OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Two former members of the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska’s governing council have been sentenced to probation for misusing federal money. The Sioux City Journal reports that 48-year-old Tillie Aldrich and 47-year-old Jessica Webster were each sentenced Friday in Omaha’s federal court to five years of probation and ordered to pay restitution. Both pleaded guilty in July. Webster must repay $89,000 and Aldrich must repay $13,404.

The two are part of a group of nine former and current council members charged with giving themselves bonuses out of $388,972 in federal money. Officials say the bonuses were paid from Indian Health Service funds meant to provide health care to members of the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska, who reside on the Omaha Reservation in Macy in northeastern Nebraska and in western Iowa.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Flowers and decorations left on graves in several Des Moines city cemeteries must be picked up by the end of the month, or be thrown out by city workers. Des Moines Parks and Recreation staff will begin removing memorial decorations placed on gravesites in municipal cemeteries on Oct. 1. That means cemetery visitors have until Sept. 30 to collect any decorations they’d like to keep.
Items cemetery staff will remove and discard include vigil lights, statues, floral decorations, fences, boxes, toys, vases, glass, wood signs, cement blocks and similar articles. Workers will complete the clearing by Oct. 15, after which, the public will again be allowed to place decorations on gravesites.

The next municipal cemetery cleanup following October’s will be in March.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The amount of water being released into the lower Missouri River will be temporarily reduced because of recent heavy rains in southeastern South Dakota and northwestern Iowa. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it is reducing the amount of water being released from the Fort Randall and Gavins Point dams to allow area rivers to return to normal levels. The Corps says the releases from Gavins Point dam will be reduced until the Missouri River crests near Sioux City, Iowa, which is expected in the next several days.

The releases will be restored to near 60,000 cubic feet per second after the river level recedes.

(WATERLOO) – Charles Anthony Ware, convicted of Domestic Abuse Assault, 3rd or Subsequent Offense in Black Hawk County, failed to report back to the Waterloo Residential Center as required last night (Friday). Ware is a 44-year-old black male, height 6’2″, and weighs 197 pounds. He was admitted to the work release facility on August 21, 2018.  Persons with information on Ware’s whereabouts should contact local police.

For a picture of the escapee, please see the department’s Twitter account at @IowaCorrections.

(Radio Iowa) — Congress is allocating billions of dollars to the U-S Army Corps of Engineers for flood mitigation, construction and invasive species management, but the agency is still waiting for money to replace aging lock-and-dam systems on the Mississippi River. Colonel Steven Sattinger oversees the Corps’ Rock Island District and notes many of the structures are well past their prime. “They do occasionally, pieces break, machinery breaks, but we have really great crews in the district who are out there 24/7 fixing it and keeping them open,” Sattinger says. “The longer you defer maintenance though, the more likely that someday it’ll fail in a way that we didn’t foresee.”

While many of the locks and dams on the Mississippi are 80 years old, they were only designed to last 50 years. Sattinger says dam failures could hamstring the shipping economy — and local communities that depend on it. “In the Upper Mississippi River, there’s no bypasses,” he says. “If one of our locks and dams fails, it has to be closed to traffic. The traffic would have to go on the land. There are no additional locks or dams or water routes to move that freight.”

A 2017 analysis by the Mid-America Freight Coalition estimates if a dam failure blocked barges, it could cost the industry 283-million dollars in trucking costs, while causing 28-million dollars damage to the roads.