For the record A6 The Hays Daily News Monday, Feb. 2, 2015 Watch for breaking news at HDNews.net Monday Markets Hays cash grains Courtesy: Golden Belt Co-op Local cash wheat . ..............................5.05 Local cash milo . .................................4.08 Oil $ per barrel Kansas Crude (Friday).................. $38.00 NY Spot Crude . ............................. $48.27 artzer, “I check my inventory to choose what I need the most of,” Artzer said. The teenager is also involved in volleyball, cheerleading, basketball and track. She likes to make cupcakes, and “I make supper a lot of times, too,” Artzer said. The experience has changed her. “The business has made me think more,” she said. “It’s made me learn a lot of things.” The teenager also donates to a nonprofit, Pheasants Forever. She gifts 10 mixes and a basket each year to the organization. “I like to donate back to the people that donated to me,” she said. “It gives back to the people who gave to me in the first place.” Artzer won the gold medal at the Family Career and Consumer Science at the national competition in entrepreneurship for Made by Jade. She has won other awards, too. She is the daughter of Kim and Jason Artzer, Goodland. She has a brother, Koal. Artzer does all of it herself, her mother said. That includes sales tax and income tax. “She pays for everything herself. It’s 100 percent her business,” her mother said. Kim Artzer credits 4-H for her daughter’s maturity. “4-H is probably the basis of where this all came from,” she said. “We’re very proud.” “The business has made me think more. It’s made me learn a lot of things.” quakes, Theora Margaret (Haage) Slone Society in education. She was a United Methodist Youth Group Leader, a speech and debate coach and school Theora Margaret (Haage) sponsor “Extraordinaire.” Slone, 76, died Tuesday, Jan. She enjoyed gardening, 27, 2015. decorating, antiquing, readShe earned her master’s ing, shopping and traveling, of library family and friends, spending science at time with them, laughing, University sharing a meal or being on of Missouri the lake. in ColumVisitation will be from 9 bia, Mo., to 11 a.m. Saturday at Tusand her cumbia Christian Church, bachelor 275 Highway HH, Tusof science cumbia, MO. Following the in education at Kansas memorial service, family and State College of Pittsburg, friends are invited to lunch Pittsburg. at the church. Following She was a retired librarian, lunch, inurnment in Boltz debate/speech teacher and Cemetery. English educator, dedicating Condolences can be sent her life’s work to the written to the family at www.Charletand spoken word. FuneralHome.com. Survivors include two brothers, George Haage and wife, Hanako Koyama, Everett, Wash., and PhilKaren Ann Baczkowski, lip Haage, wife, Sue, Paris, 61, Hays, died Saturday, Texas; three sisters, Judy Jan. 31, 2015, at Northcare Rentschler and husband, Hospice Riley, Lake Ozark, Mo., and PalEleanor Haage and partner, liative Care Cheryl, Nevada, Mo., and in North Carol Deveney, St. Louis; Kansas City, two grandchildren, Gabriella Mo., after Coco and Sawyer Coco; and a long and a niece, Grace Blehm. courageous She was preceded in death battle with by her parents, George and lymphoma. Dorothy Haage; a sister, She was born Nov. 18, Barbara Ruggels; a brother, 1953, in Hays to Alfred and Charles Haage; a brotherRita Mae Jacobs. She grew in-law, Jack Deveney; and a up in Pfeifer, attended Holy niece, Tamra Ruggels. Cross School and was a 1971 She was a member of graduate of Victoria High the Kappa Delta Pi Honor School. Karen Ann Baczkowski from A1 Jade Artzer young entrepreneur Obituaries Nada Kay Hutchison, 93, died Sunday, Jan. 4, 2015, in Overland Park. Services will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Church of the Resurrection in Firestone Chapel, Leawood; inurnment in Kansas Veterans Cemetery, WaKeeney, at a later date. Services will be at 2 p.m. Friday at Park Place Christian Church, 2600 N. Adams, Hutchinson. The family will receive friends following the service at Hutchinson Town Club. Friends can sign the register book until Friday at Elliott Mortuary, Hutchinson. JoAnn Marie Franke, 82, Hutchinson, died Friday, Jan. 23, 2015, at Hester Care Center, Wesley Towers. Dale L. Shearer, 90, died Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015, at Norton County Hospital, Norton. budget, She was a registered nurse. She specialized in psychiatric nursing, working many years in facilities in Kansas and California. She returned to Kansas in 2012 to be closer to her family, completing her nursing career as a clinical supervisor at Senior Focused Care at Hays Medical Center. She enjoyed reading, gardening and most importantly, spending time with her family, especially her grandchildren. Survivors include two sons, Jeff Baczkowski and wife, Kayla, and Nathan Baczkowski and wife, Erin, all of Hays; her father and stepmother, Alfred and Virginia Jacobs, Kansas City, Mo.; two brothers, Fred Jacobs and wife, Jane, Louisville, Ky., and Tim Jacobs and wife, Joyce, Olathe; a sister, Stacy Miller and husband, John, Kansas City, Mo.; four stepsisters, Cheryl Alexander and Nancy Wetig and husband, John, all of Great Bend, Debra Moss and husband, Ed, Coats, and Lisa Crain, Larned; two stepbrothers, Mark Crain, Great Bend, and Mike Crain and wife, Renay, Eades, Colo.; two grandsons, Brooks and Brody Baczkowski, both of Hays; her niece, nephews, great-nieces and greatnephew. She was preceded in death by her mother. Service will be at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at St. Joseph Catholic Church, 13th and Ash, Hays. Additional services Services will be at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at First Church of God, Norton; burial in Norton Cemetery. Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Enfield Funeral Home, Norton. Visitation will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday and from 9:30 to 10 a.m. Wednesday, both at Brock’s-Keithley Funeral Chapel, 2509 Vine, Hays, KS 67601. A vigil will be at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the funeral home. Memorials are suggested to Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Northcare Hospice & Palliative Care (www. northcarehospice.org) or to an educational fund for her grandchildren in care of the funeral home. Condolences can be left by guestbook at www.keithleyfuneralchapels.com or emailed to [email protected]. Frank Bretz Jr. Frank Bretz Jr., 90, Hoxie, died Friday, Jan. 30, 2015, at his home. He was born Oct. 8, 1924, in Lane County near Shields to Frank Sr. and Inez (Thomas) Bretz. He married Evelyn (Eitel) Bretz on Jan. 2, 1947, in Dighton. He was a farmer and manager of Nichols Hardware and Mickey Hardware. He was a U.S. Navy veteran, serving during World War II. Survivors include his wife, of the home; a son, Jan and wife, Teresa, Studley; a daughter-in-law, Joy Bretz, Studley; 12 grandchildren; and 18 greatgrandchildren. He was preceded in death by a son, Dennis Bretz. Services will be at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at Hoxie United Methodist Church; burial in Studley Cemetery, with Navy military guard. Visitation will be from 1 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, with family receiving friends from 6 to 7 p.m. at MickeyLeopold Funeral Home, Hoxie. Memorials are suggested to Hoxie United Methodist Church, Studley Cemetery or Sheridan County Health Complex in care of the funeral home. Condolences can be sent to the family at www.mickeyleopoldfuneral.com. Robert E. Balderston Robert E. Balderston, 82, Stockton, died Sunday, Feb. 1, 2015, in Stockton. Arrangements are pending at Plumer-Overlease Funeral Home, Stockton. Sybilla Schmidt Sybilla Schmidt, 95, Hays, died Monday, Feb. 2, 2015, at Good Samaritan Society of Hays Card Center. Arrangements are pending at Cline’s Mortuary of Hays, 1919 E. 22nd, Hays, KS 67601. Services to be at 11 a.m. Feb. 21 at Yorgensen-MeloanLondeen Funeral Chapel, Manhattan; cremation is planned. and Oakley VFW Post No. 2981. Visitation will be from 9 to 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at Kennedy-Koster Funeral Home, Oakley. Richard Harland “Dick” Russell, 88, rural Manhattan, died Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015, at Good Shepherd Hospice House, Manhattan, as a result of injuries he sustained in an automobile accident. Leighton Riley Goble, 90, Oklahoma City, died Friday, Jan. 30, 2015, at Integris Hospice House, Oklahoma City. Graveside services will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday in Monument Township Cemetery, with military honors by U.S. Army The Hays Daily News will publish an obituary free for people with direct ties to the area. More information can be added for additional charges. Contact us at (800) 657-6017. While all but certain to die in Congress, Obama’s budget could provide Democrats with a platform in the 2016 elections for the White House and Congress. His proposals would help more than 44 million households with an average benefit of $600 per household, according to the White House. One proposal will be the six-year, $478 billion infrastructure program focused on roads, bridges and transit systems. About half, $238 billion, would come from a one-time 14 percent tax on the roughly $2 trillion U.S. companies have offshore, senior administration officials said Sunday. The other half of the money — $240 billion — would come from the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is financed with a gasoline tax. Finding money to pay for the nation’s crumbling infrastructure has been debated with little success for years. Washington has occasionally debated “tax holidays” for companies to voluntarily repatriate offshore earnings at lower tax rates than the current maximum corporate tax Obituary policy from A1 “This budget shows what we can do if we invest in America’s future and commit to an economy that rewards hard work, generates rising incomes, and allows everyone to share in the prosperity of a growing America,” the budget will say. “It lays out a strategy to strengthen our middle class and help America’s hard-working families get ahead in a time of relentless economic and technological change.” The proposed budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 includes a long list of spending and tax increases, many of which have been offered in the past but rejected by Congress. This year’s plan is expected to be no different in a newly Republicancontrolled Congress, where lawmakers will propose their own budget this spring. “It seems to be more of the same policies that have resulted in the lowest, slowest economic recovery out of an economic downturn in the history of the country — more taxes, more spending, more borrowing,” House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga. said on “Fox News Sunday.” rate of 35 percent. Obama opposes such programs, and his plan would be mandatory. “Republicans believe that we should be building our infrastructure. The question’s how we should pay for it,” Obama said in an interview with NBC. “That’s a negotiation we should have.” The Obama budget will urge Congress to throw out spending caps adopted in 2011, and allow a 7-percent increase in spending that’s not already on autopilot such as Social Security and Medicare. from A1 As oil production has increased, specifically in Harper and Sumner counties, so too has the use of saltwater injection. According to state data, Harper County oil production climbed from approximately 361,000 barrels in 2010 to 1.85 million barrels through the first nine months of 2014. The county also went from 44 injection wells in 2009 to 71 in 2013, with an additional 18 applications received in 2014. In addition, the volume of water injected by those wells increased from approximately 11.3 million barrels in 2009 to 51.8 million in 2013. At the same time, the number of earthquakes in Kansas has been increasing. According to the Kansas Geological Survey, 34 quakes with magnitude 2.5 or larger occurred in Kansas between 1977 and 2012. But since 2013, Kansas has experienced 115 quakes of that size or larger. The acceleration is even greater in Harper and Sumner counties. Between 1977 and 2012, those two counties experienced only two quakes greater than 2.0. Since 2013, however, those counties have had 138. This past week, Kansas experienced three quakes greater than 3.0 during a 24-hour period. All of them were in south-central Kansas. Rex Buchanan, the interim head of the Kansas Geological Survey, told lawmakers this past week a correlation exists between the earthquakes and the use of saltwater injection. He said there is a “reasonable probability” a relation- ship exists between the quakes and injection. Smith is no stranger to quakes. He lived in California at one point and has felt large ones before. The first one he felt in Kansas came in December 2013. “It sounded like somebody tossed a stick of dynamite out in our yard,” Smith said. People who have not felt tremors regularly before get rattled, Smith said. He calls it “psychological damage.” Physical damage exists as well. Smith said there are hairline cracks on his walls, which he called cosmetic. But he added the quakes could cause unseen damage to building foundations. The cumulative effect of regular quakes can begin to take a toll, said Joe Spease, the fracking chairman for the Sierra Club of Kansas. “Cracked walls, windows, foundations, hospital technical equipment rooms and church steeples — this all adds up. When it’s happening to thousands of homes, it’s not going to take a lot to get to millions of dollars of damage here,” Spease said. If it can be proved the quakes are caused by oil and gas companies, those who have had property damaged by the quakes could be in a position to take legal action against producers. And lawsuits have already been filed in other states. In January, the Oklahoma Supreme Court decided to hear a lawsuit brought by a woman from Prague, a small town east of Oklahoma City. Sandra Larda alleges two companies are liable for injuries she suffered from an earthquake in 2011, according to the Associated Press. The earthquake at issue in Larda’s suit is a November 2011 tremor that measured a 5.6 magnitude. A study published in 2013 in the journal Geology linked the 2011 quake to saltwater injection. The earthquake was the most severe in Oklahoma history. For comparison, Kansas’ largest quake came this past November and was a 4.4 magnitude. Smith does not have much interest in suing. He said he’s more interested in stopping the situation. “My position is: I want them to stop pumping now until they can prove — and I don’t think it’s possible — that they’re not inducing seismicity,” Smith said. Oil production might be curtailed in the future, however, because of market forces. The price of oil has fallen dramatically in the past few months. With a barrel of oil now selling for less than $50, producers have begun to scale back output. Ed Cross, president of the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association, said companies in Kansas have also begun cutting back. “There are several companies that have reduced their drilling plans already for this year,” Cross said. Challenges to suing Anyone who wanted to sue would face practical challenges. With multiple companies operating in Kansas, it would be difficult to show any one company caused an earthquake. And showing a single quake was caused by saltwater injection might be an even higher bar to meet. “It’s difficult to prove that in a court, and I don’t know if the company would treat them as nuisance suits to get them out of their hair or fight them to the death,” Smith said. Spease called an individual suing an oil company “completely futile.” Instead, the Sierra Club wants to see the establishment of a financial risk pool. Under the idea, oil and gas companies would pay into a pool. Individuals who experience damage because of quakes would be able to petition to be compensated from the pool. The oil industry has had prior experience with compensation funds. A fund was set-up to pay victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, in which a BP rig exploded off the Gulf of Mexico coast. The $20 billion fund was administered by Kenneth Feinberg, an attorney who gained notoriety after running a victim’s compensation fund after the 9/11 attacks. In the case of an earthquake risk pool, a judge or a commission could decide whether to award cash from the fund and the amount, Spease suggested. The creation of the fund would likely require legislative action, however. “The only recourse they have at this point is with the Legislature to create what we call a financial risk pool, paid into by the oil and gas companies so people have a fund to draw from to cover the costs of the damages they’re seeing,” Spease said. That’s unlikely to happen. Rep. Dennis Hedke, R-Wichita, serves as the chairman of the House Energy and Environment Committee. Hedke, a consulting geophysicist with ties to the oil and gas industry, said this past week after a presentation from the Kansas Geological Survey on seismic activity in the state, he sees no need for additional legislation. But beyond having no desire to see additional legislative action, Hedke also remains skeptical of a link between quakes and human activity — a position also taken by the oil and gas industry itself. Cross declined to draw a link between saltwater injection and earthquakes, even after being asked about United States Geological Survey and Kansas Geological Survey findings. “I think in Kansas we’re still gathering information to try to find out what is going on. I don’t think they know here in Kansas what exactly is causing (the earthquakes) exactly,” Cross said. Cross said he understands the concerns of Kansas residents who feel the quakes, but added the correlation between the quakes and injection does not mean injection causes the shaking. He supports additional seismic monitoring, which a state task force studying seismic activity in Kansas called for late last year. Cross did not want to discuss the possibility the oil industry would be open to legal action because of damage from quakes. “I think it’s premature to say, ‘That’s the culprit, now what are we going to do about it?’ ” Cross said.