Inside: Lung cancer hits smokers and non-smokers alike See A2
Football: Denver defeats Kansas City See B1
THE IOLA REGISTER Monday, December 2, 2013
NATIONAL
Obamacare resuscitated WASHINGTON (AP) — Computer crashes should be giving way to insurance coverage — if the government’s diagnosis of its health care website is correct. The Health and Human Services Department released a progress report Sunday on its effort get the troubled HealthCare.gov website on the mend. Administration officials said the worst of the online glitches, bugs and delays may be over. “The bottom line — HealthCare. gov on Dec. 1 is night and day from where it was on Oct. 1,” said Jeff Zients, the White House’s troubleshooter tasked with making the website function properly. Yet officials acknowledged more work remains on the website, which made its national debut two months ago with hundreds of software flaws, inadequate equipment and inefficient management. Federal workers and private contractors have undertaken an intense reworking of the system, but some users might still encounter trouble. See OBAMACARE | Page A4
A thick layer of fog settled across southeast Kansas Sunday evening, through this morning. Snow is forecast for later this week. REGISTER/STEVEN SCHWARTZ
Much work Big oil pulling up yet to be done stakes in Kansas STATE
Tree cutters still dealing with effects of 2011-12 droughts By STEVEN SCHWARTZ The Iola Register
While annual rainfall this year across Allen County has relieved drought conditions caused by shortages in 2011-12, the effects remain. Tree trimmers, especially, are dealing with the damages. “It’s been a lot busier than the past couple of years,” Albert Radford, owner of Radford Tree Service, said. “It’s got someAlbert Radford, above, and Mike Stanford have been thing to do with the economy too, people doing their best to keep up with the large number tend to put trees on the back burner.” of trees damaged by two years of drought. REGISTER/ Trees hit by the drought have been shedSTEVEN SCHWARTZ ding their limbs over the past year, as well as those affected by blight and insects. Mike Standford, owner of S&S Tree Services, said drought and insects have been a bane for many of the trees in the area. “The trees that took it the hardest were probably the maples,” he said. “It (the drought) put them under a lot of stress, but we lose a couple of them every year.” Radford said it’s odd for the hearty tree to be affected so much by the elements. “Usually, they can stand quite a bit,” he said. Radford said his company has two to three weeks of work piled up in front of them — people are wanting to get trees cleared out before the cold sets in. In addition to maples, other trees have been killed by Dutch elm disease and boring insects. Radford said the insects cut through the bark to get to the moisture that runs out to the limbs. The open wound in the tree leaves them weak and open to the elements. Dutch elm disease has been around for many years, he said, and hit especially See TREES | Page A4
Quote of the day Vol. 116, No.26
ANTHONY, Kan. (AP) — The economic future seemed so tantalizing just two years ago as the nation’s big oil firms rushed into Kansas. They snapped up mineral leases from landowners for high prices and drilled horizontal wells to extract unknown riches from the same Mississippian Lime formation that had spawned an oil boom in neighboring Oklahoma. Things have changed. Most of those big out-of-state players are gone. The biggest
All of the resources in oil are still there and I think you will still get exploration, but it is going to be done at a much more humble level — very consistent with what the Kansas oil and gas industry does historically. — Art Hall, Center for Applied Economics
blow came when oil giant Shell Oil Co. halted its Kansas exploratory drilling program in May and has since put up for sale 625,000 acres of leases it owns in the state. Life here has for the most part settled back to normal in the rural farming communities in Harper and Barber counties which were once ground zero for the oil and gas exploration frenzy. Exploration is ongoing, and derricks still rise above the buttes and rolling terrain of the Gypsum Hills in south-central Kansas. Yet the activity is growing more modestly, driven by the Kansas producers who for de-
“I was so naive as a kid, I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.” — Johnny Carson 75 Cents
cades have drilled here and the few out-of-state die-hards like SandRidge Energy of Oklahoma City who stayed with scaled-down operations. “Everybody is kind of in neutral right now, seeing what is going to happen,” said Greg Esping, owner of Vantage Construction in Harper. Esping and his wife, Marie, have been living in a fifth-wheel trailer on a few acres outside of town since selling their Harper home
to a Shell executive, who has since put it back on the market where it remains unsold after his company’s pullout. The Espings built a community center in Harper they had geared for Shell’s use, and which they now sporadically rent out to community groups. The couple also once drew up plans and dreamed of building a huge complex with 24 apartment buildings housing 100 units, but ended up putting in just six buildings with 28 units in Harper that they now struggle to fill. “It hasn’t turned out to be See OIL | Page A4
Hi: 62 Lo: 44 Iola, KS