LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) – The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers has handed control of a Hamburg levee over to local officials in the southwest Iowa town. Robert Michaels, the Omaha district chief of construction, said in an interview Tuesday that the Corps will still offer help if the hastily built levee shows any trouble signs. But Michaels said he was confident the 9,000-foot-long earthen flood barrier will hold until the Missouri River flood subsides.

Southern Hamburg had faced a significant flood threat when a levee along the Missouri River ruptured in June. Federal and local officials scrambled to build a new levee along the town’s western edge, working around the clock as the flood water neared. Water is still pressing against the 18-foot-tall levee, but has caused only minor seepage problems so far.

Officials with the Iowa Dept. of Transportation say they DOT’s temporary flood-releated road information call center is slated to be deactivated at 1-p.m. today. Iowa travelers can still continue to call 511 for automated road closure information, and out-of-state callers can find out which roads are impacted by flooding by calling 1-800-288-1047.  You can also surf to www.iowadot.gov and click on the “Flooding Ahead” sign.

Information on flooded roadways is neighboring states is available on the web.  For Missouri road conditions, surf to www.modot.org.  Information on Nebraska roads is at www.511nebraska.org.  For info. on South Dakota roads, go to www.safetravelusa.org, and for road conditions in Kansas, www.511ksdot.org.

The Iowa DOT says closures continue on sections of I-29 and I-680 (in Council Bluffs), Iowa 333 in Hamburg, Iowa Hwy 2, from I-29 west to Nebraska City, NE, and the Iowa Hwy 175 bridge between Onawa, IA and Decatur, NE.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – A big jump in whooping cough cases is cited in a state of Iowa report on diseases. The Iowa Department of Public Health says its 2010 Iowa Surveillance of Notifiable and Other Diseases Report covers the more than 60,000 reports of infectious disease that were submitted to state disease surveillance programs.

The state says the number of vaccine-preventable diseases dropped compared to a three-year average. But the state says mumps and pertussis cases increased: 73 percent for mumps and 229 percent for whooping cough. The health department director, Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, says there were 705 reported cases of whooping cough reported last year.

She says most adults haven’t had a vaccination since childhood, so they probably have little or no immunity left to whooping cough, which also is called pertussis.

A crowd of a little more than 40 people attended Monday night’s public hearing in Greenfield pertaining to the construction of a large hog confinement operation in Adair County. Auditor Mindy Schaefer says the meeting went “very well.”She says 15 people signed-up prior to the hearing to speak, and each said they were opposed to the factory farm.

Eric Taylor has applied for a permit to construct a 2,480 head hog confinement feeding facility in Adair County’s Richland Township. Past history has shown emotions can run high in opposition to factory farms, but Schaefer said those who spoke stuck to the time limit, and were very respectful of the rules.

She says they were given three-minutes to speak. Most took less than the allotted time, but those who took the full three-minutes were very respectful, and stopped when their time expired.

The Adair County Board of Supervisors are slated to discuss the permit application and, based upon the Master Matrix Scoring and written public comments, forward their recommendation to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. That portion of their meeting takes place at 10:15-a.m., Wednesday.

A person adjusting their radio was cited for Following too Close following a chain reaction accident Sunday evening about four-miles south of Shenandoah, in Fremont County. Sheriff’s officials say Alexandria Snyder, of Macedonia, was traveling north on Highway 59 at around 6:13-p.m., when she took her eyes off the road to tune her radio. She didn’t notice a vehicle in front of her was stopped, waiting for an unknown semi to turn left onto 250th Street, and ran into the back of the vehicle.

Following the collision between Snyder’s Ford F-150 pickup and the 2002 Hyundai, driven by Andrea Candamil, of Omaha, NE,  Candamil’s car slammed into a 2005 Lexus GX, driven by Elaine Baumann, of Town & Country, Missouri, who was also waiting for the semi to turn left. Candamil and Isle Candamil suffered minor injuriesin the crash, and were transported to the Shenandoah Hospital for treatment. No other injuries were reported.