DE Since 1916
Daily Egyptian WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2014 VOLUME 98 ISSUE 120
Groups disagree on future of energy
Amtrak: Delays up, ridership down Jon Hilkevitch Chicago Tribune
Amtrak ridership dropped an average of 4 percent in Illinois on downstate corridors with connections to Chicago in fiscal 2014, the passenger railroad reported Tuesday, putting much of the blame on late arrivals and departures caused by freight train interference. The problem of freight congestion blocking passenger trains is affecting Amtrak service across the Midwest and also stretching from
Chicago—Amtrak’s busiest hub—to the East Coast, officials said. “Delays of four hours or more for Amtrak trains operating between Chicago and Cleveland have become a near daily occurrence,” said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari. “These and other major delays have ripple effects across the Amtrak national system.” Amtrak’s Capitol Limited trains, which operate between Chicago and Washington, D.C., were late 97 percent of the time in
September, records show. Amtrak has resorted to busing passengers overnight to and from Toledo, Ohio, as well as in North Dakota, for instance, because of gridlock on the rails, Magliari said. In the face of worsening on-time performance, Amtrak President and CEO Joseph Boardman announced Monday that he is setting up a committee of rail and transportation leaders to address rail traffic congestion in Chicago.
Spending time at local breweries
Austin Miller Daily Egyptian
Coal is one the oldest forms of energy in the world, being the fossilized remnants of trees that are millions of years old. Now, the debate is whether or not people should continue to use it. Jeff Biggers, a southern Illinois native and author of “Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland,” said the future of energy lies in renewable energy sources, rather than coal. Biggers, who spoke about the future of energy in Illinois on Oct. 16 at Guyon Auditorium, comes from a family of coal miners, and said his grandfather paid for his mother’s education at SIU with wages made as a coal miner. “We are looking now at a huge issue of conflict,” Biggers said. “This is the challenge of our generation.” One of the problems with using coal is the working conditions of mines, Biggers said. He said there was a tenfold increase of black lung disease cases from 1998 and 2012, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That rate is the highest since the 1970s. Black lung is caused by breathing in coal dust, which builds up in the lungs. Biggers said black lung disease was the cause of his grandfather’s death. Brent Ritzel, president of the Buckminster Fuller Future Registered Student Organization, helped bring Biggers to SIU. Please see COAL · 3
N ick G aliNdo d aily E GyptiaN Kyle Groves, right, hands out draft beer to a customer Saturday at Scratch Brewing Company in Ava. “I was coming out here as a customer before I worked here and I’ve known these guys for the past couple years … this is a really special place,” Groves said.
Please see page 5 for this story
Unofficial Halloween may benefit city economically
Engineering experts sell new system to control coal dust
Sean Phee
Daily Egyptian
Daily Egyptian
One only needs to go to YouTube and type in “Carbondale Halloween” to see that Halloween and unofficial Halloween are big events in the city. However, Halloween may provide a significant economic boost to the city according to residents and business owners. Residents have been celebrating Halloween earlier in the month since an infamous riot in 2000. Carbondale City Manger Kevin Baity said the City Council decided to close many bars on the strip during Halloween, and students reacted by creating unofficial Halloween on an earlier date. Some residents loathe the annual celebration because of large amounts of alcohol consumption and property damage caused by some party-goers. Unofficial Halloween attracts hundreds
of people to the city of Carbondale for Halloween-themed parties. This year it fell on Oct. 17 and 18, and resulted in some criminal activity including a flipped car. Still, this year’s celebration was not as unruly as past events, which prompted the council’s decision in the first place, Baity said. While some say the event has a positive impact on the city economically, Baity disagrees. “From an economic standpoint, unofficial does not produce significant retail sales that are trackable,” he said. However, many business owners reported a large increase in sales during the weekend. James Karayiannis, the president of Pinch Penny Pub and Copper Dragon, said his businesses saw a tremendous increase in sales during unofficial. Greg Knoob, owner of Levels and Saluki Bar, said he saw a 100 percent increase in business. Please see HALLOWEEN · 2
Austin Miller In a coal mine, miners work with clouds of black soot hanging over their heads and entering their lungs. Minerals Development Technologies Inc., a local company owned partially by SIU professors Yoginder Chugh and Harrold Gurley, have created a new system to reduce the amount of breathable dust in coal mines. Chugh, professor of mining and mineral resources engineering, said his group has been researching ways to control dust for six years. He said mine companies have been spraying water to wet the dust and take it out of the air, but those methods have no scientific foundation. Coal particles are thrown into the air during mining, and Chugh said coal dust gets into the lungs of miners, causing miner’s silicosis. Miner’s silicosis is an incurable disease that causing swelling of the lungs, according to
American Lung Association’s website. “We have been committed to the health and safety of miners for the last 30 years that I have been working here,” Chugh said. “We feel very, very happy that we are finally able to get some of our ideas into the marketplace.” Chugh said the spraying system they have developed takes the mineral composition of coal and airflow of the mines into account to create a more scientifically accurate spraying system. Gurley, professor of mining and mineral resources engineering, said seven to 11 spray blocks–which house the nozzles–are mounted on the machines, called continuous miners, that mine coal. The sprayed water mixes with the mined coal, but the amount of water used is not large enough to affect the coal, Chugh said. The continuous miners gather 14 to 16 tons of coal per minute, while the water system uses 40 gallons of water per minute. Please see MINE · 3