Des Moines Register. March 22, 2018
Which Iowa leader has courage to take on big Pork?
We’ll keep asking the question: How much pork can Iowa reasonably produce?
How much before more confinements drive people out of rural Iowa with noxious odors? How much before manure further damages lakes, streams and groundwater?
Every single candidate for governor and the Iowa Legislature should address these questions. The current governor and Statehouse leadership won’t.
Make no mistake: The pork industry is important to Iowa’s economy. The industry consumes a chunk of Iowa’s biggest-in-the-nation corn crop and helps support grain prices. But the very success of Iowa’s pork industry and its rapid expansion underscore the need for smarter regulation.
The industry is a juggernaut. In late 2017, there were 22.8 million hogs and pigs on Iowa farms, up 3 percent from the previous year and about 18 percent over the last decade. Production is forecast to grow more than 4 percent this year, according to an ISU economist.
Signs of a boom are everywhere. Two new pork-processing plants in Iowa will be able to process up to 30,000 hogs a day. Producers are snapping up land to put up new barns. A Department of Natural Resources study says, based on the state’s fertilizer needs, that Iowa could support 45,700 concentrated animal feeding operations - four times as many as exist now.
Iowa is totally unprepared for the influx. State leaders refuse to address the current problems with CAFOs, let alone the expected growth.
But if you ask such questions, the Iowa Farm Bureau and other industry groups will call you anti-farmer. Who can blame most producers? They’re reacting only to demand for more protein, strong profits for pork and low prices for grain.
And yes, many pork producers have improved their operations to lessen the chances for spills and emissions.
But there are also bad actors who exploit lax federal and state rules. There are producers who build confinements that are one hog under the minimum required for regulation, as well as loopholes that let corporations with different owners - even if those owners are connected - locate next to each other. The result is that producers can stack confinements virtually side by side, and neighbors and regulators can do nothing about it.
On top of this, state, federal and industry officials resist protections. Large animal confinements are largely exempt from federal air emission rules, for example.
Gene Tinker, who was fired last year as DNR’s coordinator of animal feeding operations, said the state is allowing producers to build facilities on land that is “legally allowed but just plain are not good sites … whether that’s next to housing developments, sinkholes or trout streams.”
Pig farmer Trent Thiele works with pigs at a 2400 head concentrated animal feeding operation near his house in Elma, Iowa Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018. Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register
But Gov. Kim Reynolds denies there’s a problem.
Iowa’s regulations “ensure CAFOs meet certain environmental requirements prior to building,” said her spokeswoman, Brenna Smith. “These safeguards ensure the state’s natural resources are protected.”
Really? If state oversight is so great, how did the DNR miss more than 5,000 hog confinements and cattle lots across the state until last August?
If the safeguards are strong, why have about 20 counties called for changes to the state formula that determines where confinements can be constructed?
Why are more rural residents calling for a moratorium on all confinements?
State lawmakers refuse to give serious consideration to a series of bills from Sen. David Johnson, an independent from Ocheyedan. In addition to calling for a moratorium, Johnson seeks to give local leaders more control over confinement construction and increase distances between facilities and neighbors. He also wants to create a study committee made up of state leaders, livestock association members and others to review rules that guide confinement construction.
Such a committee should consider this overriding question: How do we find the balance between growth and regulation?
Many of the gubernatorial candidates, including Republican Ron Corbett, are asking that question. But Reynolds? Silence.
Iowans deserve a governor who has the courage to take on Big Pork and pursue a balanced approach to livestock production.
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Quad-City Times. March 18, 2018
Adults, not the students, are the problem
The kids are fine. It’s the adults who aren’t all right.
Davenport Community School District fumbled through Wednesday’s walkout at West High. District officials were clearly uncomfortable Tuesday night with the planned hyper-political anti-gun violence movement that’s taken hold in a suddenly “woke” generation, who, like every one before them, have had enough with the ineptitude of the adults who run the country. And passersby to Wednesday’s rally couldn’t help but flip the bird or make some codgerly quip about how those damned kids don’t know bravery because they’ve never seen combat.
Sorry, sir, military service is not, nor has ever been, the sole yardstick for bravery. Nor can it be in a functioning, civilian-run free society. It’s rhetoric best left for autocrats.
Courage comes in many forms in this system. Protesting requires courage. Putting one’s name on a call for change requires courage. Running for office requires courage. And all of these are no less foundational to the American system than military service.
But it’s this kind of age-old gripe that best represents the crusade to delegitimize the youth uprising that resulted from last month’s mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. A movement’s power is directly proportional to its ability to be heard, often through the media.
West High Principal Jenni Wiepert, however, didn’t see her students’ sudden interest in social policy as a teaching moment about citizenship. No, for Wiepert, the entire thing was an annoyance. The media, including the Quad-City Times, attends sporting events at West all the time. Reporters are regularly in classrooms writing about various academic programs. And yet, on Wednesday, Wiepert cited some vacuous “district policy” and kicked the press literally to the curb.
Apparently, student civic engagement - the crux of public education - is a public relations fiasco for those running the region’s largest public school district. At the very least, district officials didn’t dole out punishments for students that walked out.
Make no mistake, the flailing response wasn’t isolated to the Davenport school district. Throughout the country, officials struggled with how to respond, a sign of just how toxic this country’s gun debate has become. But officials in Moline-Coal Valley School District were a noteworthy exception. They stood up for students’ free speech rights and correctly identified the walkout as a teaching moment.
All the eye-rolling, all the hateful comments on social media, all the disdain heaped upon the kids - it’s nothing new. For centuries, the “adults” have shaken their collective fist at the generation immediately succeeding them. Then-U.S. Sen. Al Gore made a fool of himself in the U.S. Senate in the 1980s when he tried to blame rock and roll for Gen X’s general disaffection. Baby boomers took to the streets in the late 1960s and were met with police batons and President Richard Nixon’s utterly destructive War on Drugs. Socrates probably shook his head at whatever fad Plato was into that was sweeping Athens’ hip scene. And, now, adults blame video games, music and laundry detergent for their children’s supposed failings - none of which with any basis in objective reality.
If America’s children are making memes - and yes, that’s what they largely are - about poisoning themselves with Tied Pods, if they’re listening to dark music, if they’re consuming mind-bending drugs, then it’s the adult that should do some reflection. None of these are causes of society’s ills. On the contrary, they’re a direct reflection, symptoms, of festering frustration with an increasingly broken and divisive sociopolitical system.
It’s the adults, after all, who elected a president that stokes racial and religious division seemingly every day. It’s the adults that wage senseless, costly wars. It’s the adults who are incapable of any rational, fact-based debate about gun violence.
The kids are just fine. The adults are the problem. And they always have been.
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Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. March 22, 2018
Internet plan for CF students a good one
Since Cedar Falls citizens approved the establishment of a municipal communications utility in the early 1990s, Cedar Falls Utilities has developed into a nice asset for the city and its residents.
CFU is the largest municipal utility in Iowa, and it’s the only utility in the state that has all four utilities - electric, water, gas and communications.
Its relatively recent investment in renewable energy is a progressive approach to future needs. And CFU’s ability to offer some of the fastest internet speeds in the nation should continue to help lure businesses that demand those high speeds.
CFU has been an excellent partner on many levels. Its newest initiative to partner with the school district certainly won’t do anything to damage that stellar reputation.
First, a little district background: In 2014, the Cedar Falls School District began providing a Chromebook for every junior high and high school student. That was a good move by the district and a great way to help ensure all students had readily available access to the internet.
However, having internet access at home is one more expense that some families do without. And without internet services at home, some students have been unable to make full use of the Chromebooks to do homework.
That’s about to change.
CFU recently announced it will be rolling out a new low-cost internet service option designed for families who cannot afford internet service. The service will be called Connect CF.
“We’ve worked closely with the school district on this,” said Steve Bernard, CFU general manager. “We think there are about 100 (families) that will qualify for this.”
That equates to the number of families in the CFU service area with a seventh- through 12th-grade student who qualifies for free or reduced-price lunches and haven’t subscribed to internet services from the company within the past 60 days.
“The need has been there,” said Dan Conrad, director of secondary education for the district. “For some reason, they don’t have the financial means (to pay for internet services). This was a way we could partner with CFU to provide limited access at home.”
The service will cost $20 per month and be available during the school year. Internet service costs $45 per month for regular customers who also have cable TV through CFU, and $60 for those who don’t.
The company has developed a “kind of a new internet product,” said Bernard, that can be accessed only by the school-issued Chromebooks. That way the service is not a subsidized one. And there are efforts to raise funds to further offset the cost for participants.
One thing is sure. Every student needs access to technology, because every student needs to be prepared for a world filled with technology.
This isn’t your parents’ schoolroom.
CFU plans to begin connecting students to the service later this spring.
“I have to give a lot of credit to CFU,” Conrad said. “They have invested a lot of their own time and resources to make this happen.”
We give a lot of credit to both the district and CFU for getting the Chromebooks into the hands of each student, and now seeing they have internet access at home to use them there.
It’s one more hurdle removed for low-income families in making sure their students are not left behind.
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Sioux City Journal. March 21, 2018
Sioux City Council was right to support Warrior Hotel redevelopment
We believe the City Council was right on Monday to agree to a package of financial incentives for what is the most promising proposal we have seen for breathing new life into the downtown Warrior Hotel building.
Planned is a $56 million renovation of the Warrior and Davidson Building in the 500 block of Sixth Street into a combination hotel and residential/commercial/retail complex. The project is part of the city’s proposed Reinvestment District Program, which also involves construction of an agriculture/recreation center at the former site of the John Morrell plant in the old stockyards area; redevelopment to residential and commercial use by Ho-Chunk Inc. of several former industrial buildings in the 100 block of Virginia Street; and construction of a hotel and parking ramp next to the city’s downtown Convention Center.
Strengthened by Warrior owner Lew Weinberg’s agreement with developer Restoration St. Louis, a national-recognized company with expertise in historic renovation, the plan offers the city potential for rewards far greater than the risk involved in financial support. Today, the building produces nothing more than minimal property taxes based on the assessed value of an unused, long-empty shell. However, if its package of incentives helps push the project across the finish line, the city’s return will include increased property taxes, hotel-motel taxes, sales taxes, and jobs, both construction and permanent. Also, a redeveloped Warrior and Davidson will help the city repay its Reinvestment District Program obligation to the state of Iowa faster.
If lack of support by the city resulted in the project falling through, the city would get nothing - no new tax revenue, no new jobs. The Warrior would remain what it is today.
By far, the biggest share of the city’s $12 million incentives package is in the form of tax credits. Only $5 million of actual city money, in the form of a loan for infrastructure improvements, is involved (once $2.5 million of the loan is repaid, the other $2.5 million will be forgiven).
Is it worth $2.5 million to help get a $56 million deal and its potential for much, much bigger tax benefits and jobs far into the future done?
In our view, the answer is yes.
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