*5
Dedicated workers required
to keep UNL community cozy
By Darken Ivy
Staff Reporter
Students may not notice the important role
the campus utility plants have in their daily lives
at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Even
fewer may understand how all the machinery
in the utility plants works.
But they do notice if they’re too hot, too
cold and if campus building are without water
and electricity.
That’s why employees at campus utility
plants aim to keep the campus cool in the sum
mer, warm in the winter and electrically pow
ered throughout the year bv working 24 hours
a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
“Our utility division works 24 hours a day
because the campuses always need electricity,
heating and cooling,” said Gary Thalken, man
ager of utilities. “These are necessary services
for a successful teaching and research environ
ment.”
The UNL utilities division acts like a regu
lar district utility company. The utility plants
transfer electricity, produce steam far heating
and produce cool air for air conditioning, which
is used by City Campus, East Campus and off
campus buildings.
“We buy it, distribute it and bill it each
month,” Thalken said.
Because the utility plants are a campus de
partment, they collect money from university
facilities in two different ways. Expenses from
the residence halls, the Nebraska Union, the
State Capitol, the Bob Devaney Sports Center
and the Pershing Armory are paid on a monthly
basis according to the amount of energy each
one uses during the month.
However, the energy costs for the academic
buildings on campus are paid for with the
money the Legislature allots the NU budget
each year.
In 1996, the university paid $10.5 million
for energy from the utility plants. This money
paid for the 146.5 million kilowatt hours of elec
tricity, 650 million pounds of steam and 32.8
million terns of chilled water City Campus used.
It also included the 48.5 million kilowatt
hours of electricity, 288 million pounds of steam
and 10.4 million tons of cool air East Campus
used.
Plants of the past
The university hasn’t always had its own
utility plants. When the university was founded,
each of the buildings had self-contained heat
ing units.
But after the number of buildings increased,
the City and East campuses had to build their
own utility plants. That first city plant was built
where Richards Hall is now.
In 1926, a new plant was built and the steam
part of that plant is still part of the current util
ity plant at 14th and Avery streets.
Since the City Campus plant was built, there
have been many additions.
Last year, the plant’s four original brick
boilers were removed. Currently, one of the new
steel boilers has been installed, but Thalken
hopes to have the other boiler installed by
March 1998. Although the plant is only install
ing two new boilers, the total heating capacity
will be greater.
“The new boilers will be more efficient and
more reliable,” Thalken said.
Located in the middle of East Campus, the
East Campus power plant supplies energy to
all of East Campus and to the Pershing Armory.
Originally built in 1926, the East Campus plant
also has had many additions.
With these additions, the plant now has
three boilers, three chillers, three cooling tow
ers, one electrical substation, one emergency
generator and 100,000 gallons of stored oil.
Distribution, not generation
Before 1980, the two utility plants gener
ated their own power because the costs were
comparable with buying from an outside source.
But in the last 16 years, generating their
own power has become impractical for many
power plants.
“We can buy it cheaper than we can pro
duce it,” Thalken said.
The utility plants spend an average of
$30,000 a day on energy. Thalken estimated
that this figure would be at least twice as much
if the plants produced their own.
Another factor that makes generating en
ergy impractical is the fact that the power plants
don’t have enough generation capacity to gen
erate energy fen* the whole campus, he said.
Thalken said the plants would have to buy other
energy anyway.
Plans for power
Steam far the university is produced by the
utility plant boilers. The boilers bum natural
gas or oil, which in turn heats the water. The
heated water then turns to steam and is distrib
uted to buildings through pipes. Inside the cam
pus buildings, the steam is used to heat air or
water.
The cooling system is not as simple. The
coding systems consist of cooling towers, chill
ers, Freon and cooling rods. The water starts
in the chiller where it is cooled by the Freon.
The cool water is then piped to the campus
buildings where it goes across cooling rods. As
the water goes across the rods a fan blows the
cool air through vents. This is the air condi
tioning.
After the water goes through the rods, it
cones out warmer. This warm water is piped
back to the plant where it starts the cycle over
again. Like any air conditioning unit, the cool
ing towers blow the warm air or steam into the
air. This steam is what many students might
seecoming out of the utility plants in the mail
ing- ....
Electricity also is distributed to the campus
through the substations at these utility plants.
Behind the scenes
However, all the university’s massive ma
chinery would be useless without the people
who operate and hike care of it.
Forty-three UNL utilities company employ
ees work around the clock keeping the machin
ery operational.
Overseeing the operations of the entire util
ity company the past 11 years has been part of
Thalken’s managerial duties.
Additional upkeep of the plants has been
done by Jim Lane and Bill Peters, the City Cam
pus and East Campus plant superintendents.
Although Lane and Peters are the superinten
dents, they couldn’t do it without the help of
their co-workers.
“The utility plants are an essential part of
the campus and the people who run (the plant)
are the cogs in the wheel,” Peters said.
Leader of England’s Labor Party revamps creed
Charismatic Blair could
bring the movement to new
political heights.
By Robert Barr
The Associated Press
LONDON—Die Labor Party was a mass
movement bom in the mines, mills and dock
yards of Britain, but the Labor Party in its cur
rent form is largely associated with one man:
Tony Blair.
in uirce years as party leaner, mair nas
changed the party’s creed, branded it “new
Labor," and put it in position to win a national
election Thursday for the first time in 23 years.
Suppressing the ideological battles that pre
occupied the party a decade ago, and embrac
ing many of the policies of the governing Con
servative party, the 43-year-old Blair has led
Labor on a single-minded quest for power.
If he succeeds in this week’s national elec
tions, Blair will be Britain’s youngest prime
minister since Lord Liverpool, who was 42
when he assumed office in 1812. t
“What Tony Blair has particularly done is
to admire and, in a sense, imitate Margaret
Thatcher’s techniques at the height of her pow
ers,” said Roy Hattersley, deputy leader of the
Labor Party in the last election.
Political chameleon
Critics inside and outside the party charge
that there’s little substance behind the catchy
slogans and the high-wattage grin of the leader.
The common accusation is that charismatic
Blair has traded principles for popularity.
“Isn’t the real truth that you are a politi
cally hungry chameleon?” a talk-show caller
demanded of Blair on Tuesday.
Blair responded: “I refuse to believe that the
Labor Party should either face a choice of be
ing electable and unprincipled or principled but
unelectable.”
Blair said voters face two fundamental ques
tions: Do the Conservatives deserve a fifth
term? Is new Labor really different from the
party that lost the last four elections?
Specific issues of government and policy
take second place to those larger questions, but
Blair wants to reassure his followers that the
party still leans left.
“I want the left to realize that if we win this
election, we will have done so without ceding
any ground that cannot be recovered,” Blair
said.
I am going to be a lot more radical in gov
ernment than many people think,” he said.
Oxford and rock music
Blair already is more radical than his back
ground would suggest. He grew up in a com
fortable middle-class home in Durham, and his
father, a law professor, headed the Conserva
tive Association there.
Blair went to Oxford University in the early
1970s where he was lead singer in a rock band
called Ugly Rumors. Even then, the driven
young man was apparent beneath the shoul
der-length hair and skin-tight trousers.
At Oxford, Blair also became acquainted
with Peter Thomson, an Anglican priest from
Australia who led long and Influential conver
a
What I can promise is that there will be a fresh
start with different priorities, different values —
and bit by bit we will rebuild the education system,
the health service and the welfare state in this
country”
Tony Blair
Labor Parly prime minister candidate
sations with students about theology and poli
tics, and the idea of community.
Blair went into trade union and industrial
law after graduating and marrying fellow bar
rister Cherie Booth in 1980. They have three
children.
He started making a mark in the Labor Party
in 1992 when he was appointed spokesman cm
crime and justice. He set out to take the law
and order issue from the Conservatives, and
make it Labor’s.
“I think it’s important that we are tough on
crime and tough on the causes of crime too,”
Blair said in 1993.
Stepping up to stands
Labor annexed other Tory issues in a simi
lar style. On taxes Labor has pledged no in
crease in the top rates, and no increase in spend
ing overall.
“What I can promise is that there will be a
fresh start with different priorities, different
values—and bit by bit we will rebuild the edu
cation system, the health service and the wel
fare state in this country,” he says.
Blair completed the work of two predeces
sors in revamping the Labor Party after it polled
just 28 percent of the vote in 1983. Blair won
his seat in the House of Commons that year on
a Labor platform advocating unilateral nuclear
disarmament, higher government spending,
more borrowing, and withdrawal from what is
now called the European Union.
In its eagerness to woo Conservative vot
ers, the Labor Party now embraces ffee-market
capitalism, is enthusiastic overall about Euro
pean Union, has said it will keep to current
spending ceilings, and plans to retain Britain’s
nuclear power.
Or as political satirist Rory Bremner says
in his Tony Blair light bulb joke: “Why change
it if it’s working?”
