A public hearing will be held Wednesday morning in Atlantic, with regard to a proposed preliminary plat in the Walnut Grove Subdivision, Washington Township. The meeting will be held during the Cass County Board of Supervisor’s meeting, which starts at 9-a.m.

Also on the board’s agenda Wednesday, is action on expense appropriations for Fiscal Year 2012. That includes funding request appropriations. If there is no change from budgeted amounts, no additional action will be necessary.

Other business includes discussion and/or action on: a contract for legal services related to funding for the northwest Water-Sewer extension project; a contract for computer services, FY 2011-2012 (Licensed Code and System Hardware/Network/Software support); certification of county officers’ deputies’ base salaries; and, determining the compensation of “other employees” (other than those who are under a bargaining unit- or other employment- contracts.

The Board will also act on approving a 28-E agreement with Adair County, for service provided by Cass County Engineer Charles Marker.

ADEL, Iowa (AP) – Tubing or sunbathing along central Iowa’s Raccoon River in the nude could soon be against county law.

The Dallas County Board of Supervisors is scheduled Tuesday (today) to consider a new ordinance that would ban nudity in county areas accessible to the public. Board chairman Kim Chapman told The Des Moines Register that county officials have gotten complaints about nudity on the river. Sheriff Chad Leonard asked for the item to be placed on the board agenda.

Harold Wells operates the Raccoon River Retreat Center near Van Meter. He says his guests occasionally sunbathe nude on a nearby sandbar. Wells says people who live along rivers have always stripped occasionally, adding, “I don’t know why there should be an ordinance now.”

Enforcement officers with the Iowa Department of Transportation will be busy over the next three days checking out semis and other large vehicles. The department is taking part in a 72-hour continuous enforcement effort that’s happening across the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Major Ned Lewis, with the DOT, says 60 officers will be inspecting all vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds that are on Iowa’s roadways.

“We will have motor vehicle enforcement officers located throughout the state at our interstate scale sites at Avoca, Dallas County, Jasper County and Brandon,” Lewis said. The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) Roadcheck runs today (Tuesday) through Thursday. During last year’s event, officers conducted more than 65,000 inspections across the U.S.

“The most important part of this is finding vehicles or drivers who are not in compliance with the rules and regulations,” Lewis said. “Those drivers and/or vehicles can be placed out of service for serious safety violations.”

Most vehicles or drivers are placed out of service because of issues with their brakes or discrepancies with the driver’s logbook. The 2010 Roadcheck found vehicle compliance rates of 80-percent, while drivers had a 95.6-percent pass rate.

“Most of the vehicles and drivers do a great job. We do put a fair amount of vehicles out of service for severe safety violations,” Lewis said.

Busses are not required to stop at the scale locations in Iowa.

(Radio Iowa)

Despite “near-heroic” efforts by the Council Bluffs wastewater treatment staff, repairs to a valve on a sewer force main have been delayed due to high flood waters.

A passerby reported the leak to the Council Bluffs staff about noon Saturday, but the city had to pump water down behind a levee to reach the sewer main on the south side of the city near Interstate 80. Wearing life jackets, city staffers tried to shut an air relief valve and discovered the valve was broken.

A contractor tried to make repairs or temporarily plug the leak last weekend, but was unsuccessful. The city estimates 100 to 200 gallons of wastewater per minute are discharging to the Missouri River.

The city plans to make temporary repairs Monday, but will be unable to make permanent repairs until flood waters recede.

The DNR will continue to monitor the situation and provide technical assistance as needed.

(DNR Press Release)

HAMBURG, Iowa (AP) – Flooding along the Missouri River is expected to break decades-old records this summer and test its system of levees, dams and flood walls like never before. The swollen river is already threatening the small southwest Iowa town of Hamburg.

Crews were scrambling Monday to pile massive sandbags on a faltering levee and build a secondary barrier. The fire chief says that if those efforts fail, parts of Hamburg could be under as much as 8 feet of water for a month or more.

The levee that guards an area of farmland and small towns between Omaha, Neb., and Kansas City has been partially breached in at least two places. New breaches are expected as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers releases record amounts of water from dams by mid-June.