Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’ Friday press conference on COVID-19 in Iowa. We’ll have live audio on KJAN as well with the presser set to begin at approximately 11:00 a.m.

(Radio Iowa) — Iowa Senator Joni Ernst toured the Green Plains ethanol plant in Shenandoah Thursday to discuss biofuels-related issues with company officials. Ernst says the E-P-A Administrator’s responses during a Senate committee hearing on COVID-19’s impact on the ethanol industry has renewed the fire in both her and Senator Chuck Grassley’s office to push the E-P-A on ethanol issues. “Since hearing the really unsatisfactory answers that Andrew Wheeler gave us on the non-progress coming out of E-P-A, we now go back and push him on these issues,” Ernst said. “We need him to explain clearly to me why we don’t have those tanks re-labeled. Why is this not happening? Just simply stating, ‘we haven’t had time,’ that’s not a good enough answer.”

Ernst got to look at a new portion of the facility that produces a higher protein animal feed from the spent corn kernel. Green Plains C-E-O Todd Becker says the product is more sought after than the traditional dried distillers grain that comes out of ethanol facilities. “It’s filling this hole between soybean meal and fish meal, between 48 and 60 percent protein,” Becker says. “Nothing really exists of that high quality out there — so that’s what we’re making out there — and we are sold out. It’s a ready-made pet food today. Everything we make out there is going into products like that, which would never happen in distillers grains, ever.”

The new system is part of a 38 million dollar investment the company has made in the Shenandoah location, which includes a research facility to develop feed for the aquaculture industry. Becker says the expansion means more jobs for the area. “It starts with construction jobs and from there it starts with operator jobs and management jobs. They are all high-paying jobs in an ethanol plant — they just are. In the aquaculture, there’s P-H-Ds out there,” according to Becker. “We’re attracting people into the county here that would have never thought about coming to Iowa, number one, and Shenandoah, number two.”

He says this is the start of a process that is going to grow. “We’re doing things out here that have never been done in ethanol plants. This is going to be a model for what we roll out across the country,” Becker said. The first shipments of the new high-protein feed left the Shenandoah facility in April averaging about 20 percent more protein than traditional distillers grain.

The Iowa Department of Public Health reports the following COVID-19 statistics from across the State, to date:

• 146, 288 Iowans had been tested for the virus
• 18,791 tested positive for COVID-19
• 127,070 have tested negative
• 10,640 have recovered
• 520 have died.
• 376 people were being treated for the virus in a hospital
• 117 patients were in an ICU
• 38 had been admitted over the past 24-hours
• 78 patients were on ventilators.
• The number of LTC facility outbreaks is up one at 38; 1,529 LTC patients/staff have tested positive; 670 have recovered, and 243 have died.

In western/southwest Iowa, the latest RMCC data show 9 hospitalized, 9 in an ICU, 2 were admitted to a hospital, and 5 people were on ventilators.  Here are the latest County COVID-19 numbers from the IDPH COVID-19 dashboard (# of cases/# of persons recovered):

• Cass County – 11/9 (377 tested, 354 negative, 12 tests pending)
• Adair – 9/5 (203 have been tested as of 5/29)
• Adams – 7/3
• Audubon – 12/8
• Guthrie – 48/29
• Montgomery – 6/5
• Pottawattamie – 235/152
• Shelby – 34/30.

Senior Alumni Scholarship Foundation (SASF) scholarship recipients were announced during the KJAN AHS Senior Class Night streaming event held May 21st. Atlantic High School seniors McKenzie Waters, Ethan Pross, and Emma Templeton were each awarded $2,500.

SASF honors the school and community that provided SASF alumni an excellent educational start through an endowment that has been funded by generous donations from Atlantic High School graduates. For more information about SASF see: https://atlanticsasf.org/

More State and area news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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(Radio Iowa) — Authorities spent yesterday (Thursday) digging in a Waterloo suburb, apparently looking for evidence in the month-long search for a missing Arizona man and his step-daughter, who are believed to have been murdered. The property being searched is at the end of Timber Oak Road, a cul-de-sac, in a quiet Evansdale neighborhood. Officials dressed in white hazmat suits carrying shovels and digging equipment could be seen near a chicken coop on the undeveloped property. The FBI and officers from several local agencies were involved in the search. Late Thursday afternoon, police in Chino Valley, Arizona, confirmed the digging was connected to the disappearance of 45-year-old David Batten and 28-year-old Elissa Landry, who have been missing since April 19th.

Landry’s boyfriend, 24-year-old Mitchell Mincks, formerly of Waterloo, is a person of interest in the Arizona homicide case. On April 28th, he was arrested on unrelated charges at rural Waterloo home. Authorities say two pets belonging to Landry were found in Waterloo last month and her missing vehicle is also believed to be in the Waterloo area.

The Creston Police Department reports 31-year old Lance Keaton Wood, of Lexington, MO., was arrested Thursday morning in Creston, on a warrant for Failure to Appear April 30th, on a prior charge of Public Intoxication. Wood was seen by the Union County Magistrate, plead guilty and was released. Police said also, a man residing in the 800 block of N. Spruce Street, reported Wednesday, that someone had keyed the passenger side of his 2014 Toyota Tundra pickup. The damage was estimated at $200.

The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:05-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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(Radio Iowa) — A University of Iowa study finds tiny tree pollen particles can hang in the air for a long time after a rain shower, causing grief for allergy and asthma sufferers. U-I chemistry professor Betsy Stone is the study’s author who led a team into the rainy outdoors of Iowa City on 28 separate days early last year. Rain events ranged from light showers to thunderstorms and even severe weather that spun off a tornado — and all brought down pollen.  “We logged many different rain events in the spring of 2019 and we found that they stuck around two-and-a-half to 11 hours after the rain ended,” Stone says.

The research found the harder the rainfall, the longer the pollen fragments would remain suspended in the air. She notes there’s a difference between pollen and pollen fragments, as the smaller granules can make their way deep into the lungs and worsen a person’s allergic reactions.  “Pollens are relatively large atmospheric particles. They’re 20 to 100 micrometers in size. With that size, they have a little bit more weight and that causes them to settle out of the atmosphere due to gravity,” Stone says. “Pollen fragments are about 100 times smaller than an intact pollen and they can actually stay in the atmosphere much longer.”

A weather phenomenon that’s sometimes seen during thunderstorms can send pollen far up into the sky. “An updraft will take particles from near the surface up into the upper atmosphere where they’re going to be exposed to higher humidity,” Stone says. “Under those very humid conditions, a pollen grain can rupture, releasing hundreds of tiny particle fragments and those fragments can come back down to the earth’s surface when it rains.” People who suffer from allergies or asthma should take note, she says, and do their best to stay indoors when the raindrops are falling — and immediately afterwards. “The highest concentrations of pollen fragments, and the highest potential for human exposure, would be when it’s raining, especially when it’s raining very, very hard,” Stone says. “So, if people are able to avoid the very strong rainfall and the period of time right after the storm, usually an hour or two, the pollen fragment levels drop down considerably.”

The study was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and was published online in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

(Radio Iowa) — Animal rights groups are criticizing the methods used by Iowa pork producers to euthanize the animals that they are not able to take to the packing plant. Coronavirus shutdowns slowed production and Ag Secretary Mike Naig says no producer wants to destroy animals. “As it relates to some of the activist activity in the state, I think it is disgusting,” Naig says. He says hog farmers hate this more than anyone. “I think that our producers are experiencing and unprecedented disruption in their business and their way of life. And we’ve got folks with a clear agenda that are kicking our farmers while they are down,” he says.

Naig says producers follow specific guidelines. “The facts are that producers work with their veterinarians. Veterinarians follow the American Vet Med Association’s guidelines for euthanasia– humane euthanasia, even in constrained situations like we are in today,” according to Naig. “That’s the guidelines, those are the best practices that producers will use. No producer wants to be in this situation.”

Naig says the backup of hogs will reduce as meat processing plants get back up to full production — but it will still take some time to catch up.