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Keep up-to-date with Fox News Radio, Radio Iowa, Brownfield & the Iowa Agribusiness Networks!
(Atlantic, Iowa) – A regular meeting of the Atlantic City Council takes place Wednesday (Nov. 20th) at City Hall, beginning at 5:30-p.m. Among the discussion/action items on their agenda, is the First Reading of an Ordinance “Amending the Code of Ordinances of the City of Atlantic” by “Amending Provisions Pertaining to All-Terrain Vehicles and Snowmobiles.”
In his meeting notes, City Administrator John Lund reports Iowa Senate File 2130 was developed in response to a 2020 survey, asking ATV and UTV riders what they would like to see changed in Iowa law, to better support riders of those vehicles. The survey results determined riders wanted to ride on more County and State roadways in all 99 counties, under a uniform State law. Cities were then left to create their own rules, but were not allowed to charge permitting fees.
Lund says the City of Atlantic’s Community Protection Committee met last August to review the options for adopting an ordinance regarding the use of ATV’s and UTV’s on city streets, and has reviewed and recommended to the Council an amended ordinance, which includes:
In other business, the Atlantic City Council is expected to approve a pay application to Hydro-Klean, LLC for the 2024 Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation Project, and act to approve a related resolution accepting the work for the project and Ultra Violet CIPP (Cured In Place Pipe) Lining Project.
GLENWOOD, Iowa — Hundreds of people who were separated from society because they had disabilities are buried in a nondescript field at the former state institution in Mills County. According to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, disability rights advocates hope Iowa will honor them by preventing the kind of neglect that has plagued similar cemeteries at other shuttered facilities around the U.S.
The Glenwood Resource Center, was closed this summer in the wake of allegations of poor care. The last of its living residents were moved elsewhere in June. But the remains of about 1,300 people will stay where they were buried on the grounds. The graveyard, which dates to the 1800s, covers several acres of sloping ground near the campus’s brick buildings. A 6-foot-tall, weathered-concrete cross stands on the hillside, providing the most visible clue to the field’s purpose. On a recent afternoon, dried grass clippings obscured row after row of small stone grave markers set flat in the ground. Most of the stones are engraved with only a first initial, a last name, and a number.
During more than a century of operation, the institution housed thousands of people with intellectual disabilities. Its population declined as society turned away from the practice of sequestering people with disabilities and mental illness in large facilities for decades at a time. The cemetery is filled with residents who died and weren’t returned to their hometowns for burial with their families. State and local leaders are working out arrangements to maintain the cemetery and the rest of the 380-acre campus. Local officials, who are expected to take control of the grounds next June, say they’ll need extensive state support for upkeep and redevelopment, especially with the town of about 5,000 people reeling from the loss of jobs at the institution.
Iowa’s Glenwood Resource Center started as a home for orphans of Civil War soldiers. It grew into a large institution for people with disabilities, many of whom lived there for decades. Its population peaked at more than 1,900 in the 1950s, then dwindled to about 150 before state officials decided to close it. Two former employees of the Glenwood facility recently raised concerns that some of the graves may be mismarked. But officials with the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, which ran the institution, said they have extensive, accurate records and recently placed stones on three graves that were unmarked.
Spokesperson Alex Murphy wrote in an email that while no decisions have been made about the campus, the agency “remains committed to ensuring the cemetery is protected and treated with dignity and respect for those who have been laid to rest there.” Glenwood civic leaders have formed a nonprofit corporation that is negotiating with the state over development plans for the former institution. “We’re trying to make the best of a tough situation,” said Larry Winum, a local banker who serves on the new organization’s board. Tentative plans include tearing down some of the existing buildings and creating up to 900 houses and apartments.
Max Cupp, a retired supervisor of the grounds at Iowa’s Glenwood Resource Center, brushes away grass clippings so he can check a grave marker at the shuttered institution’s cemetery on Oct. 9, 2024. (Tony Leys/KFF Health News)
On a recent day, just one of the Glenwood graves had flowers on it. Retired managers of the institution said few people visit the cemetery, but amateur genealogists sometimes show up after learning that a long-forgotten ancestor was institutionalized at Glenwood and buried there.
(Creston, Iowa) – The Creston Police Department reports a man was arrested last week, on drug charges. Authorities say 28-year-old Carlos Ivan Cortez, of Creston, was arrested at around 2-p.m. Wednesday at a residence in the 600 block of N. Pine Street, in Creston.
Cortez was charged with Possession of a controlled substance, 2nd Offense Marijuana and Unlawful Possession of Prescription Drug. He was taken to the Union County Jail and held on a $2,000 bond.
(Afton, Iowa) – Sheriff’s officials in Union County say the driver of a pickup escaped injury, Friday evening, after their vehicle struck two Black Angus cows near Afton. Authorities say a 2005 Dodge RAM 1500 pickup driven by 40-year-old Willhun Christopher Lee, of Afton, was traveling south on Creamery Road at around 6:05-p.m., when it struck the cows that were standing in the middle of the road, outside of their fenced-in area.
The pickup was disabled by the collision, sustaining an estimated $15,000, according to the Sheriff’s Department. The cattle, owned by Randal Pettit, of Afton, were valued at $5,000.
(Radio Iowa) – The search for lead water pipes in the state is near the end and some communities are already notifying residents of what they’ve found. Sioux City Utilities Director Brad Peutz (Pitts) says it’s part of a federal program to get rid of lead pipes. “All lead service lines, all galvanized lines requiring replacement, and those lines that are unknown to either be replaced or verified within ten years,” he says. Peutz says residents who have a line that needs attention will soon get a letter.
“Sioux City has roughly 26-thousand service connections. Of those 26-thousand service connections, the city has identified roughly 73-hundred service connections that could potentially need replaced by that November of 2037 date, the focus at this time is outreach,” he says.
The Iowa D-N-R is overseeing the federal program here. A spokesperson for the D-N-R says they are still compiling all the survey results and doesn’t yet have an exact statewide count on how many pipes need to be replaced.
(Radio Iowa) – It’s been a tough couple of years for Iowa’s tree canopy, between terrible tornadoes, derechoes, and killer insects like the emerald ash borer wiping out tens of thousands of trees. Chip Murrow, an urban forestry program specialist at the Iowa D-N-R, says the agency’s now offering 900-thousand dollars in competitive grants for Iowa communities to plant trees. “The money is for tree planting, and along with that, they can do staking if needed, mulching, supplemental watering,” Murrow says. “It’s a two-year grant, so the idea is they can do planting both spring and fall of 2025 and 2026.”
The grants do not require matching funds and are being awarded in amounts of between 10- and 30-thousand dollars per community. Murrow says the trees to be planted have to come from the D-N-R’s list of approved species, which is on the agency’s website. He says a group of Iowa foresters created the list of about 85 species, everything from the black maple to the Serbian spruce. “We discussed what ones are still good, what ones are starting to show problems that we haven’t seen before, if there’s any new cultivars, we can add to it, so we update it every so often,” Murrow says. “The idea is that we keep a good list of tree species that do well in the Iowa environment and also in the urban settings where we’re planting trees.”
Iowa’s seen more than its share of severe weather this year, with a record of 127 tornadoes, and many towns still haven’t replaced all the trees they lost during the “land hurricanes” known as derechoes in recent years. “Communities are hurting for tree resources,” he says. “We’re not a highly canopy-covered state, as we put it. We know that our canopy is low. We have a goal of in 2050 to try and increase our canopy growth by three-percent or 3,000,000 trees, but the emerald ash borer, of course, and the derecho has set us back a little bit on that.” The funding for communities comes through the I-R-A Iowa Tree Planting Grant. The deadline to apply is December 30th.
Learn more at the Iowa DNR’s Urban Forestry website: https://www.iowadnr.gov/Conservation/Forestry/Urban-Forestry
DES MOINES, Iowa [WHO-TV] — Longtime local pollster J. Ann Selzer announced Sunday morning that she is retiring from election polling.
Selzer has been conducting Iowa polls since 1997, founding Selzer & Company in the late 90’s. The news comes after Selzer’s Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll showed the Vice President in the lead by three points in Iowa over President-elect Donald Trump. Trump ended up winning the state by more than 13%.
Selzer has had plans to retire for over a year and seek out new opportunities. Her work as a pollster was highly respected in the polling industry, with top grades for accuracy. Her 2016 Presidential election poll in Iowa showed Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, and correctly calling the state again for Trump in 2020.
(Iowa News Service) – The Iowa Alzheimer’s Association chapter is making new resources available to caregivers during November, a month set aside to educate and help people with the disease and those who care for them. Nearly 100,000 Iowans are family caregivers, helping more than 62,000 people living with this form of dementia.
Erica Eikern – program manager with the Alzheimer’s Association, Iowa chapter – said the group is making a huge effort this month in particular to get resources to those caregivers, letting them know they are not alone. “We have approximately 50 local caregiver support groups, in many communities across the state of Iowa,” said Eikern. “We also have a virtual support group that we just started for young adult caregivers who are taking care of a parent or older family member.”
Nationally, nearly half of all caregivers who provide help to older adults are doing so for someone with Alzheimer’s disease, according to data on the association’s facts and figures website. Eikern said the association is working at the state level to give those caregivers some respite options.
Eikern said caring for a person with Alzheimer’s can take a heavy physical and emotional toll. So, she said the association is trying to make sure they know help is available. “At our Iowa chapter, we’re averaging about 30 programs that we’re doing per month, out in various communities throughout the state,” said Eikern. “We have a goal of trying to reach everyone in all 99 counties through our awareness presentations, through support services.”
Those resources are also available on the association’s website. More than 11 million people in the U.S. are providing unpaid care to a person living with Alzheimer’s or other form of dementia. Last year alone, that care was valued at more than $346 billion.
(Red Oak, Iowa) – The Red Oak Police Department reports a man was arrested at around 12:30-a.m. today (Sunday), on two charges. 35-year-old Bryceton Lee Flathers, of Red Oak, was arrested for Interference with Official Acts, and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia (both are Simple Misdemeanors). Flathers was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $300 bond.
(Des Moines, Iowa) – The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports another Iowa county is being sued by Summit Carbon Solutions over attempts to regulate the company’s planned carbon dioxide pipeline across Iowa. In 2022, Summit sued Story County and Shelby County in U.S. District Court for Southern District of Iowa. Both lawsuits alleged the locally elected county boards of supervisors were attempting to impose on the project siting requirements that are the exclusive province of federal regulators.
In December 2023, a federal judge sided with Summit and permanently barred the two Iowa counties from enforcing their ordinances that restrict the placement of carbon dioxide pipelines. This past week, Summit sued Bremer County over the same issue. The new lawsuit claims that despite the December 2023 court ruling in the two previous cases, Bremer County has passed and let stand similar – and, in some respects, identical — local regulations of carbon dioxide pipelines and related construction activity. The county is also accused of threatening to fine Summit if it does not comply with those ordinances.
The company says that on Oct. 30, 2024, Bremer County Attorney Darius Robinson wrote a letter to Summit’s legal counsel, stating that Summit was not in compliance with ordinances passed in September 2024, and threatening to fine Summit. In the letter, Robinson allegedly warned Summit that “that any non-compliance with the Bremer County ordinance can result in all legal remedies being pursued” and formally requested that company representatives attend an upcoming public meeting to discuss the matter.
As a result, the company says in its court filings, Summit must now seek declaratory and injunctive relief against the enforcement of the Bremer County ordinances. Bremer County has yet to file a response to the lawsuit.
Summit’s planned pipeline is intended to transport carbon dioxide captured from more than 50 ethanol plants across Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska. Plans call for the pipeline to utilize a network of more than 2,500 miles of underground pipes across the five states and deliver it to a site in North Dakota. In Iowa, the pipeline will travel through 39 counties, including Bremer County.
Construction of the pipeline project is already underway, and Summit has been engaged with the Iowa Utilities Commission for more than three years as part of the planning and permitting process. The commission has granted Summit a permit from the first phase of the project and the company is now in the process of securing the Iowa permit for phase two, which will serve ethanol plants east and west of Bremer County.
Summit says it has already obtained voluntary easements for much of the proposed route across Iowa and has paid more than $159 million to Iowa landowners for access.
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