(Onawa, Iowa) – Officials with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) will host a public meeting at 6 p.m., March 31, at the Lewis and Clark State Park’s Visitors Center to discuss ongoing lake restoration efforts at the park, including a hydraulic dredging project slated for the 2022 open water season. Restoration activities planned for the park will be presented at the meeting, along with an opportunity for the public to ask questions about the dredging operations and potential impacts to the park throughout the construction season.

Over the past decade, members of the community have worked with DNR and other project partners to develop and implement a comprehensive lake restoration plan to improve water quality and recreational opportunities at Blue Lake. Hydraulic dredging is a significant step in the restoration process for improving water quality in the lake.

Blue Lake, Onawa, Iowa (Via Lewis-Clark.org)

The dredging project at Blue Lake wildlife area is being completed in two phases: phase one, completed in 2021, constructed a sediment containment site for holding dredge materials from the lake, and phase two will hydraulically remove approximately 434,000 cubic yards of sediment from the main basin of the lake to minimize sediment resuspension and improve water clarity. For more information about the Blue Lake Restoration project, check out the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAlqglIxTBU

Blue Lake was added to the State’s list of Impaired Waters in 2004 due to poor water transparency attributed to sediment resuspension within the water column. A water quality improvement plan (TMDL) was completed for the lake in 2009, but water quality remains poor. Restoration planning efforts began in 2011 to address sediment resuspension within the lake and better manage water levels and nutrient inputs at Blue Lake.

Lewis and Clark State Park is a very popular recreation destination with more than 40,000 visitors each year. The campground is consistently one of the busiest in Iowa. The park is a popular place for boating, camping, relaxing, hiking or walking the trails, and fishing.

(Ida Grove, Iowa) – The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reports, an investigation that began as a turkey poaching case last fall has concluded with five individuals pleading guilty to 48 wildlife charges and assessed nearly $83,000 in fines and liquidated damages. State conservation officers were executing a search warrant at the home of 26-year-old Devon Lewis, of rural Washta, Iowa, on Nov. 21, when they discovered evidence of other poaching activity. Once an additional search warrant was secured, investigators uncovered evidence of a year-round poaching network involving at least 70 deer, four turkeys, ducks, raccoons and red fox dating back to at least 2018.

State Conservation Officer Kirby Bragg said evidence from the lengthy investigation showed that these individuals would shoot wildlife out of season, over bait and from vehicles, often without the proper tags. The deer were primarily bucks with antlers.

Iowa DNR photo

The following individuals pleaded guilty in January in Ida County court.

• Devon Lewis, 26, of rural Washta, pleaded guilty to 23 citations with fines and damages totaling $37,600 and a minimum seven-year hunting license suspension;
• Taylor S. Luvaas, 27 of Schaller, pleaded guilty to 14 citations, with fines and damages totaling $31,118 and a minimum seven-year hunting license suspension;
• Jacob R. Fouts, 23, of Cherokee, pleaded guilty to six citations, with fines and damages totaling $5,861 and his hunting license will be suspended;
• Dylan D. Lewis, 22, of Cushing, pleaded guilty to three citations, with fines and damages totaling $5,251 and his hunting license will be suspended;
• Austin T.L. Lewis, 19, of Cushing, pleaded guilty to two citations, with fines and damages totaling $4,300.

The judge condemned five rifles, three shotguns and three bows used to commit the crimes. “Our best chance to catch poachers is when the public provides us with timely information after witnessing illegal activity take place,” said Officer Bragg. “It was apparent that this activity had been going on for quite some time.”

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources was assisted by the Woodbury County Sheriff’s Office, Woodbury County Conservation Board, Ida County Sheriff’s Office and the Ida County Conservation Board.

(Glenwood, Iowa) – The Mills County Sheriff’s Office reports the arrest Monday evening, of a man from Woodbury County. Authorities say 53-year-old Darrin Lee Sulsberger, of Hornick, was arrested at the Woodbury County Jail, on a Mills County warrant for Contempt of Court. Sulsberger was being held without bond in the Mills County Jail.

Authorities said also, a woman from Silver City was injured during a single-vehicle accident that took place at around 10-a.m. today (Tuesday) on Barrus Road at 250th Street. 67-year-old Sharon Grauer was driving a 2013 Ford westbound on Barrus Road, when her vehicle went onto the north shoulder and then into the ditch. The accident happened as her vehicle was rounding a curve in the road.

In the ditch, the vehicle hit a culvert pipe and drove over 250th Street, before coming to rest on the northwest side of the intersection. Grauer told Deputies she accidentally went off onto the shoulder and over-corrected, causing the vehicle to enter the ditch. The woman was transported by Silver City Rescue to Mercy Hospital.

(Radio Iowa) – Several U-S senators have already declared how they’ll vote on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the U-S Supreme Court, but Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he’s not yet ready to commit one way or the other. “No, and I don’t think I’ll announce it until next Monday when we have a committee meeting,” Grassley says. “I might make up my mind before then but right now I’m going through the — I don’t know — 35 to 40 hours the hearing went on, through the records, because I had other committee meetings and couldn’t be there for all of it.”

Grassley says he and members of his party asked “tough, thorough” questions of Jackson and conducted a “fair” hearing, though he remains unhappy the Judiciary Committee didn’t have access to all of her non-public documents. “We’re still, as Republicans, some documents we’re trying to get,” Grassley says. “We may not get them but we’re not going to hold up the nomination from going forward just for that reason but I’m sure that most people are going through the same process I am.”

The Judiciary Committee has a vote on Jackson scheduled for Monday. As yet, there are no Democrats who have indicated they’ll oppose Jackson’s nomination, while no Republicans have yet said they would support her.
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Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he has no worries about Justice Clarence Thomas and any possible cases that may come before the U-S Supreme Court regarding the January 6th riot. Several agencies report Thomas’ wife, Ginni, exchanged more than two dozen texts with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about efforts to overturn the election.  “I think a wife has a right to have her own personal views on anything she wants to have them on,” Grassley says. “I mean, I don’t want to tell Mrs. Grassley what she can say or not say.”

Grassley, a Republican, says Justice Thomas is “a person of integrity” and it’s Thomas alone who should decide if he should recuse himself from any future proceedings. “It’s pretty well established in the Supreme Court that each justice themselves make a determination for recusal,” Grassley says, “and it’s worked this way for 240 years and that’s the way it’s going to have to work now.”

In the past, Ginni Thomas has said there is no conflict of interest between her husband’s position and her conservative activism.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Trevor Frederickson Memorial Fund has donated a set of 3D shooting targets to the Atlantic Community Schools’ archery program.  The program which continues to grow each year offers students in 6^th through 12^th grade the opportunity to shoot at both bullseye and 3D tournaments.  This year the Atlantic High School became the State Champions and several students from both the middle school and high school division will be traveling to Salt Lake City, UT at the end of April to compete in the NASP Western Nationals.

Frederickson Fund spokesperson Melanie Petty (Trevor’s mom), said “We look forward to watching this group continue to grow in the sport for years to come.”

Pictured: Grant Petty and Coach Clint Roland (Photo & info. courtesy Melanie Petty)

(Johnston, Iowa) – Two law enforcement officers from Cass County are set to graduate Friday morning from the 46th DPS (Dept. of Public Safety) Basic Academy. The ceremony for recruits takes place in Johnston. According to Iowa State Patrol Sgt. Alex Dinkla, for the past 10-weeks, the 17 recruits – including Dustin Gelner and Tyler Shiels, from Cass County – have completed courses on the laws of arrest, search and seizure, defensive tactics, arrest techniques, precision driving, firearms, emergency management services, criminal law, human relations, physical fitness, human trafficking, motor vehicle law and many other law enforcement-related courses.

Following graduation, Dustin Gelner, a former Atlantic Police Officer, and Tyler Shiels, formerly with the Cass County Sheriff’s Department, will both become members of the Iowa State Patrol.

Guests speaker for the ceremony is IDPS Commissioner Stephen K. Bayens. The event is open to family members of the recruits.

(Radio Iowa) – There are some students at Iowa State University who can actually say beer is helping them get their degree. I-S-U professor Robert Brown has been brewing beer on his own for years and was approached by the Center for Crops Utilization Research to develop a class on the subject.  “So I scrambled working with the folks that approve courses at Iowa State and got it approved last November, and here we are teaching it,” Brown says. He got help from an I-S-U Alum who donated brewing equipment his company makes to get them going, and the crop center found space for the brewing lab.

“The students get a lecture once a week, and then they spend the whole afternoon in the laboratory,” Brown says. “And they are introduced to different kinds of equipment appropriate to whether it’s home brewing they are interested — or to look at commercial brewing of beer.” He admits some people question a beer brewing course on campus — but he says there’s a lot to it. “The course is called the science and practice of brewing. And I put science first because the students are asked to reach back to what they learned their freshman and sophomore years in chemistry and biology and microbiology, and things that they learned — especially those who are engineers — to heat transfer, thermal dynamics, and apply that to the brewing of the beers,” according to Brown.

Robert C. Brown (left) works alongside Jessica Brown (no relation) while brewing their Capsaicin Sour ale. (2021 photo via ISU Engineering News)

He says you can’t just throw the ingredients together and expect to get a good beer. It takes some time. “Working out how much grain and how much water to work into it,” he says. “So it really is for many of them I think a culmination of their studies at the university — whether it was food science or mechanical engineering.” Brown says the industry has changed so much in the last several years and there’s more happening now as well. “There’s talk about hard seltzers for example and non-alcoholic beers, so there’s a revolution that’s technology driven,” he says.

Brown says the talk also centers on whether to brew large batches of beer you can market nationwide, or focus on smaller batches to be sold locally. Students in the class do have to be 21. Brown says he takes a team approach to the brewing process. There are five students assigned to each of the four identical brew stations, and sometimes they are trying to determine if one brew was better than the other with the same recipe.

He started the brewing class in January and says the batches of beer have been improving.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa farmers could inadvertently find new markets for their commodities because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Chad Hart, an agricultural economist with Iowa State University, explains….”If Russia and Ukraine aren’t able to export, that means the rest of the world is searching for another place to buy grain from,” Hart says, “and it tends to drive actually more sales for us here out of the U.S.”

When Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1980, then-President Jimmy Carter imposed a grain embargo on Russia. Hart doubts the effectiveness of a similar embargo today. “Global markets have changed quite a bit since then and we won’t see the same impacts with the same policy moves,” Hart says, “given how time has changed agriculture over the last 40-some years.”

Agricultural exports from Russia and Ukraine have ground to a halt and the invasion is going to have certain impact on what Ukrainian farmers can produce this year. “On the wheat side, I would say the planting is already done, so it’s impacting the crop that was planted last fall that would be growing later on this spring, they plant a lot of winter wheat,” Hart says. “The corn that they would produce would be planted here when we plant our crops coming up in the next month or two and it’s that planting that is most in jeopardy.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24th, so it’s already been a little over a month.

(Radio Iowa) – A northwest Iowa man was killed in a two-vehicle accident on Monday afternoon. The Iowa State Patrol reports that at about 2:30 p.m., 71-year-old Curtis Brownmiller of Spencer was driving a 2017 Nissan westbound on Highway 18, east of Hull when he struck the back of a truck driven by 43-year-old Jeffrey Ver Hoef of Hull, which was stopped and waiting for traffic to clear before turning left.

Brownmiller was taken to the Sioux Center Health Hospital by ambulance, where he died from his injuries.

(Radio Iowa) – A woman who lived on the Meskwaki settlement near Tama died Monday after being attacked by a pack of dogs. The fatal attack took place in the area of Springs Road, which is a little more than a mile southeast of the Meskwaki Casino and south of U-S Highway 30, near the Iowa River. Details of the incident and the identity of the person who died have not yet been released.

All of the dogs suspected to have been involved in the incident have been killed, according to the Meskwaki Nation Police Department.