(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds says she’ll have a conversation with House Republicans who’ve proposed regulatory changes for the proposed pipelines for capturing carbon from ethanol plants.  “I’m sure there’s areas where we could tweak and make it better,” Reynolds says, “but we just need to make sure that we’re having an open and honest conversation about what the consequences could be moving forward.”

Twenty-two House Republicans, including the House speaker, have introduced a bill with nine different proposals that would impact when, where or even if the pipelines are built. The bill’s lead sponsor says he’s standing up for landowners along the proposed pipeline routes. Reynolds says a current state law spells out how pipeline companies could be granted eminent domain authority to seize property from landowners who don’t sign voluntary easements for the pipeline. “When eminent domain has to be used, it should be used as a last resort. We should make sure that they’re fairly compensated,” Reynolds says.

And Reynolds says, as governor, she needs to make sure the state supports adding value to Iowa agricultural products, like corn that’s turned into ethanol. “When 55% of our farmers’ corn goes to ethanol and renewable fuels, I need to make sure that’s part of the conversation that we’re having,” Reynolds says.

Reynolds, who spoke briefly with reporters at the statehouse late Thursday, indicated her comments shouldn’t be interpreted as favoring or opposing the House G-O-P bill on pipelines. “I have to be very careful because if I weigh in on anything that’s not a bill of mine, then that kind of gives you all a pass to ask my opinion on everything that gets filed in this building and we’re coming up on our first funnel (deadline) and we’ll see a lot of those well intentioned ideas that won’t make it through the funnel, so I have to not engage too much in the process because that’s what it’s for — unless it’s a bill that I’ve filed and then I definitely will engage,” Reynolds says, “so we’ll watch and see what happens and we’ll have a good conversation about that.”

Friday, March 3rd is the date of the so-called funnel deadline Reynolds mentioned. Bills that deal with taxes or spending are eligible for consideration at any time. But policy bills — like the pipeline bill — have to be approved by a House or Senate committee or they’re no longer eligible for debate.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s largest manufacturing employer is reporting a stellar first quarter of the fiscal year. Deere and Company reports net income for the first quarter of one-point-nine billion dollars, that’s up just over a billion from the first quarter a year ago. Quad Cities-based Deere also reports worldwide revenues rose 32 percent, while net sales hit 11-point-4 billion, compared to 8-point-5 billion the year before.

In a news release, Deere chairman and CEO John May said the company’s “performance is a reflection of favorable market fundamentals and healthy demand for equipment as well as solid execution on the part of employees, dealers and suppliers.”

(Radio Iowa) – Researchers at Iowa State University are studying beavers and the dams they build to determine what impact they may be having on the state’s fragile system of watersheds. The study’s name is the question they hope to answer — “Beavers: Superheroes for Water Quality?” Billy Beck, an I-S-U professor of natural resource ecology and management, says it’s still early in the three-year study, but they’re already starting to see some fascinating results. “We’re not really saying that they’re good or they’re bad at this point,” Beck says. “We just want to get some numbers on what exactly they’re doing for water quality and water quantity. For water quality, we’re looking at do they trap sediments and other nutrients behind the dam, which, nutrients can be problematic in excess, like phosphorus and nitrate.”

Beck, who’s also an I-S-U Extension and Outreach forestry specialist, says beavers were hunted to near-extinction in Iowa more than a century ago but have since rebounded. Some farmers and landowners may be annoyed by the nocturnal rodents because of the flooding caused by their dams. “Flooding is often thought of as a bad thing, but when rivers flood, a lot of good things happen for water quality and water quantity,” Beck says. “There’s a lot of nutrient deposition on our floodplains that goes into long-term storage. It’s a huge sponge that soaks up that flood velocity, preventing excessive downstream flooding.”

ISU Prof. Billy Beck (right) and grad student Andrew Rupiper at a beaver dam study site. (IA Learning Farms photo)

Beavers rarely just build one dam, it’s usually a whole string of dams, so Beck says they’re carefully testing the water in multiple areas. “We’re taking water quality samples from above, we’re checking water quality at a series of places throughout the dam chain, and then finally at the end of the chain,” Beck says. “We’re sampling those for nitrogen or nitrate, phosphorus, sediments, and then things like dissolved oxygen and temperature, things like that.” Early findings indicate that nitrate levels are being reduced by beaver dam chains at the rate of one-to-two parts per million. “Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you factor in all the water that runs through there and multiply that by the concentration, that’s a lot of pounds of nitrates that are being removed in that dam system,” Beck says. “Then, comparing that to an equal length of non-dammed stream, that’s a big reduction in that short of a time.”

The study, supported by the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, is looking at beaver dams in north-central Iowa, including along Prairie Creek near Fort Dodge and along Caton Branch, near Woodward. Beck says there’s been much more study in the Pacific Northwest of beavers and their impacts, especially on fish populations, but little is known about them in the agricultural landscape of Iowa.