(Creston,Iowa) – An accident Thursday afternoon, in Creston, caused $3,000 damage to a van, but no one was injured. Creston Police report a 2022 Dodge RAM pickup driven by 40-year-old Luis Miguel Huerta-Fernandez, of Hobbs, New Mexico,was pulling a trailer and traveling south on Cherry Street in Creston at around 4:05-p.m., Thursday, when a 2019 Chrysler Pacific van driven by 81-year-old Nellie Lou Loury, of Creston, began to back out of her driveway.

Huerta honked the horn to get Loury’s attention, and swerved out of the way, but when he came back into the correct lane, his trailer hit the van on the left front fender. The trailer wasn’t damaged. No citations were issued, but the Police report noted Loury failed to yield the right-of-way while exiting her driveway.

(Missouri Valley, Iowa/KETV) — Landowners near Missouri Valley want to know if their land and water are safe because they’re living on a former missile site. The Air Force scrapped the “Atlas D Missile Site 3” decades ago, but safety questions remain. All of the structures that had been in operation in the 1950’s and 60’s, were demolished in 1988. The area was sold for residential and ag use in 2006. But in 2013, a contaminant called “TCE**” was detected in residential wells.

The pandemic forced people in Missouri Valley to wait years to ask questions in person about the safety of their land, and water. On Thursday, the Army Corps of Engineers worked to provide them with some answers.

The Army Corps of Engineers says out of 140 drinking water wells tested 25 wells had levels of TCE. The Corps of Engineers said they wanted to assure the affected landowners and others, that they’re only trying to help, by cleaning the contamination up and fixing related issues. Engineers says they hope to have an effective plan on how to do so sometime in the next three-years, likely between 2025 and 2026.

With a final decision on a remedy sometime between 2026 and 2027. You can still submit your input HERE. The questionnaire site is available until Dec. 15^th.

**Trichloroethylene (TCE) is used as a solvent for degreasing metal parts during the manufacture of a variety of products. It can be found in consumer products, including some wood finishes, adhesives, paint removers, and stain removers. TCE can also be used in the manufacture of other chemicals. TCE that has been spilled or dumped on the ground can pollute soil and groundwater, where it may pollute private and public drinking water wells.

(Greenfield, Iowa) – Adair County Engineer Nick Kauffman, Wednesday morning, updated the County Board of Supervisors on recent Secondary Roads Department maintenance and activities. Kauffman said in Washington Township, the bridge Section 32 will have guard rails installed on Monday (Dec. 4^th), weather permitting. He said also their hydro-seeder was expected to have been delivered Wednesday afternoon. Hydroseeding is a technique that spreads a specialized grass “slurry” evenly over bare ground to grow grass and prevent soil erosion.

One of their new hires will start Monday, while another started on Thursday.

In other business, Supervisor Jodie Hoadley told the Board, and Kauffman, that the County had received a requested grant for the installation of fiber optics, which includes the Orient area.

The Adair County Board of Supervisor’s next meeting takes place 9-a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6^th.

(Radio Iowa) – An ethanol industry group is accusing Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy of being hypocritical for supporting construction of an oil pipeline, but opposing carbon pipelines. Ramaswamy often recites what he calls the 10 “truths” on the campaign trail. One of them is that human flourishing requires fossil fuels and Ramaswamy has said construction of the Keystone X-L Pipeline for crude oil should resume.

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks to crowd at his Iowa campaign headquarters on Nov. 28, 2023. (RI photo)

This week, Ramaswamy criticized Governor Reynolds and other Republicans for not opposing the use of eminent domain to seize land for proposed pipeline to ship carbon out of ethanol plants. The Iowa Renewable Fuels Association says Ramaswamy’s playing a typical political game, not driven by principles. The group’s executive director says Ramaswamy is a hypocrite whose campaign is running on fumes.

At noon today (Friday), Ramaswamy and the Free Soil Coalition, a group that opposes the carbon pipelines, are holding an event in Des Moines.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa, reports a central Iowa man entered a guilty plea, Wednesday, to a charge of wire fraud. According to public court documents, 47-year-old Zachary James Flaherty, of Clive, used his position as an insurance agent and annuity salesperson to defraud elderly individuals out of their retirement savings and other monies. Flaherty admitted to engaging in a scheme to defraud some of his insurance clients, specifically, that he intended to defraud some of his clients by making false statements to those clients to obtain financial benefits for himself to the detriment of his clients.

For example, Flaherty told one of the victims, referred to in court documents as Victim #10, that he would invest proceeds from the sale of her house on her behalf and for her benefit, even though Flaherty knew that his representations to Victim #10 were false. As a result of Flaherty’s false representations, Victim #10 wrote two checks, totaling $170,000, to a company Flaherty owned and/or operated. Flaherty used the proceeds of his fraudulent scheme to acquire various assets, including a boat and automobiles.

Flaherty is scheduled to be sentenced on April 12, 2024, and faces a potential sentence of up to twenty years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine the sentence Flaherty will receive after considering the United States Sentencing Guidelines and other sentencing factors.

United States Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement. The Iowa Insurance Division’s Fraud Bureau and the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the case, with assistance from the Des Moines Police Department, Clive Police Department, and the Iowa Department of Public Safety’s Division of Criminal Investigation.