From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Feb. 6, 1974:

• Tree trimmings and refuse were being dumped illegally along the south bank of the Kansas River about one mile east of Lawrence. Mel Gray, director of the environmental health division of the state health department, said dumping trash into the river was clearly prohibited, but disposing of tree trimmings by pushing them over the river bank might be permissible. Officials from the Douglas County Health Department were investigating the dumping site, which they said had been a problem before. Gray and Ross McKinney, a member of the state advisory council on solid waste, said using tree branches and trunks to stabilize the riverbank might be legal, but it had to be done properly. In Kansas, bank stabilization with car bodies was legal if the engines were removed and the cars were properly implaced and “cabled in,” Gray said, but tree dumping was “a gray area.”
• Federal and local investigators were still looking into the cause of a recent plane crash which had killed the pilot, Ralph Wagoner Polson of Baldwin. Polson’s Comanche 250 plane had crashed on the Morris Pratt farm, five miles south of K-10 on the extension of Haskell Avenue, about 15 minutes after taking off from the Vinland Valley airport.