Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 17, 1993 TAG: 9305170022
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Jesse Perdue, manager of Roanoke's utility line services department, has removed an embroidery of Confederate flags from his office wall at the request of his bosses.
"It was felt, and Mr. Perdue agreed, that since it could be found offensive to some people, he removed it," city utilities chief Kit Kiser said Friday.
Perdue was at a conference Friday and could not be reached for comment, a woman at his office said.
A small picture of various, billowing Confederate flags, cross-stitched for Civil War buff Perdue by his wife, was cited recently by two black sewer-line workers as evidence of racial insensitivity in the department. One of the men was granted a promotion last week after lodging a discrimination complaint.
Just a minute
Traveling preacher Clyde Dupin starts his revival meetings at a nice, odd hour. No, make that a nice, odd minute.
Appearing the first week of this month at Critz Baptist Church in Patrick County, Dupin got the church's pastor to advertise the revivals as beginning at "7:27 p.m. nightly."
Pastor Billy Joe Dixon asked Dupin the obvious question: Why 7:27 p.m.? The answer, Dupin told Dixon, lay in the confusion surrounding the starting time of different Protestant denominations.
"Seven thirty, that's Baptist time," Dixon said. "Some others start at seven. He didn't want any mixups."
Say again?
Chalk it up as another cost of the blizzard of '93.
Repairing the mudslide on the Fishburn Parkway in Roanoke cost $98,868.
The repairs have been completed on the main access road to the Mill Mountain Zoo and Star.
City Engineer Charles Huffine said the cost was - get this - lower than what city officials had expected.
The mudslide occurred in late March after the blizzard and heavy rainfall.
Meanwhile, Prospect Road, the old route up the mountain, will remain closed indefinitely because of the high cost of replacing a deteriorated overhead bridge on it. The road has been closed for three years.
Replacing the bridge would cost an estimated $350,000, City Manager Bob Herbert said. Removing the bridge and realigning the road would cost $200,000, he said.
Prospect Road remains a low priority in light of more pressing needs such as the replacement of the Walnut Avenue bridge over the Roanoke River, he said.
Rules to save lives
New federal regulations are now in place to protect the 1.6 million Americans who work in confined spaces.
\ Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules, effective last month, cover work in storage vessels, furnaces, manholes, railroad tank cars and other closed spaces. OSHA says that 54 Americans die and thousands more are injured in confined-space work each year.
Roanoke Belt Inc. employees Frank Wayne Johnson, 52, of Salem; Stephen "Cookie" Miller, 39, of Roanoke; and Martin "Boomer" Mroczkowski, 21, of Roanoke died in September from inhaling glue as they repaired the lining of an 18,000-gallon disinfectant tank at an Arlington sewage-treatment plant.
Virginia will do some tightening to match federal standards on general industry, but state Department of Labor and Industry spokesman Harry Carver said strong state rules on the kind of work done by the three men already were on the books. His department fined Roanoke Belt more than $600,000 in March.
Cleaning up the awards
Citizens for a Clean Environment, the Alleghany County group that fought to have the Kim-Stan Landfill closed, was inducted Sunday into an environmental hall of fame.
\ Alicia Gordon, a Citizens member, went to Arlington to accept an award from the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes. Ralph Nader was to be there.
"We're happy with the award," said Gordon in an interview; but ever the activist, she had a quick jab for the state environmental bureaucracy. "We need the state government to hold up their end of the bargain. They need to clean it up and pay for it."
The Kim-Stan Landfill was closed by the state several years ago because it was leaking toxic substances into the environment. Then-Attorney General Mary Sue Terry worked to close Kim-Stan during her campaign in 1989, and campaigning Gov. Douglas Wilder took sides with the activists well.
"Doug Wilder stood on top of a mountain and said, `If I was governor, I'd issue an executive order to close it,'" Gordon said. "We monitored them. We did all the background work. We gave them the evidence they needed to prosecute."
Gordon says the cleanup price could be as much as $8.5 million, of which only $300,000 has been appropriated by the state.
Pigeon serial killers back?
Are the big birds back?
Remember those $23,000 worth of peregrine falcon chicks released from a building top in downtown Roanoke last summer? The birds of prey that might very well fly away and never come back?
They flew away, winging south to avoid our winter.
But there were spotty peregrine sightings through the winter.\ David McCutcheon, who coordinates the peregrine project for the Mill Mountain Zoo, suspects that peregrines from the North may have wintered in Roanoke and have now returned to their hometowns.
There's a growing bank of evidence that at least some of the year-old birds released in Roanoke are back.
A few sightings this month and some telltale pigeon parts dropped on the sidewalk are building a case that the once-endangered birds have come back home.
It's difficult to confirm sightings, said McCutcheon. Peregrines often are mistaken for more-common kestrels and red-tailed hawks, both of which are common.
He says there won't be any mating this season - peregrines need to be 2 or 3 years old before they start producing young.
by CNB