(Council Bluffs, Iowa/updated)- Residents of Pottawattamie County, Tuesday, went to the polls to determine if the method of determining how their Board of Supervisors are elected will change, or not. Three plans were on the ballot. Plan One was to keep the members elected essentially At Large, meaning each member of the Board of Supervisors is allowed to reside anywhere in Pottawattamie County and the voters of the county elect all five members of the Board of Supervisors. Unofficial results show that Plan was approved by 5,224 votes.

Plan Two garnered just 545 vote. If that had passed, Pottawattamie County would have been divided into five districts of roughly equal population. Plan Three received 2, 357 votes. That would have also divided Pottawattamie County into five districts of roughly equal population, but voters would elect the one Supervisor who resides in the same district as the voter and would not vote for the other four Supervisors in the other four districts. As previously mentioned, the Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors approved the special election on June 6 after private groups gathered and submitted a petition with nearly 4,000 signatures to allow county residents to choose between three options for county supervisor elections.

According to the Iowa State Association of Counties, 49 counties elect supervisors by that at-large system. About 81-hundred people voted in Pottawattamie County’s August 1st Special Election. During this spring’s legislative session, the Iowa Senate passed a bill that would have required Iowa’s five largest counties to elect supervisors by districts rather than in at-large or countywide elections. It would not have applied to Pottawattamie County, which is Iowa’s 10th largest county. House Republicans changed the bill so it applied only to Black Hawk, Johnson and Story Counties where the state universities are located, but the bill was tabled.

(Radio Iowa) – Seven Iowans are in southwest Montana, working for the U-S Forest Service to fight a fire that’s already consumed 17-hundred acres in a national forest. Three other Iowans are in Texas right now, dealing with wildfires there. Gail Kantak is the fire supervisor for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. She says for the most part, these are NOT D-N-R employees, but contractors the D-N-R has trained and hired to be short term employees of the U-S Forest Service.

“It’s a whole variety, big spectrum of folks who are interested in expanding their knowledge and skills in fire,” Kantak says. “We offer National Wildfire Coordinating Group training to anybody who’s interested.” The Iowans fighting the wildfire in steep, rugged Montana terrain will be there for up to three weeks. Kantak says they are patrolling fire lines and creating new ones to prevent the fire’s spread.

“When you see pictures of wildland fire fighters in the west digging lines, that’s what they’re going to be paying attention to,” Kantak says. The Iowans in Texas will be there for two weeks as part of what Kantak calls an ending crew. “An ending crew is made up of three to five people that work in tandem with an engine and water and hoses,” Kantak says.

A state-owned fire engine was deployed to Texas along with the Iowa firefighters. Each person who’s been hired to fight fires in Montana and Texas has gone through at least 40 hours of training in Iowa. Texas officials say since the beginning of the year, about two-thousand wildfires have burned through 50-thousand acres.

The Iowans in Montana are fighting a fire sparked by lighting on July 20th. At the beginning of this week, officials said that fire was only three percent contained.

(Radio Iowa) – A state report on three men killed in a Davenport apartment building collapse describes their deaths as accidental. The building partially collapsed May 28th. The bodies of 42-year-old Brandon Colvin, Senior; 51-year-old Ryan Hitchcock and 60-year-old Daniel Prien were recovered in early June.

According to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, all three men had suffered mechanical asphyxiation. That description indicates they could not breathe because of the way their bodies were positioned or because they’d been crushed by the rubble. The report said all three suffered blunt force injuries.

Several lawsuits have been filed accusing city officials and building owner Andrew Wold with failing to protect the safety of residents living in a dangerous building.

Clarinda, Iowa – Iowa Department of Corrections officials, Tuesday, said 65-year-old Terry Lee Chevalier was pronounced dead due to an unexpected medical emergency, at 8:20 a.m. on Friday, July 28, 2023. Chevalier died at the Clarinda Correctional Facility. An autopsy will be conducted by the State Medical Examiner to determine cause of death. No foul play is suspected.

Chevalier had been serving a 10-year maximum term for the crime of Criminal Mischief 1st Degree from Des Moines County. His sentence began on October 21, 2019.

DES MOINES, Iowa – On August 1, 2023, an Ames man was sentenced to 48 months in prison for making a false statement to a financial institution and possessing firearms after having been previously convicted of a felony.
In early September 2021, Aaron Christopher Lindsey, 34, purchased a 2018 Dodge Durango GT from an Ames car dealership using the fictitious identity “Kevin Grant”.

Lindsey provided the dealership that false name as well as a false Iowa driver’s license, false social security number, and false date of birth. The false information that Lindsey provided the dealership was also submitted by Lindsey as part of his credit application to obtain financing for the vehicle and caused a local Ames credit union to approve a vehicle loan for more than $42,000.

In late September 2021, law enforcement executed a search warrant at Lindsey’s Ames residence. Officers located eight firearms and ammunition at the residence, including a loaded pistol in the Durango. Lindsey possessed each of these eight firearms and ammunition. Lindsey had been previously convicted of two felonies: a forgery conviction in Marshall County, Iowa in 2017 and a forgery conviction in Story County, Iowa in 2017.

At Lindsey’s residence, police also found counterfeit credit cards, blank checks in the names of multiple purported third-persons, counterfeit driver’s licenses, hundreds of blank magnetic strip cards, hundreds of blank EMV “chip” cards, a magnetic strip card encoder, printers, computer equipment, a card cutter, a laminator, laminate papers, and holograms of various state seals.

Following his prison term, Lindsey will be on supervised release for five years. There is no parole in the federal system. United States Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement. The case was investigated by the Ames Police Department and the Iowa Department of Transportation. The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) – The first acting administrator of the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration says carbon capture pipelines are not new and will be regulated like any other liquid pipeline. Brigham McCown recently served a couple of years as chief executive of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which carries oil.  “We’ve had CO2 pipelines in the country since the 1970s,” he says. “There are about 4,500 miles of CO2 pipelines currently.”

McCown says the federal agency that regulates pipelines has the same mission as the Federal Aviation Administration, to make the transportation system as safe as possible. “The safety regulations are very robust and CO2 is treated as a liquid pipeline just like any other liquid pipeline,” McCown says. “…When pipelines are built by qualified people, they’re constructed properly and they’re maintained properly they have a 99.999% safety record. That’s better than any other type of transportation and you are far more likely to be struck by lightning multiple times than you are ever to be ever be affected by a pipeline incident.”

Pipeline opponents cite safety concerns about liquid carbon and point to the 2020 rupture of a carbon pipeline in Mississippi. That incident sent 45 people to the hospital and required the evacuation of about 200 nearby residents. McCown says regulations were beefed up after that incident and the pipeline operator was fined.  “In that case, very unusual rainfall occurred and it’s called a geohazard. It’s something pipeline operators are supposed to plan for, but the ground shifted and that caused the pipeline to break open,” McCown says.

Supporters of three proposed carbon pipeline projects in Iowa say they will allow the ethanol industry to remain competitive in the years to come, as requirements for a carbon neutral product are put in place. Opponents object to the use of the government’s eminent domain authority to seize private property from landowners who do not want the pipelines on their property.