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On filth and Miss America Corpus Christi Ray Dillon is a game warden with the State Parks and Wildlife Commission. His job in the Corpus Christi area requires that he work against what he calls “the pollutions,” because these kill game and fish. He let me go along on a tour of the pollutions: A leak somewhere underground where two oil companies’ pipelines come together, responsibility for which each company disclaims as the petroleum continues to ooze to the surface. About an acre of petroleum sludge in a declivity, uncovered, open to the air and any passing spark, dumped by the clean-up “vacuum trucks” 150 feet from a Sun-Tide oil tank farm an incredible fire hazard. The spot where Coastal States, from one direction, and PPG, the petrochemicals firm, from another, pour tons of hot waste water, loaded with chemicals, into the ship channel, which empties into Corpus Christi Bay. \(On Oct. 29, the state re-authorized PPG to discharge 75 million gallons of the Tule Lake, a large lake, once a duck haven, now a grisly industrial-petroleum dump, a lake of brine emptying into the ship channel, thence into the bay. Acres of nitrogen-laden fertilizer, 300 tons of it exposed to the open air by Hurricane Celia, running now into the ship channel with every heavy rain and probably the cause of a “fish kill” of five to six million fish on a single day a few weeks ago. And, as Rep. Sissy Farenthold of Corpus Christi says, “on and on and on.” The skyline of Corpus Christi, “sparkling city by the sea,” was blotted out the other day by smog. Driving over the bridges into the city from the north, the ship channel looks like one long aggregation of industrial belches. Central Power & Light’s Corpus Christi plant, located on a strip of land between the ship channel and Nueces Bay, has just been granted official state permission to shoot millions of gallons of hot water into Nueces Bay. It would do less damage in the already-deadened ship channel, but CP&L says it would cost too much to pipe it under a roadbed. Nueces Bay is the best nesting place for shrimp south of Matagorda Bay. The hot water injection from the CP&L plant will cause a “thermal block” in the Bay, an ecological blockade of hot water. How far out the block will extend will depend on how much pressure the company puts behind the water it shoots out into it. The block could go a third of the way across . . . half . . . two-thirds. Fishing, shrimp nesting, Nueces Bay itself as a beautiful place, may be doomed. And with the ship channel emptying Observations into Corpus Christi Bay, how much longer can it last? Officials for anarchy Grand juries and officials who protect those society whom has given guns but who have abused their trust are the best friends, not of law and order, but of anarchy and violence. The Kent State grand jury that blamed and indicted students and professors instead of the Guardsmen who shot and killed students flew in the face of the evidence collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That grand jury aided and abetted anarchy and violence. One stands up for the even enforcement of the laws; for order. What then does one say when he reads, in the Corpus Christi Caller, that high-up officials are “clearing” a policeman who shot in the head and killed, by accident, he said, a Mexican-American evidently involved in the theft of a tire? What does one say as the authorities fail to find, and the FBI fails to try to find, those guilty of the Pacifica bombings and a series of shootings and bombings aimed at persons on the left in Houston? Those who enforce law and order had better enforce it for everybody or it will become increasingly unenforceable for anybody. 28.34 per cent Herbert Mitgang, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, has taken a straight look at the usually meaningless “casualty figures” of the Vietnam war. In the Times late last month he wrote: “In general, about seven times as many American soldiers are wounded as are killed. The figures show that the brunt of the casualties killed and wounded are taken by draftees rather than Army regulars. They are up front. . “The continuing perils in total casualty terms are reflected in comparative figures for this and other twentieth-century wars. In the first World War, 53,400 Americans were killed and 204,000 wounded; in the Second 291,500 were killed and 670,000 wounded; in Korea, 33,600 were killed and 103,000 wounded; in Vietnam, 43,800 have been killed and over 290,300 wounded so far… . “Percentage disabilities for impair-. ment of sense organs were 5.60 in World War II, 10.81 in Korea, and 14.27 in Vietna,. Wounded Army personnel separated for disability as a result of amputations of arms and legs were 18.02 in World War II, 21.64 in Korea, and 28.34 in Vietnam.” Yet, Mitgang continued, Nixon vetoed a Congressional effort to appropriate an additional $105 million specifically for Veterans’ Administration hospitals. Forty dead rats For a while, I made bread. It was great, but it takes too long to do. Now, we buy only wheat bread or Pepperidge Farm. We have known, because we pay attention to the nutritionists the M.D.’s are so bent on damning as quacks, that commercial “enriched” bread has been first stripped of its nutrients and then phonied up so it can be called “enriched.” Now, Dr. Roger Williams, a University of Texas nutrition expert and a member of the National Academy of Science, has blown the scientific whistle on the bread-merchants. In a paper he read to the NAS during its meeting in Houston late last month, Williams revealed that he experimentally fed 64 rats on nothing but “enriched” commercial-bakery bread, and within 90 days forty of the rats died of malnutrition and the survivors “were severely stunted.” He fed 64 other rats nothing but bread properly supplemented at the end of the same period all but three of the rats were “alive and growing.” “From this experiment, it appears that an extremely serious situation exists with respect to the manifold products made from so-called enriched flour,” he said. In fact, he said, a prolonged diet of only the commercial “enriched” bread will starve a person to death. The divine maidenform I guess I will conclude this fortnight’s catalogue of horrors with excerpts from an AP story from Denton, Texas, about the new Miss America, Phyllis George. “Asked how she felt when she was among the ten finalists for Miss America,” AP reported, “Miss George confided that she felt the outcome would reflect ‘God’s will.’ She said when it was narrowed to her and one other, the two told each other the decision would be ‘His choice.’ .. . “As for future plans, she said she wants to do TV commercials. . . .” R.D. Nov. 13, 1970 15