KJAN’s Chris Parks and Cass/Adair County Conservation Officer Grant Gelly talk about what’s happening in the great outdoors. This week they discuss license and registration renewals, ice fishing safety, and upcoming public input meetings.

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(Radio Iowa) – The head of Iowa’s largest agricultural organization is urging state lawmakers to reconsider a measure which would -mandate- the use of renewable fuels in Iowa that are produced in-state. Iowa Farm Bureau president Brent Johnson says the Iowa Biofuels Standard was narrowly defeated in the legislature in 2021.

He says the organization has some work to do to rebuild consumer support and to get the legislative backing needed for the mandate to pass. Johnson is also urging the E-P-A to uphold the Renewable Fuels Standard R-V-O or Renewable Volume Obligation levels, after reports the Biden administration may drop the proposed blending levels below 15-billion gallons.

Johnson says the Farm Bureau supports Governor Kim Reynolds’ move, asking the E-P-A to provide a waiver to sell E-15 year-round in Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s record 2021 corn harvest led to a significant increase in traffic on the rail lines that run through Iowa. “The car loads of grain in 2021 were the most since 2008. This is mostly due to the high volumes that were being exported. That’s a great spot for our state here in Iowa.” That’s Iowa D-O-T director Scott Marler, who says railroad traffic nationwide increased seven percent in 2021, but has not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

Marler says the volume of cars and trucks on Iowa streets and highways dropped over 40 percent at the beginning of the pandemic. “Our traffic levels are pretty much back to pre-pandemic levels, but they’re different than what they used to be,” Marler says. “…In our cities and urban areas, we’re still seeing a slightly depressed amount of traffic volumes. We think this might be one of the trends from teleworking that we hear about. In our rural areas, by contrast, our traffic levels are actually a little higher than pre-pandemic levels.”

Marler says that’s likely because of the high volume of trucks carrying freight on Iowa highways and interstates. Passenger traffic at Iowa airports that offer commercial flights dropped significantly during the first year of the pandemic and Marler says it’s bouncing back.  “We’re not back to pre-pandemic levels with passenger counts at our eight commercial service airports, but we’re close,” he says, “within about 10-15% of pre-pandemic levels.”

Marler made his comments during a briefing yesterday (Thursday) for the Iowa House Transportation Committee.

(Radio Iowa) – MidAmerican Energy has filed plans with the Iowa Utilities Board for a three-point-nine BILLION dollar($3.9) renewable energy project. Company spokesman Geoff Greenwood says the goal is to hit net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. “It includes wind projects, solar by 2024 — but we’d also like to study some new technologies for clean energy. And that includes, carbon capture, energy storage, and modular nuclear,” Greenwood says. They are calling the project Wind PRIME and Greenwood says they would add more than two-thousand megawatts of wind generation and 50 megawatts of solar. The location of each has not yet been decided.

“It’s a little bit hard to say. We know what we would like to add right now in terms of additional wind and solar generation. What we don’t know yet is where we would have these projects,” Greenwood says. So, we know roughly how many more projects we need to add — but we don’t yet know exactly where we would add them.” Greenwood says past projects were built with federal production tax credits — but the amount paid in tax credits is dropping — and could lead to customers paying more. “It’s not as much as it used to be — it used to be 100 percent — and now it has gone down to 60 percent. So we expect that this will still be of value for our customers — but there likely will be a modest cost to our customers over the life of these project,” according to Greenwood. “But nonetheless, it is renewable energy and that is something that our residential and business customers are demanding more of.

The wind and solar projects are the major part of the plan, while Greenwood says they want to explore other things like carbon capture. That would help reduce emissions for coal-fired energy plants. “Our current plan calls for retiring our existing (coal) generating plants no later than 2049. So we are looking for a shorter-term carbon capture technology that may allow us to capture that carbon sooner rather than later,” he says. He says they want to look at all the technology available and the does include the small modular nuclear generation.

“We certainly have not decided to pursue this — but it is something that we think is worth exploring, because it is an emissions-free technology. And it is something that can help us get to where we want to get and where our customers want us to get — which is NetZero greenhouse gas emissions,” Greenwood says. The proposal has to go through the I-U-B process to get the plan approved. That will include public hearings and comments on the plan.

(Radio Iowa) – Charges are dismissed against a man who was accused of breaking into a Wright County hog operation in 2020, placing hidden cameras and stealing a live piglet. Thirty-five-year-old Matthew A. Johnson of Berkley, California was to have had his trial starting today in Wright County District Court in Clarion on the charges of third-degree burglary, electronic or mechanical eavesdropping and agricultural production facility trespass. On Tuesday, Wright County assistant attorney Joseph Corrow filed a motion to dismiss the charges.

According to criminal complaints and court documents, Johnson and an accomplice entered the Iowa Select hog site in rural Dows in May of 2020 without permission. Johnson and his accomplice, Linda L. Cridge of Fishers, Indiana placed two live video streaming cameras and an audio recording device in the facility. Johnson was being prosecuted under a new section of the Iowa Code known as the Iowa Ag Gag law put into law prior to the break in at the Iowa Select farm facility. Meanwhile Johnson’s motion to dismiss on the grounds that the ag gag law is unconstitutional under the first amendment was denied.

Wright County district court judge Derek Johnson dismissed the charges with prejudice, meaning the defendant cannot be charged with these crimes for the offense again.

(*UPDATED at 6:45-p.m. w/a statement from Tyson Foods) STORM LAKE—Early this (Wednesday) morning, wastewater flowed into the city of Storm Lake’s storm sewers for less than an hour. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources said the incident originated at Tyson Foods, 1009 Richland Drive, wastewater began flowing into a storm sewer about 2:25 a.m. The discharge ended about half an hour later at 2:58 a.m. The likely cause was a pump failure in the plant at 1009 Richland Drive.

The storm sewer empties into a storm water detention basin about a block north of Storm Lake, where Tyson staff began pumping it up. Of the estimated 16,500 gallons released, some of it reached the lake. Tyson staff are working to estimate how much. Tyson and the city of Storm Lake collected water samples for testing. DNR staff indicated they do not expect environmental issues given the small amount that reached the lake.

DNR will monitor the cleanup and consider appropriate enforcement actions. Wednesday evening, Kelly Hellbusch, with Tyson Corporate Communications issued a statement to KJAN, saying “We took immediate action to contain the accidental release of water from the plant and are working cooperatively with city and state officials as we continue to implement our containment and cleanup measures and further evaluate the matter.”

w/Kate Olson.

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(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reports 36 positive chronic wasting disease tests from some five-thousand deer samples this hunting season. The D-N-R’s Tyler Harms oversees the deer management program. “We did add two new counties to our list of counties in which C-W-D has been detected in the wild. Those counties are Greene County in central Iowa, and then also Fremont County in southwest Iowa. So that brings our total number of counties to 12,” Harms says.

He says they will now do additional sample testing in Greene and Fremont County moving forward. Harms says they do with other counties that have had positive deer — and those tests give them an idea of the level of C-W-D.  “If you start looking at individual counties where we’ve had it — like Allamakee County for example where it was first detected in 2013 — we are looking at about a two percent prevalence rate, which is not unexpected it’s about right where we would expect,” according to Harms. “Our goal is just to continue to do what we can to keep that prevalence as low as possible.”

Harms says Iowa’s efforts to try and keep the disease in check are working. “What we’re seeing is that we are really holding our own. We know that this disease is going to continue to expand in counties where we have it. There’s still a lot to be learned about how to effectively manage the disease,” he says. “Based on what we can tell thus far and what we are seeing in the counties where we have the disease is not outside what we would expect to see in our review of counties in other states that have had the disease for much longer.”

Harms says the best thing you can do is to keep hunting and keep submitting samples for testing. “If you are hunting in counties where we have detected the disease — those voluntary samples from harvested animals are a huge, huge benefit to our monitoring effort,” Harms says. “Consider submitting a sample from your harvested animal. Certainly, in these new counties like Greene and Fremont, these hunter-submitted samples are going to be very important for our surveillance efforts moving forward.”

He says everyone can help by NOT putting out feed for deer. “Chronic wasting disease is spread via direct contact between individual animals — so we know that artificial congregation of animals in small areas around these bait sources is going to increase the risk,” he says. Harms says hunters should properly dispose of the deer carcasses to help prevent the spread of the disease.

Counties with positive deer and year detected – Allamakee: 72 (2013); Appanoose: 3 (2020); Clayton: 29 (2016); Decatur: 1 (2019); Dubuque: 3 (2018); Fayette: 2 (2019); Fremont: 1 (2021); Greene: 1 (2021); Jackson: 2 (2020); Wayne: 22 (2017); Winneshiek: 10 (2019); Woodbury: 2 (2019).

(Radio Iowa) – Some Iowa livestock producers are still struggling with the lingering effects of drought. Iowa State University Extension beef specialist Beth Doran says they’ll be holding seminars this week and next week that are designed to help producers manage through tight feed supplies and depleted pastures. “I’ve got our crop specialist coming in to talk about repairing pastures and establishing cover crops,” Doran says. “Realize that some of those pastures are very tired, very worn out, and even if we get them repaired, it’s going to be maybe a year before they’ll come back into their own in terms of growth and yield.”

Doran says they’ll also share information on federal disaster assistance that’s available to cattle producers.  “I have Farm Service Agency directors coming in to talk about what financial assistance is out there for cow-calf producers, this is from USDA,” Doran says. “I know there’s a filing deadline on two of those programs on January 30th and 31st, so we want to do these meetings ahead of that.”

The seminars are planned for Thursday in Emmetsburg, Monday in Estherville, and next Tuesday in the Clay County town of Royal. All of them run from 1-to-3 P-M. For more information or to register, visit the Iowa State University Extensions website.
https://www.extension.iastate.edu/

(Radio Iowa) -A regional cattle processing plant that’s planned for the Council Bluffs area is expected to benefit from the Biden administration’s just-announced Meat and Poultry Supply Chain Action Plan. Chad Tentinger, founder of Cattlemen’s Heritage, says the massive facility will get a financial boost from the billion dollars earmarked for expanding the footprint of independent processors. Tentinger says they’ll break ground late this spring or early summer. “We are in fundraising right now through various means, talking to a lot of investors at this point,” Tentinger says. “We are 75% done with all blueprints and planning. We have the site under control. We have done grid sampling and boring samples to make sure it’s stable. We’re moving along quite nicely.”

The project is on schedule, he says, to be completed by late 2023 or early 2024. Tentinger says their approach is different because they want to put a face on their product for consumers and give small family farmers a place to sell their high-quality cattle and be rewarded for it. “Our plant will be 400,000 head a year, roughly 1,500 head a day. We will have 750 employees. We will have a $1.1 billion annual impact on the state of Iowa. We are incorporating all of the latest technology into this plant. We will have agent source verification from the ranch to the plate.”

He says they’re still trying to determine if they will sell direct to consumers or online.  “We have a lot of demand for this high quality beef that we’ll be putting through this plant and with that demand, we’re exploring all options,” Tentinger says. “It will be domestic and international. We anticipate a lot of restaurant groups. Cattlemen’s Heritage will be an umbrella that will set the gold standard of quality for meat.”

Tentinger says the goal is build the facility and not be bought up by one of the nation’s four major meatpackers.