(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Atlantic Chamber Ambassadors were hosted by Produce in the Park on Thursday, June 6th, 2024. The Ambassadors gathered to welcome the new Produce in the Park manager Maria Miller.

Pictured Left to Right Back Row: John Bricker, Jeremy Butler, Dr. Keith Leonard, Bill Saluk, Jim Kickland, Cole Doherty, Ann Quist, Jeff Christensen, Tori Gibson, Dolly Bergmann, Lana Westphalen, and Sue Liston Pictured Left to Right Front Row: Grace McAfee, Alisha Wagner, Nina Welter, Elaine Otte, Jennifer McEntaffer, Maria Miller, Heidi Hinman, Julie Waters, and Kate Olson (Photo submitted)

Maria moved to Atlantic from Omaha, Nebraska two years ago with her husband and four kids. Wanting to get away from the hectic city life, Atlantic was the perfect spot for a slower paced lifestyle. The family fell in love with the community and opportunities offered in Cass County. The position as Market Manager came up unexpectedly for Maria. She took a chance at applying for the position and could not love it more after starting in March.

Produce in the Park is a homemade/homegrown style farmers market that is held every Thursday from 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM in the summer months at the Atlantic City Park. With a wide variety of vendors, shoppers can find anything from produce, meats, plants, candles, and so much more. There are a lot of exciting things happening in Produce in the Park this year. You’ll find a mix of new and old vendors, food trucks, entertainment, activities, and theme nights. Maria is excited to give the entrepreneurs in the community a space to do their own thing and show off what they have been working on!

Produce in the Park is located at 102 Chestnut St. Atlantic, Iowa 50022.

For more information, contact 402-680-2029 or visit their website at https://www.produceintheparkatlanticiowa.com.

(Radio Iowa) – An emergency medical physician is urging Iowa parents who have small kids living in their homes to avoid buying any sort of health-related gummies. Dr. Benjamin Orozco, who’s a medical toxicologist with the Gundersen Health System, says kids get curious and they love candy, and if gummies are in the house, there’s a chance your child could end up seriously ill — or worse — if they find the bottle. “Any supplements, whether it be gummy vitamins, melatonin, recreational marijuana use in adults that’s in gummy form, any of that stuff is a very high risk to be eaten by children, especially toddlers in large amounts,” Orozco says. “They’ll eat the whole bottle, and depending on what the product is, you can actually have a fair amount of toxicity associated with that.”

Despite what the label says, he says the concentrations may be all over the map. If your child is discovered feeling woozy with the container nearby, you’d better make a fast call to the Iowa Poison Control Center. “If you call the poison center and your kid is alert and talking, they can walk you through the treatment and observation for that,” he says. “Many times, you’ll be able to keep the kid at home, but they’ll appropriately identify the kids that need to be in the hospital. I always put in a plug for the poison center at 1-800-222-1222.” Orozco says he’s not a fan of children being given melatonin for help with sleep as he says many supplements are “littered with problems.”

“First of all, it may not get to the root cause of why the child is having poor sleep,” Orozco says. “Second of all, even if you buy melatonin and there’s a labeled amount on the bottle, recent studies show you could have three or four times as much melatonin in there than you think you’re getting your child, none at all, or potentially CBD or some other substance all together.” There are plenty of non-medical ways to help a kid with sleep, including enforcing a regular sleep schedule, banning screens before bedtime, having regular meal times and plenty of physical activity. Orozco says it’s risky to have this sort of supplement in the house with kids, and he recommends if adults need any of these products, get them in pill or tablet form so they don’t tempt a child.

“Avoid gummies, chocolate bars, things like that, at all costs,” Orozco says. “Don’t have them out where your kids can see them. Don’t take them in front of your kids, because they’ll look for them later. They need to be locked up high and out of sight. And really, I don’t like gummy and candy forms for any sort of supplement or recreational substance in the house with small children.” If a child takes an adult dose of any medication, he says “any is too many,” but gobbling an entire bottle of gummies could land them in the I-C-U. It’s safer, Orozco says, to simply not allow them in the house.

Gundersen Health System has clinics in Calmar, Decorah, Fayette, Lansing, Postville and Waukon, and a hospital in West Union.

Volunteers, Atlantic Parks & Rec Personnel & Trees Forever Representatives gather gather to plant trees at the Schildberg Recreation Area Campground in Atlantic, Iowa (6-7-2024)

(Atlantic, Iowa) – A little more than a dozen volunteers and Parks and Rec personnel gathered at the Schildberg Recreation Area RV campgrounds this (Friday) morning, in Atlantic, to help plant a variety of 32 trees. Local Trees Forever representative Dolly Bergmann, said Alliant Energy provided funding for the project in the form of a $3,000 grant.

Trees Forever also made the trees available through a grant. Bergmann said City employees did some prep work before today’s (Friday’s) tree planting.

She informed the volunteers (and for that matter, anyone who wishes to plant trees on their own property), of the right and wrong ways to plant a tree.

Schildberg RV Park playground

RV’s fill the camping pads at the Schildberg Rec Area RV Park (6-7-24)

Schildberg Campground Shelter House

She advised putting three-to four-inches of mulch for each tree, but not right up against it. “Leave a little doughnut hole around [the tree].” City employees will water and eventually place stakes and protective barriers around the trees to keep the deer away. The RV Pads at the Schildberg Campground were mostly full this (Friday) morning, with campers taking advantage of the Schildberg Recreational Trail, the fire pits, playground and shelter-house amenities. (Ric Hanson – Photos)

(Creston, Iowa) – Police in Creston, Thursday evening, arrested a man on a Union County warrant, and a charge of unauthorized use of a credit card. 31-year-old Jesus Osmany Ramos Berrelleza, of Creston, was arrested at his residence a little after 7-p.m., Thursday. He was transported to the Union County Jail and posted a $2,000 bond before being released from custody.

OMAHA, Neb. – VA Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System’s Shenandoah (Iowa), VA Community-Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC) will host a two-hour open house on Saturday, June 15, 2024, beginning at 11 a.m. The clinic is located at 2043 ‘A’ Avenue in Shenandoah, Iowa.

According to Joyce Portz, nurse manager at the Shenandoah VA CBOC, the open house will include opportunities for Veterans, Veterans families and the community at large to learn more about the many Veteran health care services offered at the clinic.

Along with a reception hosted by the local American Legion Auxiliary, visitors will have an opportunity to tour the facility, meet members of the CBOC team, and speak to the VA Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System’s Health Care Enrollment specialist and local county Veterans Service Officer and learn more about enrolling for VA health care. The local American Legion Auxiliary will also be providing refreshments for the open house.

The open house is scheduled to begin following the June 15 dedication ceremony for the new Page County Veterans Memorial at Rapp Park, which is set to begin at 10 a.m. The open house will conclude at 1 p.m.

(Radio Iowa) – A century-old car with a fabled history for road trips was -supposed- to be chugging across Iowa today (Friday), but as happens with aging vehicles, it’s developed engine trouble. Tim Matthews, curator of the Museum of American Speed in Lincoln, Nebraska, says this was the ten-millionth Model T produced by Ford and it’s already made three cross-country treks — when it was built in 1924, on its 50th birthday in 1974, and again in 1999. Matthews says things were going well on this 100th anniversary trek when they left New York City last Sunday, but the engine blew apart in Pennsylvania.

“We actually had a connecting rod bearing failure, and anytime you have one thing go bad inside an engine, it usually creates a chain reaction,” Matthews says. “So that bearing came unglued, which destroyed the crank, and it threw a lot of material around the engine and it required us to take the engine completely out of the car.” The black buggy was hauled to Ohio for repairs and soon, it’ll be trucked back to Pennsylvania to resume its 45-hundred mile “Sea-to-Sea in a Model T” trek from New York to San Francisco. Matthews credits the team of expert Model T mechanics who are driving the vehicle, but also Henry Ford, who pioneered the industry, introducing mass production and assembly lines.

Photo from https://www.museumofamericanspeed.org/

“He built a car that really anybody could understand and anybody can take it apart,” Matthews says. “You’re talking about a time when a lot of Americans didn’t have electricity yet, but this car generated its own electricity, so for the time, it was very technically advanced, but it was simple enough that people with just common tools could take it apart and rebuild it. So that’s kind of the fun of the whole deal.” The Model T will soon resume its route, following the Lincoln Highway coast-to-coast. That’s Highway 30 in Iowa, which will take it through communities including: Clinton, Cedar Rapids, Marshalltown, Ames, Carroll and Denison. Matthews says the historic car, with its “TENMIL” Iowa license plates, always draws crowds of onlookers when it stops, but there’s a steep learning curve to operate it.

“Most people look at a Model T, they get in and there’s three pedals on the floor, and none of them are the gas pedal, and so people are thinking, ‘What the heck? How do you even drive this thing?'” Matthews says. “It takes a little time to understand how to operate a Model T, with the three pedals and your throttle’s up on the steering wheel — that’s how you control your speed.” The Lincoln Highway Association says 85-percent of the original stretch of road across Iowa is still drivable, though some of it is gravel. While you might think a hundred-year old car would provide a rough, bumpy ride, Matthews says that’s not the case, though its top speed is only 45 to 50 miles an hour.

“The Model T is like a giant spring, basically, and it goes off road better than most of your off-road vehicles today,” Matthews says. “I mean, this thing was designed to go across the country before there were great roads, so it’s accustomed to going through ditches and over mountains and things of that sort, and they’re incredibly adept at doing that.” The car was recently donated to the museum by the family of Dr. Alan Hathaway, a Davenport dentist who died in 2016. The Hathaway family drove the “Tin Lizzy” cross-country twice, for its 50th and 75th anniversaries, while officials from Ford drove it sea-to-sea when it was new in 1924. If you’d like to see the historic Model T, it’ll be coming to Iowa — soon.

The schedule on the website (museumofamericanspeed.org) will be updated as soon as the vehicle is again roadworthy.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, a Republican from Marion, has proposed legislation she says will create better border control. Hinson it is in response to the recent action by President Joe Biden that she calls inadequate. “Iowans and Americans see this for what it is. It is a cheap election year ploy by President Biden,” she says. Hinson says the House Appropriations Committee legislation would expand beds in border detention facilities to about 50-thousand. Biden’s plan puts a cap on those seeking asylum. “This weak, watered-down executive order won’t do anything to protect Americans from the potentially dangerous illegal immigrants that are already in the U-S, or to actually secure the border. The proposed legislation would also end grant programs for sanctuary cities.

Hinson also talked about the importance of keeping up efforts to battle the Avian Flu, especially with the first case being reported in an Iowa dairy herd. “We know its effect on poultry we know that if milk is pasteurized it is safe but obviously Animal Health is a huge priority for me,” she says. Hinson says part of the battle is maintaining adequate funding. “In the Ag/F-D-A bill we have continued to prioritize making sure we have resources available to properly research and fund potential vaccine efforts and to step up those efforts across the board,” Hinson says.

Hinson made her comments during her weekly conference call with reporters.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – Sheriff’s Deputies in Montgomery County, Thursday evening, responded to an altercation at a residence east of Villisca, and ended-up arresting a man from Shelby County. When deputies arrived at 3153 110th Street at around 5:30-p.m., they arrested 57-year-old Rex Dean McDermott, of Elk Horn, for Criminal Mischief in the 2nd Degree – a Class D Felony, and on three-counts of Aggravated Assault while displaying a dangerous weapon – which are aggravated misdemeanors.

McDermott was transported to the Montgomery County Jail and held on a $5,000 bond.

(Radio Iowa)  – An analysis released by the Sierra Club and landowners who object to the proposed Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline suggests the project will require drawing well over three BILLION gallons of water from Iowa’s aquifers each year. Jess Mazour is the conservation coordinator for the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club.  “This is not a good use of our public water supply,” Mazour says. “We need to ensure we have water for generations to come and not squander it on a private company.”

Mazour says ethanol plants already use a significant amount of water and the pipeline would be an even bigger drain on Iowa’s water supply. “We have no idea how much water is below us underground,” Mazour says. “…Our bottom line is we need Iowa to take a long, hard look and study our aquifers and we need to deny water for carbon capture and storage for any company.”

Jess Mazour of the Sierra Club’s Iowa Chapter speaking during an online news conference June 6, 2024.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has already granted Summit a permit to withdraw up to 55 million gallons of water each year from a new well near an ethanol plant in Chickasaw County. Wally Taylor, the attorney for the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club, says the agency has been handing out water use permits like candy, without considering the impact on groundwater resources.

“The DNR sees its role as serving its customers and the customer is the applicant for a permit,” he says. “In fact, they used to call that portion of the DNR the Environmental Protection Division. Now it’s the Environmental Services Division. That tells you all you need to know.”

According to federal reports, it takes between 10 and 17 liters of water to produce ethanol. More water would be required at each ethanol plant site to cool carbon so it can be compressed, liquefied and pushed through a pipeline. More than half of Iowa’s corn crop is used to produce ethanol. Summit and corn growers who support the project say the pipeline is crucial to the survival of the ethanol industry, as more consumers demand fuel that has a low or no carbon footprint.

Summit’s pipeline would sequester carbon from 57 Midwest ethanol plants, including 30 in Iowa.