A custodian with the Creston Community School District charged with the felony Sexual Abuse of a person between the ages of 12 and 13, has been fired from his position. 36-year old Eduardo Medina was released from his employment with the district at Monday night’s meeting of the Creston School District’s Board of Education. Medina was suspended last week after school officials received word he may have had improper contact with a former student.

According to on-line court records, Medina was arrested May 15th on a Class C felony charge of Sexual Abuse in the 3rd degree. His court appointed attorney waived Medina’s Preliminary Hearing. Medina was ordered to have no contact with the alleged victim. The man was being held in the Union County Jail on $10,000 bond.

After record run-off and flooding on the Missouri River last year, it appears river flows this year will be below-normal. Jody Farhat is chief of the Missouri River Basin Water Management Office for the U-S Army Corps of Engineers in Omaha. Farhat says their predictions will be welcome news to those who had flood damage last year. “Our run-off forecast for the 2012 calendar year above Sioux City, Iowa, is 21.6-million acre feet which is 87% of normal,” Farhat says. “This is based on the lack of Plains snowpack, the lower-than-average mountain snowpack and the unusually warm and dry conditions we’ve had so far this year.” Farhat says the Corps will be able to maintain normal flows on the river until at least July first. “We’re currently providing full-service navigation flow support,” she says. “If the total system storage falls below 57-million acre feet on July first, flow support will be reduced for the second half of the navigation season.”

Farhat says some normal signs of life are also returning to the river, including two types of endangered birds.”To date, 51 piping plover nests have been located, with the highest number of nests on Lewis & Clark Lake and on the river reach below Gavins Point Dam,” she says. “Very few nests have been found on the new habitat that was created below Gavins Point Dam due to last year’s flood. The first interior least tern was spotted in the basin this week but no least tern nests have been found.” Last year’s flooding of the Missouri River in eastern Nebraska, western Iowa and northwest Missouri caused hundreds of millions of dollars damage to homes, businesses, farmland and infrastructure. The high water lasted months.

(Matt Kelley/Radio Iowa)

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) – Missouri River governors plan to question a top officer for the Army Corps of Engineers about the agency’s plans for stopping future floods. North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple  is hosting today’s (Wednesday’s) meeting in Bismarck. The governors of South Dakota and Kansas and the lieutenant governors of Nebraska and Iowa plan to attend in person. The governors of Montana and Missouri are listening in by telephone.
 
Brig. Gen. John McMahon is commander of the region that oversees the management of the Missouri River and its network of dams. He’ll be briefing the state officials on the corps’ flood-control plans.  States along the Missouri River sustained hundreds of millions of dollars in flood damage last year. Dalrymple says the governors want to know about federal plans for preventing another disaster.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports a Villisca man was arrested Tuesday evening on Criminal Mischief and Burglary charges, after authorities were called to investigate an assault in the 100 block of West 2nd Street, in Villisca. 20-year old Jesse Luft was taken into custody at around 5:20-p.m.  He faces 4th Degree Criminal Mischief and 1st Degree Burglary charges. Luft was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $25,000 bond.