenses, marine re creational license, commercial gear licenses and commercial opera tional licenses, Hogarth said. "This is a seriesof proposals,* said Jess Hawkins, district manager for the Division of Marine Fisheries in Washington. *Input from the public is vital.” If the package is approved, it could generate as much as $6 to $9 million, Hogarth said. This money if allocated to the di vision as an addition to its current budget, about 65 percent would be used for fisheries management and development, 15 percent for enforce ment, 10 percent for public educa tion and 10 percent for administra tion and documentation, Hogarth said. A $25 license to sell is proposed for any North Carolina resident who sells any fishery product taken from the marine waters of the state. An alternative to this is a Marine Producers License dependent on percentage of total income derived from commercial fishing. Other licensing proposals include a fee for commercial fishing vessels See FISH, Page 6 fTfrfffTjfffrtrtjfJfjf Conservation helps protect soil, water resources locally By Tim Etheridge SCS Conservationist Conservation is defined as pre serving, guarding or protecting. Using conservation measures on our soil and water will preserve and protect these valuable resources. Some landowners consider con servation practices something that is needed that would be nice to have. Installing these measures costs mo ney which the landowner does not feel he or she can justify. When in stalled, conservation will pay for itself. Lets take a look at three conser vation practices used in eastern North Carolina and see how they can pay for themselves. No-till is a practice that’s used throughout the state. Field borders are used mostly in the more sloping land of the state. Water control structures are found more often in the farmland of the coastal plains. All three practices have ways of paying for themselves. No-till or conservation tillage is practiced when a crop is planted in residue left fi’om the previous crop. It cuts soil erosion by water in half. This is due to the residue keeping the soil surface under cover. Re sidue also prevents wind erosion which is a big contributor to filled-in ditches. Slowing erosion prevents the loss of your valuable topsoil and the nu trients that are attached to the soil particles. The soil cover serves to in crease the amount of water taken in and stored for use by the next crop. No-till will pay for itself, but does re quire a higher degree of manage ment than conventionally planted Halloween and harvest The time of harvest comes to mind when one sees (top photo) pumpkins, corn stalks and bales of hay put together to form a mi niature landscape. The components of this autumn landscape signify It's harvest time for what was planted as seeds In the spring. Throw in a few ghoulish characters (bottom photo) and Halloween jumps to mind. A leisurely drive around the county See SOIL, Page 5 can bring a cornucopia of autumn landscapes. crops. Field borders are found in the Coyotes threat to area red fox population ,—With coyote pups having been found in Craven, Jones and Beau fort counties recently, an area wild life official says the counties ore threatened by the loss of their red fox populations. ‘Coyotes won’t tolerate having red foxes around,” Perry Sumner, furbearer project leader for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission in New Bern, said in a recent tele phone interview. *The two species don’t stay in the same area.” Sometimes, he said, the coyotes even will kill the red foxes. In the Northeast, Sumner pointed out, a lot of red foxes that are moving into urban areas appa rently have been pushed out of their habitat by coyotes. ‘The ironic thing,” Sumner said of Jones County, ‘is the folks who run the foxes with hounds are generally the ones who brought (coyotes) in here.” The main population of coyotes had been moving toward North Car olina from the middle of Tennessee and Georgia, Sumner said. But per sons who had brought coyotes into North Carolina, where they never had been a native species, had speeded up the process. ‘Once (the coyotes) get here, theyll beheFe,*he added. The coyote population in south ern Geoi^a had stayed in that area, he added, from the 1930s until the last five or 10 years. But most Geor gia counties have them now. Coyotes had no natural enemies, Sumner said, and research had shown that hunting them and tiy- ing to poison them had not been suc cessful means of eliminating them from an area. The more killed, he said, the more pups the remaining coyotes had. About two years ago, he noted, he had had two reports close together of coyotes found in Jones County: One had been killed in the road, and a hunter had shot the second one. Then, in the spring, he said, a far mer in the Cove City area had noti fied him that he had discovered the two pups. To his knowledge, Sumner added, they were the first coyote pups bom in North Carolina that anyone had had their hands on. The pups, which were about 6-8 weeks old, were destroyed, he said. He had heard numerous reports of coyotes in the Terra Ceia area of Beaufort County, Sumner noted. *But we’ve not actually had our hands on them.” Sumner said he also had had numerous reports of coyote sight ings in the Cove City area over the last year, mostly from people who had spotted them during the wheat harvest. See COYOTE. Page 6 Officials want drinking water rules changed State and federal officials said last week they will revise drinking water regulations to prevent another situation like that in Washington, where authorities failed to act for eight years on infor mation that the tap water contained dangerous levels of cancer-causing chemicals. The state already has found that the drinking water of 13 of those communities — including the Mar ine Corps Air Station at Cheny Pont — may contain carcinogens like those in Washington’s water. In Vnneeboro, the town’s water system shows no signs of problems like Washington is experiencing, said Town Clerk Carolyn Ipock. She said the town’s water supply is tested twice a month, once by the state and once by the county. TTie town gets its water from groundwa ter through a well. If the regulations are revised, small towns like Vanceboro could be forced to meet more stringent treat ment methods and report high levels of possibly dangerous chemi cals in their water supplies, if they have levels above the EPA standords. The U.S. Environmental Protec tion Agency isreviewingits require ments for the water supplies of all smaller U.S. communities in light of Washington’s water problems, Mi chael Leonard, chief of the drinking water section of EPA’s regional of fice in Atlanta, said in an interview. “We are trying to review all reg ulations of contaminates, lowering the limits for some and lowering the populations to which these limits apply,” Leonard said. The new regulations could be in place in 1991 or 1992, he said. Such action could extend environ mental safeguards to 56,000 U.S. water treatment plants serving mil lions of people across the nation in communities of less than 10,000 po pulation, which are not now regu lated by EPA. Drinking water for an estimated 195-million residents in U.S. cities above 10,000 already is protected by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. In North Carolina, 104 water treatment plants serve at least half a million residents in the under-10,000 category, according to estimates. *I am concerned that people who live in small communities are not protected by U.S. Environmental Iht)tection Agency requirements,” said state health director Dr. Ro nald Levine. “This clearly needs to be addressed.” According to documents obtained See WATER, Page 5 VA administers loans for children of veterans According to veterans service of ficer for Craven 0>unty, the N.C. Di vision of Veterans Affairs adminis ters the state’s program of scholar ships for children of disabled, deceased or POW-MIA veterans. Many children apply each year for the scholastic aid o^ered by the program, which provides benefits at public and private institutions in the state. There are several classes of scho larship eligibility. They are: Class I and IV: Children of certain veterans who died or are 100 per cent disabled as a result of service in the World War I. World War II, Korea or Vietnam or children of peacetime veterans whose death or 100 percent service-connected disa bility was incurred as a direct result of armed conflict or while engaged in extra-hazardous service or children of certain veterans who were prison ers of war or listed as missing in ac tion. The veteran must have been a legal resident of North Carolina at the time of entry into the service, or with certain exceptions, the child must have been bom in North Car olina and cqntinuously resided here. Class II: Children ns described above whose parent was a war vet eran who has or at the time of death had a 20 percent or more but less than 100 percent service-connected disability or a statutory award for arrested tuberculosis. Certain children of peacetime veterans may qualify based on the nature of their See VA, Page 6 Stilley literally getting kicks in football as punter, kicker Chris Stilley gets his kicks in football — literally. Stilley, a 5-9, 155-pound ju nior, handles punting and kick ing duties for the West Craven Eagles. And he handles them well enough to earn this week’s Flying Eagle Award. The award is given to an Eagle player mak ing an outstanding contribution to the team. Stilley has kicked 23 point- afier-touchdown kicks and three field goals this season, for a total of 32 points on the season. In a game where a PAT kick or field goal can mean the difference between a winning or losing, Stil ley has proved fairly consistent. He didn’t miss his first PAT until the sixth game of the season against Havelock. That miss left the Eagles down by one instead of tied at 7-7. The Eagles later scored and came away with the win. Stilley is tied for third in scor ing in the Coastal Conference, See AWARD, Page 5 Becton breaks 1,000; Eagles stay undefeated west Oak. Rogsr Rutsen phoio Craven's Lee Becton (22) heads for one of three touchdowns in Eagles' 23-7 win over White Lee Becton passed the 1,000-yard rushing mark for the season on his second rush last Friday night — a 39-yard touchdown score that staked the fifth-ranked West Cra ven Eagles to an early lead and an eventual 23-7 win over White Oak. Becton, a junior tailback, would score twice more and finish with 189 yards to rush for 1,179 yards in eight games as the Eagles improved to 4-0 in the conference and 8-0 overall. The fifth-ranked Eagles virtually assuired themselves of a playofl' spot and it appears they will face D.H. Conley at the end of the regu lar season for the league title. Agame next week with West Car teret stands in the way of the Eagles going in undefeated against Conley, also undefeated in the league but with two other losses. While Becton was Becton, the Ea gle defense came up with two fumble recoveries and two interceptions. The defense also limited White Oak’s Tracey Boone, the second- leading rusher in the conference, to eight yards on eight carries. The Vikings were held to 91 yards in 20 rushes. Doug Hall, who scored the Vikings’ only touchdown on a 60-yard jaunt, led the Vikings with 64 yards on two carries. Eddie McKeel recovered a fumble for the Eagles that led to Becton’s second touchdown and Terrence White’s fumble recovery led to a 27-yard field goal by Chris Stilley, staking the Eagles to a 17-0 half time margin. Becton scored the second time he touched the ball with a 39-yard run and the PAT put the Eagles ahead 7-0. Stilley added his field goal five plays later. McKeel pounced on his first fumble in the second quarter and Becton scored again five plays later for a 17-0 lead. Becton added an interception to his trophies before the half ended. Kip Bryan’s fumble recovery led to Becton’s third score, but not before a little confusion. White Gak’s Chris Glasgow inter cepted Eagle quarterback Kevin Holzworth, but Glasgow fumbled the pigskin on the return and Bryan recovered at the Viking 15. Becton bulled in from the 3 in three plays. Slilley’s PAT was wide left, but the Engles led 23-7. White Oak had one more chance, See ElAGLES, Page 6