It’s been over four days since a fire at a water pumping station near Shelby left more than 1,500 people in Shelby, Pottawattamie and Harrison Counties without clean running water. Volunteers distributed donated bottled water all weekend and on Monday, emergency management stepped up their efforts going door to door delivering bottled water to residents in the village of Corely.

Shelby County Emergency Management Coordinator Alex Londo tells KETV, that bottled water was donated by HyVee and Fareway. Early Friday morning, a fire knocked out a pump in a rural water transfer station. Residents in five rural communities were placed on emergency water shortage status. A smaller pump is slowly feeding the water towers, according to Londo, but a boil order remains in effect until further notice.

Emergency management is leaving extra water at distribution sites in communities. Arrangements are also being made for any livestock producers to fill tanks, especially as temperatures begin to rise. Londo said emergency management is meeting daily with rural water and state officials about the emergency, but it could be days or even weeks before full water capacity is restored.

(Radio Iowa) – Economists from Drake and Iowa State say researchers are on unfamiliar ground as they evaluate how the economy has been affected by the pandemic. I-S-U economist Peter Orazem says after the recession hit in 2008, it took seven years to return to pre-recession employment rates, but this recession is nothing like that.  “This will be the strangest recession we’ve ever had,” Orazem says. “We’re expected within two years of the initiation of the recession to return to the unemployment rates that we had at the beginning and we had a very strong labor market as of February, 2020.”

Drake University economist Bill Boal says there’s no data yet to confirm why so many dropped out of the labor market when the pandemic struck and haven’t returned once businesses reopened. “The labor market is surely the most peculiar thing we’ve seen in my lifetime,” Boal says. “…Why were there so many people sitting on the sideline all of a sudden?” Wage expectations, particularly among blue collar workers, have gone up as pandemic closures ended.

While the overall savings rate has soared, Boal says it’s primarily been among those who had jobs during the pandemic. Orazem warns if consumers start spending what they’ve saved, inflation may rise. “What you hope is that it’s not going to all enter the marketplace at once and you’re going to get this very large surge in customer demand or consumer demand,” Orazem says.

Orazem and Boal made their comments this weekend on the “Iowa Press” program on Iowa P-B-S.

Adair County Sheriff Jeff Vandewater, Monday evening, reported three arrests. On July 2nd, at around 1:20-a.m., 28-year-old Kevin William Wessel, of Greenfield, was arrested for OWI/1st offense. His Breath Alcohol Content tested at .203%. Wessel was released on later that morning on a $1,000 cash/surety bond.

On June 29th at around 1:50-p.m., 38-year-old Christopher Anthony Ford, of Greenfield, was arrested on an Adair County Felony warrant charging him with two counts of Enticing a Minor under the age of 16, for sexual purposes. Ford was released July 1st on a $10,000 cash/surety bond.

And, on June 26th, 41-year-old Nicholas Arthur Hardisty, of Orient, was arrested on an outside agency warrant.

(Radio Iowa) – The northwest Iowa town of Lytton hopes to set a world record on July 26th. Lytton, with a population of around 300, will be the first stop on day two of this year’s RAGBRAI route, as thousands of bicyclists make their way from Sac City to Fort Dodge. Scott Matter, co-chair of Lytton’s RAGBRAI committee, says they’ve done the research with the Guiness Book of World Records team.

“We want to have the largest ever goat yoga class. The current record is 500 people and 115 goats and our goal is to get 800 people and 160 goats, I think,” Matter says, “so that should be a lot of fun to watch.” There will also be hay bale challenge, to see how far someone can toss a square bale. Lytton’s theme for the day is “A Slice of Heaven” — fully leaning into the most popular food item on RAGBRAI routes.

“We like to say it’s the pie capital of America,” Matter says. “We have a group of people in town…who have come together to bake hundreds of pies…and our goal is to raise money for the fire station from all of that.”

Matter, who is formerly of Lytton, now lives in Des Moines and was among the crew who rode the RAGBRAI route Inspection Tour in mid-June.

(Radio Iowa) – July is the last month of what has already been a record-setting fiscal year for the Iowa Lottery. Lottery C-E-O Matt Strawn says people found lottery games a safe thing to do in the pandemic — with scratch tickets leading the way. “It will be a record year for scratch tickets sales, as the Iowa Lottery is on pace to sell 300 million dollars of scratch tickets for the first time in its history,” Strawn says.

Speaking during the recent Lottery Board meeting, Strawn talked about the impact of scratch ticket sales on the bottom line.”Through May, scratch tickets sales were slightly over 290 million dollars. This represents 69-point-seven percent of all lottery sales thus far,” Strawn says.  The sale of national lotto games did come back some after suffering during the pandemic. Strawn says big jackpots in Powerball and Mega Millions that exceeded 700 million dollars earlier this year allowed their sales to rebound in this fiscal year after an historic low performance in the previous fiscal year.

Strawn says the lotto games have not returned to previous levels. “Powerball and Mega Millions sales are collectively 29-point-eight percent ahead of last year’s performance through May,” according to Strawn. “However, despite that year-over-year improvement, both national jackpot lotto games continue to underperform their historic averages.”  Strawn says the poor performance of the lotto games is cause for concern.  He says the national lotto games are the ones that produce the strongest revenue margins for the Iowa Lottery.

Strawn says efforts are being made to bolster the national lotto games with things like expanding the number of weekly drawings.

(Radio Iowa) – A report by the United Health Foundation says Iowa’s senior citizens are at low risk for social isolation compared to the rest of the nation. It says Iowa’s 65-plus population has the sixth highest rate of volunteerism in the country and ranks seventh for low risk of social isolation. Rhonda Randall, chief medical officer with United Healthcare, says the rankings are based on pre-pandemic data so some may dramatically shift next year.

“A really good example is where we were facing issues with seniors in our nation in social isolation before the pandemic and then the public health guidance was to socially distance,” Randall says. “So, we’re concerned that that may have gotten worse.” The figures on social isolation are important, Randall says, as they point to other potential trouble spots.
“We see strong links with social isolation and poor mental health, strong links with social isolation and poor overall health,” Randall says. “So, it’s good news that that percentage is lower in Iowa than in most of the other states.”

The report also found Iowa’s seniors have high rates of obesity, as well as less access to geriatric health care professionals and high speed internet as compared to other states.

(By Natalie Krebs, Iowa Public Radio)