From the Files of the Kosciusko County Historical Society

Editor’s note: This is a retrospective article that runs a few times a month on InkFreeNews.  

Oct. 1, 1980  — Only the county clerk’s office was open today following Tuesday’s fire that caused the temporary closing of the Kosciusko County Courthouse in downtown Warsaw.

County Clerk N. Jean Messmore and her staff opened the clerk’s office at noon. The only business they were conducting was voter registration and the issuance of support checks. Persons going to the clerk’s office were asked to enter through the east door.

Small cases containing 175 vote-a-matic machines and 70 demonstrator machines were neatly lined against a wall in the west basement hallway, which was hit the hardest by fire.

The county commissioners held the first of two regular monthly meetings today. However, they were unable to meet in the commissioners’ room in the basement because of the extensive fire, smoke, heat and water damage in the lower level.

Officials say they believe the county’s insurance policy will cover all the damage, which was estimated between $500,000 and $1 million.

Oct. 7, 1972 — The fragile bubble of plans for construction of a singular high school in the Tippecanoe Valley School Corp. just might burst in a special board meeting Monday night.

A September ruling by the Indiana Stream Pollution Control Board is being enforced for the first time with the proposed TVSC high school between Akron and Mentone.

The pollution control board edict forces all new schools constructed after September to run pipelines from the town or city nearest the construction site to the school to carry sanitary sewage to a treatment plant and water to the students.

TVSC board members had planned to drill their own well on the site and construct their own septic system in line with requirements set by the State Board of Health.

Now health board officials in Indianapolis say five miles of sanitary sewer and water mains must connect the proposed school with the sewage and water systems in Akron. Mentone has no sewage treatment plant.

Oct. 6, 1971 — A state biologist said today a band of pollution that has killed thousands upon thousands of fish in the Tippecanoe River along a stretch from Warsaw to beyond Rochester is no longer a threat.

John Winters of the State Health Department said the polluted strip has decreased enough in strength that it no longer is killing any fish.

The pollution was first noticed last Thursday, and a state conservation officer, Richard Eurit, said it resulted when 127,000 gallons of chicken droppings were pumped from a damaged holding tank onto a field near Warsaw 500 feet from the river. The poultry farm was not identified.

Winters said the fishkill extended about 50 miles downstream from Warsaw. The slug of effluent cut off the supply of oxygen for fish.

– Compiled by InkFreeNews reporter Lasca Randels