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per 1,000 cubic feet. The FPC staff originally recommended a price of 35 cents, which it said would provide the companies with a reasonable return of 15 percent on their investment. Sen. John Pastore of Rhode Island called a hearing of the Commerce Committee to look into Moody’s controversial vote. Moody explained there must be a “misunderstanding” of what he had meant by “any matter.” He said he meant that he was barring himself from participating in any FPC case in which his former law firm “appears before the commission and in which the firm was employed.” But, he said, he represented Mallard in a court case in 1966 and that the case had nothing to do with the FPC. “I would not under any circumstance choose to be cast in the role of violating a pledge. And, certainly, I do not perceive that I have done so,” Moody said. “You may not be guilty of a crime,” answered Sen. Adlai Stevenson III, “but you are guilty of extremely bad judgment.” Down in Duval Waterplanning artificially inducing rainfall for West Texas was merely mentioned in passing by Harry P. Burleigh, executive director of the Texas Water Development Board, in the January-February issue of Water for Texas. Burleigh was talking about the difficult issues to be faced by the governor’s new task force on water conservation and development. Specifically, Burleigh said: “Other matters will preoccupy the task force. In at least two areas of our country the High Sierra and southwestern Colorado it has Not to worry . . . yet. The idea of The race for state senator in District 21, which includes Duval County among the 16 it covers, is getting interesting. Sen. John Traeger is running for re-election. He is opposed by Oscar Carrillo \(see Obs., brothers whose family has traditionally been close to that of Duval boss George Parr. With the Parrs weakened by indictments, a divorce case and such, the Carrillos are apparently making their move to supplant the Parrs. And Oscar is charging that Traeger is a Parr man. It seems the 229th judicial district had no district attorney since R. F. Nye resigned. According to Carrillo, Traeger and Parr are maneuvering to get a Parr man in. While the dickering with Gov. Dolph Briscoe is going on, by this account, Traeger is opposing all other nominations \(which would have to be approved by the Carrillo who originally had an appointee in mind. The incumbent notes that his approval is moot, since the Senate will not be in session before the May 4 primary anyway. Traeger says he will recommend to Briscoe that the governor appoint whoever wins the primary. As if that weren’t enough of a muddle, there is the case of the airborne leaflets. The Corpus Christi Caller reported Feb. 26 that thousands of small cards, printed with the words “Quien manda el condado de Duval, George Parr o los Carrillos?” \(“Who runs Duval, George dropped from an airplane over the county seat. No one seems to know exactly whom the leaflets are supposed to benefit. The range war has been getting more serious since Ramiro Carrillo \(county Gary Garrison that he and his brothers “have the votes” in the county. Shortly after that, Traeger says, he got a call from George Parr which left him with the distinct impression that Parr would not be knocking himself out supporting Oscar Carrillo. Meanwhile, in the divorce case involving George’s nephew Archer and Jody Martin Parr, the Fourth Court of Civil Appeals has overturned a district court judgment that put the Parr couple’s assets into receivership. The original suit was brought by the First State Bank of San Diego in an effort to guarantee repayment of a $125,000 loan. The bank president testified, though, that Parr’s financial condition was satisfactory and that the notes in question were not delinquent. Mrs. Parr appealed the receivership order which Dist. Judge 0. P. Carrillo entered in spite of the bank president’s testimony. She claimed that the order invested the receiver with even more power than the unnecessary amount sought by the bank. The appeals court agreed, ordered the receivership dissolved and advised the bank to intervene in the divorce case itself to safeguard its notes. The patron himself, George Parr, has been spending his time in court these days as well. Parr’s income-tax evasion case has finally gone to trial. He is accused of understating his income for the years 1966-69 by some $287,000 and of failing to pay about $129,000 in taxes. So far, the prosecution has been detailing some of the sources of that income. There were the $1,000-a-month consultant’s fees from Duval County. There were $40,000 in legal fees, the prosecution claims, listed as long-term capital gains income on Parr’s returns. There was a $60,000 payoff from a contractor who did business with the county, according to the testimony of the contractor \(who received immunity in told the jury, Parr had $166,000 worth of irrigation equipment for his ranch billed to the Duval County Conservation and Reclamation District. The water district paid the bill. been clearly demonstrated that natural precipitation rates can be increased by artificial means. Studies of this nature are the goal of a possible effort of this agency and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on the High Plains of Texas. They would be admittedly exploratory; as presently evolving, they would be under-financed. The task force would do well to take such steps as appropriate to assure additional funding for eastslope experiments of this nature at both the national and state levels.” It is true that the Water Development Board finally abandoned its 1968 plan to channel water from the Mississippi River to the High Plains, but the board is not necessarily desperate enough to try to fool Mother Nature into dumping extra water on dry West Texas. We’ll just have to wait and see. Meantime, Burleigh says the task force also will be looking into the feasibility of desalinization. And, he says, some of the most difficult questions the the state is going to provide 100 percent financing for water projects as the feds bail out \(possibly, Burleigh answers, by doing single-purpose rather than multi-purpose projects for example, by choosing not to supplies needed for cooling towers at a rapport with environmentalists and construction costs \(whether ’tis best to start construction early in anticipation of inflation or wait to start a project until there is an overwhelming need for it, thus Burleigh estimates that the state will need to spend at least a billion dollars on new water projects within the next decade. The Environmental Protection Agency wants all ocean dumping to stop by mid-1977. Furthermore, says Arthur Busch, the EPA’s regional administrator, the agency is “determined to prevent the Gulf of Mexico from deteriorating to the unnatural state of several other partially enclosed seas.” Environmentalists were, no doubt, cheered by these words, especially since they were spoken the same day the EPA granted permits for two industrial firms to dump 641,000 tons of poisonous wastes into the Gulf over the next year. DuPont gets 575,000 tons worth of the permit \(no Shell gets to dispose of 66,000 tons \(with no more than 3,250 tons going on one fungicides, insecticides, weed killers, nitrobenzene, ammonia and formaldehyde. They will be dropped into the water at a site 127 to 143 miles south of Galveston. There is an old dump site some 20 miles March 29, 1974 9