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Show Check Inside ' i Off 1 VERMAL Piggy bank goes to CFpage 16 Economic aid page 3 Book Cliff land cleared page 7 Movie to be made page 11 Art captured on film page 14 Doubles team takes 2nd page 18 Express online: www.verexp.com Single Copy 50 WEDNESDA WEDNESDAY, October 7, 1998 Vernal, Utah 84078 106th Year No. 40 20 Pages n3 m County hit with 1st case of Hantavirus A Uintah County woman has been diagnosed as having been infected with the often deadly Hantavirus, reports health officials with the TriCounty Health Department. The infection which took place in late September was confirmed by blood tests at the Utah State Public Health Laboratory. The woman was most likely infected with the virus after begin exposed to rodent's nests while working in an agricultural agricul-tural setting. "Hantavirus continues to be very dangerous to humans with a 40-60 percent death rate in known cases," said Joseph B. Shaffer, TCHD director and public health officer. "People need to continue to use caution in areas where rodents may be present." Latest information from the Centers for Disease Control has found the Hantavirus is present primarily pri-marily in the droppings, saliva and urine of rodents, (deer mice, cotton rats, rice rats and the white-footed mouse). Humans who breath in the virus as a mist or dust may become infected and contract Hantavirus Pulmoney Syndrome (HPS). The virus may also be transmitted to humans by touching the mouth or nose after handling contaminated materials. A rodent's bite may also spread the virus. "With just over half of all infected persons dying and with most cases occurring in the western states with no vaccine nor cure available," said Shaffer, "We can't be too careful about HPS.'" Precautions should be taken: Precautions: Avoid contact with areas known to be infested with rodents. When cleaning areas known to be infested with a small number of Bullet shuts down television By Steven R. Wallis Express Editor A vandal's bullet shut down the Uintah County community television televi-sion system Saturday night and nearly curtailed the broadcast of Sunday's General Session of the LDS Conference. The outage occurred Saturday evening after 8 p.m. when someone shot a .22 caliber from directly below the half-inch coaxial cable located on Tabby Mountain in Duchesne County. The outage curtailed cur-tailed reception of channels 5, 4 and 2 and Fox for the entire Uintah Basin. Joe LeBeau, county television maintenance supervisor, and his son Jeremony, went to Tabby at daybreak day-break Sunday to re-establish the signal. "At first I thought the power was off because of a lightning strike," said LeBeau. "When we discovered . See Bullet on page 3 L The 22 bullet that interrupted General Conference broadcast. rodents, wear latex or heavy rubber gloves and wet down the areas with general household disinfectant solutions solu-tions such as Lysol or a bleach and water solution (one cup chlorine bleach to 9 cups clear water) or ammonia. Cleaning of areas with a large number of rodents should include the wearing of latex or heavy rubber gloves, goggles and a respirator fitted fit-ted with HEPA filters as well as wetting the area with disinfectants to keep down the dust. Rodent prevention action should accompany this type of cleaning to ensure no reoccurrence of an infestation. HPS symptoms usually appear within two weeks of infestation, but can appear as early as three days to as late as six weeks after infection. First symptoms are general flu-like fever (101 to 104 F) headache, abdominal, joint and lower back pain; sometimes nausea and vomiting. vomit-ing. However, the primary symptom of this disease is difficulty in breathing, which is caused by a fluid build-up in the lungs and quickly progresses to an inability to breath. If any combination of these symptoms, symp-toms, especially difficulty in breathing, breath-ing, appear after exposure to rodents, contact a doctor or health facility immediately and be sure to mention an exposure to rodents. For more information regarding Hantavirus, contact TCHD from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 781-5475 or 722-5085 722-5085 or 24 hours a day at 1-800-532-9929. Francis Harding tL ? - -fin ;-v School board candidates run on full agendas The Uintah School Board Candidates for districts 3 and 4 come with full agendas as to what they want to accomplished if elected. elect-ed. Francis Harding, district 3, has been on the school board for four years and has dealt with tough issues such as reconfiguration, the attendance policy, early retirement, classroom size, and site-based administration. Her opponent, Robert Bertola, admits that he may be influenced by his wife, who is a school teacher in the district, but he said he doesn't agree 100 percent of the time with her feelings. He advocates that more decisions should be made on the school level. "Teachers and principals are closer to the front-lines front-lines and should make more of the decisions." He said the number one concern of residents is classroom size, but yet, the recently adopted board goals don't directly address class- ft ."-C Wt VI ' ' ,. J . . frf " ' t . r . . ..- : ' - ' , ' , ' - . , " - " ,... ! - ' " ' ' ., V Farmers have seen better prices. Plummeting prices By Steven R. Wallis Express Editor Prices are plummeting and supply is high. For some Uintah Basin farmers they will be shut down if present conditions persist. Fanner and ranchers are accustomed accus-tomed to the cyclical tends in the market, but this year the slump is unusually broad because it's affecting affect-ing everything from corn to cattle. To determine what can be done to solve the plight of local farms, a meeting was setup last Thursday with representation from Utah congressmen, con-gressmen, Farm Bureau officials and members of Farm Service Agency met in Roosevelt to discuss solutions. Of the 60 farmers and ranchers at the meeting, 50 percent raised their hands stating they would be out of business in the next one to two years, if present conditions continue. contin-ue. "That is concerning to me when that many farmers feel that way," said Mike Mower, Congressman -.flow r'-;--v -"''. - Robert Bertola Mike McKee room size. "I am in support of the teachers," he said during Tuesday's noon Chamber of Commerce meeting. "Five of the top 10 public concerns in the Dan Jones survey involve teachers." He said a voted leeway could pass, if it is presented correctly. Harding said she supports an increase in time on the elementary level for language arts. It is now 2 hours ancf 5 minutes a day. She said the school board tried site-base decisions, but it created a backlog in some classes because the curriculum curricu-lum was not correlated between the schools. She said classroom size is the reason for the reconfiguration. She said she supported the cut back in early retirement benefits because the district couldn't afford them. On the westside of Uintah County, district 4, Mike McKee is runnine acainst Maxine Natchees. Chris Cannon's office. "I don't believe that 50 percent of the farms in Utah will go away next year," said Kim Christy, Utah Farm Bureau, who attended the meeting. "But there is no question they are seeing some tough times." Christy said that many are predicting pre-dicting that the prices have bottom out and will start to rise again. Some of the things farmers believe are affecting prices are unfair competition from unfair trade regulations from Canada and Mexico, a monopoly among three large meat packing companies and trade sanctions against foreign counties. Currently there are 220 unilateral sanctions with other countries, 61 of these have been implemented under President Clinton. "When American trade with foreign for-eign countries is cut off, other counties coun-ties just come in and fill the gap," Christy said. Those at the meeting said that food should not be used as a m - lf laws, W v wV i f - ' '-0' 'fy Maxine Natchees McKee is a long-time resident of Tridell and has eight children in the school system. Natchees is a member of the Ute Tribe and is employed by the tribe to manage its severance tax. She is also a former member of the Tribal Business Committee. McKee said the situation on the westside is different than in Vernal, because half the kids go to Lapoint elementary and continue on to Uintah High and the other half goes to Todd and continues through to Union High School. "The voted leeway lee-way didn't fail because the westside is against eduction, it failed at the grass roots," he said. Natchees said she decided to run because she believes the Ute tribe should be more involved in their children's eduction. She said she would like to find out why there is a high drop out rate of Native Americans on the west-side, west-side, and take actions to correct it. hurt local weapon against other countries. Others claim that meat coming into the U.S. from Canada and Mexico is not adhering to the same standards. stan-dards. Christy said NAFTA and open trade treats with Canada have benefit bene-fit the Utah Farmer overall. Because Congress will be out of session Friday, nothing can be immediately presented to Congress, said Mower. "But something might be done administratively. One of the ideas is to support a "made in the USA" label on all meat from cattle raised in the U.S. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the real problem is not Canadian trade but the economic eco-nomic turmoil in Japan and southeast south-east Asia. Until recently, Japan and southeast Asia were a big market for farm goods from the United States. Asia is cutting back on everything from soybeans to pork. The result: Farm goods are piling up and prices are falling. A year ago for example, wheat averaged 43.56 a bushel, and last Entities on brink of jurisdiction agreements The Ute Tribe Business Committee, State of Utah, county commissioners of Duchesne and Uintah' counties agreed in principle to sign three unprecedented agreements agree-ments relating to jurisdiction within the original boundaries of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservoir. The three agreements include a "cooperative agreement for mutual assistance in law enforcement," "a disclaimer of civil regulatory jurisdiction" juris-diction" and an "agreement to refer tribal members charged with committing com-mitting misdemeanor offenses to tribal court for prosecution." All three agreements arise out of the United States Supreme Court's 1994 decision in Hagen vs. Utah. In that decision, the court ruled that lands within the Uintah Valley Reservation that were settled by non-Indians under the homestead and townsite laws were no longer within "Indian country." While most people are familiar with the term "Indian reservation," the critical legal term that defines the scope of every Tribe's jurisdiction jurisdic-tion is "Indian country." Lands that are within "Indian country" are subject sub-ject to tribal jurisdiction while lands that are outside "Indian country" are subject to state, county and city jurisdiction. After the Supreme Court's decision, deci-sion, the Tribe no longer could claim jurisdiction over reservation lands that had been homesteaded in the early 1900s. While much of that farmers month it stood at S2.46. Corn price sare down 24 percent. Even cattle are down 9 percent. The Clinton administration last week announced a $7.1 billion rescue res-cue package that includes $2 billion in emergency aid. Republicans in Congress are pushing a $3.9 billion plan. The difference between the two plans is Clinton's would give farmers a one-year boost in a key price subsidy called a marketing loan. Because this violates the landmark land-mark farm legislation, The Freedom to Farm Act. passed two years ago to reduce subsidies, Christy said the Farm Bureau is supporting the more conservative Republican proposal. Also the implementation of the International Monetary Fund would infuse $17 billion into countries which could then buy U.S. farm goods. "We hope to have another meeting meet-ing with our Congressmen present," said Greg Whitbeck, Farm Services Agency. land is located in the City of Roosevelt, there are thousands of acres of homesteaded lands scattered scat-tered throughout Uintah County and in particular, Duchesne County. If the Supreme Court's decision had been implemented, the Tribe, State, counties and BIA would have faced a law enforcement nightmare. Any time the State Highway Patrol or county sheriff stopped a tribal member, they would have had to search title records to determine whether the State, County, Tribe or BIA had jurisdiction to arrest that person. The location of the offense, and not the ethnic identity of the person charged with the offense, would have determined which court had authority to prosecute the person. per-son. To avoid this situation and make law enforcement possible within the Reservation boundaries, the State and counties have agreed to cite into tribal court all tribal members who are accused of committing misdemeanor offenses anywhere within the original boundaries of the Reservation even if the offense is committed on lands that are no longer within "Indian country" and over which the State and counties have jurisdiction. "This is the first time that we know of, in the history of the United States, that a state has actually actu-ally agreed to surrender to a tribe See Tribe on page 3 POOR COPY si |