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Show ttUfoij Jt' a Ik jsalt iakc tribune Saturday Morning Section Januarv 18. A irw. rTHjo 1980 Page 14 Little Dell Dam Projeet Makes Big Water Use Planning Sense spillways on the Mountain Dell Dam may not be large enough to accomodate the flows in event of extremely heavy flooding. This could threaten a the stability of the strucuture locata for dam frightening prospect ed upstream from a major metropolitan area. Then came the floods of 1983 and 1984. Once again Mountain Dell was too small to have much impact on the high flows from Parleys Canyon and sandbag rivers reappeared in Salt Lake City. And this time city water officials had to worry about the stability of Mountain Dell as the flood waters filled the reservoir. It was, and still the is, an unacceptable situation. aggravated problem. After much debate, members of The proposed solution was Little the board of the Metropolitan Water Dell. By building another reservoir about two miles above Mountain Dell, District of Salt Lake City last week selected a design for the Little Dell city officials reasoned they could capDam and a way to finance the project. ture most of the spring runoff and alleviate flooding downstream. The If all the preliminary delays are now, stored water could then be released at last, cleared up, construction could begin as soon as the spring of 1987. during the summer and fall to supplement local drinking water supplies. Little Dell Dam always has been the made and sense, remains a vitally needed flood Although project it languished for many years because control structure. In expanding storof high costs and uncertainty about age capacity, taking considerable wet how large a dam was desirable. year pressures off Mountain Dell Dam Two factors have revived the dam and increasing municipal water supin recent years. First were the studies plies somewhat, Little Dell makes a conducted in the wake of the Teton big contribution. Its time to stop talkDam disaster which showed that the ing and planning and start building. After more than 33 years of discussion. no one can accuse Salt Lake City officials of rushing into the Little Dell Dam project. Its about time they finally made a decision to proceed with this important project. The dam was first proposed in 1952 when spring runoff floods from Parleys Canyon overwhelmed the citys storm sewer system. The result was Salt Lake Citys first sandbag river" down 1300 South. The problem was that Mountain Dell reservoir was just too small to accomodate the runoff in Parleys Canyon. Once it filled, the city took the full brunt of flood flows. An inadequate storm sewer system only Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover Reagan Still Ignores Black Agenda More on Tobacco Warnings planned it that way, Utahns couldnt have chosen a more opportune time to tout warning labels on smokeless tobacco. Even as Utahs House Health Committee considered labeling legislation Wednesday, a National Institutes of Health panel issued the strongest statement so far against snuff and chewing tobacco. As long as the issue is kept in perspective, that juxtaposition of events should stack up in the publics favor. The federal panel of experts announced that regular use of the ground and cut tobacco, which usually is held between the cheek and gum, indeed endangers health and increases the risk of mouth and throat cancer. The panels report points out that the product may cause gum recession and thick white patches of gum tissue that can turn malignant. "The human data provide convincing evidence for an increased risk of oral cancer as the results of smokeless tobacco use," the panel said. Meanwhile, members of the Utah Legislature were shown what that and other health groups have been talking about since millions of Americans, many of them younger than 21, have turned to snuff and chewing tobacco If they had as a "healthy alternative to cigarettes. Technicolor slides graphically showed gum erosion, teeth stains, inflammation and tongue cancer, presumably the signs of regular smokeless tobacco use. The visual aids apparently did the trick. The legislative committee promptly approved a bill mandating this label for smokeless tobacco products: "Use of this product may cause oral cancer and other mouth disorders and is addictive." That endorsement, coupled with the new federal report, should go a long way toward swaying the rest of the Legislature in the warning label's favor. Those lawmakers should not allow the momentum building for warn- - ing labels, however, to turn their heads in the wrong direction. The same day they embraced warning labels, House Health Com- Chicago Tribune Servve In the observances of WASHINGTON Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s birthday culminating with next Monday's national holiday. President Reagan is taking pains to be out front and center. Although he opposed the holiday for years before relenting and sign-- , ing the bill when Congress sent it to him, he has now joined the festivities. In one sense, this action is in character for a man who personally radiates good will and seems to bear no grudges. Although repeatedly attacked by black political leaders, the presidenthas always insisted that he has been a champion of equal rights for black Americans. On numerous occasions, he has indicated how pained he has been that anyone might think otherwise. His participation in public events leading up to the national holiday, and his White House invitation to Coretta Scott King. Dr. Kings widow, are all part of an effort to as well as. underscore his commitment s gesture in quite obviously, a a continuing Republican Party campaign to public-relation- mittee members, apparently caught court black voters. As evidence that this effort has been up in the euphoria of the moment, apWhite House political aides point to working. proved a bill that would outlaw clove recent surveys by two ranking Republican cigarettes. Another law has been inpollsters showing a sharp rise in black suptroduced to ban smokeless tobacco port for Reagan. One, by Robert Teeter, indicated that 36 percent of blacks approved of outright. the president, and the other, by Richard Given the legality of producing Wirthlin, gave him 38 percent. An indepenand marketing cigarettes and other dent poll by CBS News and The New York tobacco products in this country, these Times indicated an even higher approval last two measures would go too far, if rating of 56 percent four times higher than Reagan's not fail. Smokeless tobacco producers would not stand for a ban while cigarettes, which are at least as dangerous, continue to be sold in this state and would surely seek costly court relief. Smokeless tobacco users, meanwhile, would not put up with such restrictions on their personal freedoms. And if the issue ever got that far, Utahns could expect illegal tobacco trade to develop. The proposed Utah bans simply sound too much like the American Medical Associations but misguided attempt to outlaw all tobacco advertising. While the AMA proposal would arbitrarily single out one legal product for free speech restrictions, the pending Utah measures presume to outlaw one or two products in this state which are pervasively, legally sold throughout the nation. Alerting Utahns to the health risks of all types of tobacco and enforcing well-meanin- g com-meric- al existing restrictions against tobacco sales to minors are more responsible, realistic courses of action. The 1986 Utah Legislature should concentrate their energies in those areas and leave product prohibitions to Congress. How come there's so much more taxation WITH representation? The first big milestone in a boy's life is hen he decides that girls are more interesting than frogs, but he isn't sure why w 1 1 percent of the black vote in 1984. None of this, however, is cutting much ice with the established political leadership of the black community. Althea Simmons, director of the Washington office of the National Association for the Advancement of these leaders are voter concerns. in the forefront of black Beyond the cosmetics of the King birthday observances, leaders like Simmons say the real test of where the Reagan administration stands is how it will resolve its interthe nal debate over affirmative action executive order requiring holders of government contracts to set timetables and goals for minority employment. Attorney General Edwin Meese on television the other day predicted there will be "changes" and perhaps additions" to the order, which he has contended now discriminates against whites. If that happens, says Simmons, also the NAACP's chief lobbyist, her organization and others will launch a campaign to have Congress override the executive order by writing affirmative action in minority hiring into law. Some 60 Republicans in Congress have already expressed their support for the executive order as it now stands, she notes. They are not likely to let the president weaken it. she predicts, "when they have elections to face in the fall and he doesn't." Colored People, says Reagans participation in the holiday observances is simply a case of "seeing the train going on without him, so he gets on board." While he does, she charges, his administration "is committed in its efforts to roll back civil rights," to the point that the NAACP will be obliged in its lobbying before the new session of Congress to "fight to regain the gains of the last 35 years." Simmons and other leaders of the traditional black political organizations, including the Congressional Black Caucus, say they continue to get a cold shoulder from the Reagan White House as it attempts to give blacks it prefers credibility to lesser-knowto deal with. They put in this category the Council for a Black Economic Agenda, whose members, supportive of Reagan's economic policies, had a meeting with him at the White House the other day. "Mr. Reagan seeks to make leaders," Simmons says. "But black people determine their own leaders. They don't want and don't need him to do it for them." In addition to dealing with these black businessmen and economists, the president and his head of the Civil Rights Commission, Clarence Pendleton, have on several occasions alleged that the traditions al black leadership does not speak for most blacks. Polls repeatedly show, though, that the issues espoused by n Within the administration. Secretary of Labor Bill Brock has led the fight to retain executive order, a the affirmative-actiofight that is said to have reached a stalemate. With the observance of Dr. King's birthday at hand, this obviously is not the if Meese is to be the time to resolve it winner n So for now President Reagan will pay while the tribute in his fashion to King established black leaders do a slow burn. civil-right- Is There a Solution to Teen Pregnancies? Universal Press Syndicate We sat in the semidarkness of the warm Brooklyn night and listened to the old man weep. My best friend and I were 8. too young to understand the intricacies of "big people's business." as his mother put it. So we feigned indifference and went outside, hoping to learn more through the darkening window. My friend's mother returned to consoling her distraught brother. The source of his distress, we soon deduced, was that his youngest daughter was pregnant by her boyfriend. Both were popular in their church and community. Her mother and father were racked with anguish and humiliation. Soon it would be all over the neighborhood. Shame. That same year. 1950, a prominent young couple in our community made known their intention to divorce. The news spread up and down our street like a prairie fire. Their parents. too. dropped their heads a little when they walked past prominent neighbors, such as clergy and their families. Such were the disgraces of those times. Good or bad, those mores have virtually vanished from our culture, especially in the big cities. Those who struggle to maintain such values have chosen an arduous task against powerful trends The divorce revolution, which gained its momentum in the middle '60s. has helped set off another trend teen-ag- e pregnancy. Over the last 30 years, the two have developed a close statistical relationship In 1950, the year of such sorrow in the neighborhood, divorce in America was relatively rare Less than one marriage in five ended in divorce. That same year, according to statistics compiled by the Children's Defense Fund, less than 15 percent of all births in the United States were to unmarried wo- resent, are not going to be wished away. Nor is there a clear social agenda for dealing with the consequences of this teen-ag- e population explosion. Worse, the Children's Defense Fund and Planned Parenthood agencies stand almost alone among social agencies on the national scene in even raising an alarm about the childbirth. spiraling syndrome of teen-agThose who would exhort youngsters to remain chaste until marriage may feel morally better for the exercise, but the results are poor, and the problem continues to grow. A and financed campaign must place its stress on educating s about their limited life chances as parents, and the limited life chances of their children. Role models of women in professional life have to be a major part of such an educational campaign. Such scant data as there is suggests young women with clear career goals are less likely to become pregnant and give birth before high school graduation than those without clear goals. Sweden offers the best evidence education works. It has for years been educating its children aboht sexuality and fertility. The results are impressive compared with the United States. For every three s who become pregnant in the U.S.. one becomes pregnant in Sweden. men. By 1980, there was one divorce for every two marriages, and almost 30 e well-focuse- d teen-ager- s gave birth every hour someAmerica. place To say this set of numbers suggests an extreme shift in American family structure is to state the obvious. The question is whether that is what we as a society want: a nation of children raising children. An increasing number of adolescents arc being raised in households with a single parent, almost always by a working mother. Try as the mother might at strict supervision, s find themselves on millions of their own a good deal of the time. Add to that our inability to educate about sexuality and fertility, and you have the recipe for a population explosion among 300,000 of whom gave birth last year before finishing high lock teen-ager- in teen-ager- teen-ager- well-know- n teen-ager- s. school Those numbers, and the people they rep- - What so upset the elders of my community back in the '50s we take for granted today. Half our marriages fail, and s get teen-ager- pregnant. Few weep over the commonplace. That might be the tragedy Middle East Terrorism Has Deep Roots in Plight of Palestinians Washington Post Writers Group Some individuals so dominate the processes of which they are a part that they and the process become almost identical. To a considerable extent, Martin Luther King Jr. WAS the movement; John F. Kennedy WAS the return of American idealism; Anwar Sadat WAS the Middle East peace process. Yasser Arafat WAS though no longer is) Palestinian resistance Hul if personification is sometimes a useful slim thand way of dealing with movement'. ideas and processes, it can also be a dangerous distraction that obscuies more than it illuminates Libya's Moammar as barbaric and "flaky" as he may be. is not terrorism. The problem with making the Libyan the embodiment of international terrorism, as President Reagan came too close to doing at his recent news conference, is that it gets us - WASHINGTON civil-right- thinking that if we can somehow isolate him. and perhaps one or two others, we can elimi- nate international terrorism. It obscures the fact that the principal source of terrorism in the Middle East is the s None of this means that Reagan is w rong to try to isolate Khadafy, who, our intellir gence experts tell us. was an important in the slaughter in the Rome and Vienna airports, and in other terrorist acts as well In fact. I think the president is handling the matter rather well (though goading and silly name r ailing is likely to prove counterpro duetivei fue-W- i Kha-duly- ,1 - toward a solution, including the refusal of America and Israel to talk to the PLO. virtually guarantees that terrorism will increase and that it will spread in all likelihood to the United States. , absence of any effective international alten tion to the plight of the Palestinians It may not follow that resolution of that problem even the creation of an independent Paleswill spell an end to terrorism tinian state But it seems inarguable that failure to work f Whatever his failings with regard to the "peace process," Reagan is right to serve notice that the United States Is prepared to in react unilaterally if necessary sponse to the killing of Americans And while his halting of all US trade with Libya is given the relative insignificance of trade between the two countries, more form than substance, it does serve to highlight the irresolute economics-above-hono- r attitude of America's European allies. It is interesting that Reagan, still viewed in much of the world as a Wild West gunslinger, has recognized that the sort of threats that might work with a stagecoach robber or a rustler, don't work at all with terrorists who are prepared to die for what they perceive as a noble cause. He understands that it would be far more effective to deny safe haven for terrorist organizations, and that one way of doing that would be to punish, with economic isolation, those nations that provide them bases and training facilities. It's too bad our European allies lark that understanding, or the courage to act on it But while the President's policy for deal It's important to understand that some is an attempt to disrupt peace negotiations. But most of it is a direct result of the absence of negotiations. Thus, while Reagan is using his influence to persuade America's allies to join him in an international campaign against terrorism, he must also work to persuade Israel to join him in working toward resolution of the Palestinian problem terrorist activity There's no point in pretending that the problem of terrorism can be resolved merely by naming it Khadafy and tightening the screws on Libya. I K i A ing with terrorism makes sense, it is important, too, to deal with the roots of terrorism: not in the sociological sense of dealing with the roots of crime but in recognition of the fact that terrorists who are prepared to die for a cause are not deterred by the threat of criminal sanctions. |
