Volunteers are needed to pull on boots and gloves this weekend to help clean up the banks of the Missouri River after last year’s historic flooding. Jeff Barrow is director of Missouri River Relief and says they’re focusing their efforts Saturday on the Nebraska side of the river, just north of Omaha. They’ll be getting the debris that washed up on the islands and in the woods in last year’s flooding. Barrow says up to 300 volunteers are expected for the event who will help pick up 10 to 15 tons of trash. He recommends bringing bug spray and sunscreen. The trash pick-up runs until noon and lunch will be provided. After lunch, more volunteers are needed to sort and haul that trash away.

The Army Corps of Engineers is providing a barge on which the trash will be dumped, while there will also be separate dumpsters for trash and scrap metal. Volunteers should be on the look-out for unusual items and there’s a contest for the best “trash treasures” found. Barrow says they’ve literally found a message in a bottle before.”We were doing a clean-up way down near the Mississippi River on the Missouri River and someone in Council Bluffs had put a message in a bottle and it’d been in the river ten years,” he says. “We found it. It was really amazing. We tried to call the person back but the phone number was no longer active.”

Volunteers should be at N-P Dodge Park north of Omaha at 9 AM Saturday. Barrow says in ten years, more than 16,500 volunteers have collected and hauled away more than one-million pounds of trash from 784 miles of river.

(Radio Iowa)

This is National Farm Safety Week as experts look to try and cut down on the over 300 farm-related deaths that happen each year.Iowa State University extension safety specialist Charles Schwab, farming ranks as one of the most hazardous occupations. “The agricultural industry, as a whole, has a much higher death rate than any other industry, and higher than the whole average, nine times higher, than all the other industries combined. So it’s a huge number of fatalities that we deal with in our population,” Schwab says.

Tractor roll overs account for the most farm deaths, and Schwab says they can be prevented if tractors have roll over protection or ROPS. “The phrase in Iowa which is very viable is we haven’t had a fatality from a roll-over with a tractor with ROPs and all of them have been with tractors without ROPs, and so a good life insurance policy is get the ROPs on the tractor,” according to Schwab. La Vonne Galles is the coordinator for Agri-Safe of Plymouth County, a division of the Floyd Valley Hospital in Le Mars. Galles says many times farm accidents occur because of fatigue, so she tells farmers to “take a break” from the busy harvest season.

“The main thing is just be careful, to think before we do anything, and try not to be, you know, so tired. I guess if we can take rest breaks and we can go at a pace that is conducive for good, safe, conduct, then that’s what I think we should be doing,” Galles says. She is worried the summer drought may present a new hazard on the farm in the form of aflatoxin mold in grain. “Yeah, its a respiratory issue of course and so that dust or mold that gets into our respiratory track. If we can avoid that by just using a mask, you know I think that is really important,” Galles says. “Think of that first before we enter into those grain bins, or even any close area that has the grain.” Galles warns that combines, grain trucks, wagons, and grain bins can often times be a playground for children, and she reminds farmers to always know the whereabouts of their children before moving equipment.

(Radio Iowa)

w/ Max Dirks

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The Guthrie County Sheriff’s Office reports they are currently seeking information on the whereabouts of a 1950’s model road grader and a 1956 John Deere Model 70 tractor. The implements were last seen on a farm in central Guthrie County…about two-years ago. If you have any information on the disappearance of the equipment, contact Guthrie County Sheriff Marty Arganbright at 641-747-2214.

w/ Kate Olson

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