DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa attorney general’s office says Deere & Co. has agreed to pay $1 million for violating air quality standards at its Cedar Falls facility. A news release said Thursday that the Moline, Illinois-based heavy equipment company has agreed in a consent decree to annual third-party environmental audits for at least three years. They will continue until Deere receives two consecutive audits reports with few or no violations.

The Iowa Natural Resources Department has said Deere didn’t comply with emissions limits at its Performance Engineering Center, operated without proper air quality permits in some cases and provided inaccurate information on compliance reports to the department from 2005 to 2016. Deere spokesman Ken Golden says problems arose from past errors in air permits issued in 2005 for the center’s engine test cells. He says that Deere took corrective actions and worked with Iowa officials toward the issuance of new permits after learning of the problems in late 2016.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has received a nearly $12 million federal grant to research challenges connected with rural drug abuse in the Midwest. The five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund a research initiative called the Rural Drug Addiction Center. Researchers will track 600 rural drug users in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

Nebraska has seen a drastic jump in its drug overdose rate in recent years. The issue is complicated by a trend among the state’s drug users who are often addicted to a combination of substances. It’s an understudied phenomenon that’s been seen in other Midwestern states. The program’s leader, Kirk Dombrowski, says current drug addiction treatment focuses on brain chemistry, but understanding social patterns of abuse can lead to new treatments.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The flurry of activity that often signifies the end of a legislative session is evident at the Iowa Capitol this week. The exact end of the 2019 session isn’t set, but lawmakers were preparing Thursday to wind down their work and go home for the year. A Friday adjournment would be a week earlier than the scheduled May 3 session end. The Iowa House debated a Republican priority property tax bill until nearly 3 a.m. Thursday. Only a few must-do budget bills remain.

Some controversial issues also are unresolved, including a bill to impose a fee on solar energy installations, a measure that remaking the way Iowa nominates judges and a bill seeking election day changes, including moving up the closing time for voting. If leaders pull together the needed votes, those issues could surface in the final hours.

Officials with the City of Atlantic announced on Thursday morning that the compost yard waste site near Schildberg Recreation Area has been closed today. The site will be closed until further notice.

DES MOINES, Iowa—The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has an immediate need to fill temporary positions in Fremont, Harrison, Mills, Monona, Polk, Pottawattamie, Shelby and Woodbury counties to assist with disaster recovery. FEMA is looking for qualified candidates for a variety of emergency management functions. Posted positions include public assistance specialists, site inspection specialists, travel specialists, equal rights specialists, emergency management specialists and external affairs specialists and many more.

The temporary positions are for 120 days and may be extended, in 120-day increments, for a maximum 365-day appointment, based on the needs of the disaster. To see posted positions, go online to USAJOBS.gov and type “FEMA local Hire” in the search box and “Iowa” in the location box. Detailed information is provided for each position, including pay, benefits and application deadline. The deadline to apply is April 30, 2019.

Atlantic Rock Island Society Enterprise (ARISE) is sponsoring a presentation this weekend at the American Legion Memorial Building (The Armory), that will make women in war come alive. Actress Pippa White will share stories of real women in the Civil War, World War I and II in the program entitled “Spies, Soldiers and Saints.”

White researches their lives through diaries, letters and memoirs. Women tended the wounded, risked their lives as spies and served as soldiers where needed. Saints, Soldiers and Spies will be presented Sunday, April 28 beginning at 2-p.m. at the American Legion Memorial Building (201 Poplar Street, Atlantic). The building is handicapped accessible. The program is supported by the Atlantic Community Promotion Commission. There is no fee to attend, and refreshments are included.

(Radio Iowa) — The Iowa Senate has given final legislative approval to the Iowa Hemp Act. The bill sets up a state licensing program for growers. If the governor — as expected — signs the bill into law, it will immediately become legal for Iowa retailers to SELL hemp-based products. “Allow the building of the infrastructure of this market now, so that when it comes time for our farmers to harvest their crops, there will be a robust demand and an outlook for industrial hemp.”  That’s Reprsentative Jarad Klein of Keota, a farmer who worked on the legislation. Hemp has been banned for decades and the 2018 Farm Bill effectively legalized growing it again. Representative Mike Sexton of Rockwell City is urging caution, though, as planting hemp could make a farmer ineligible for crop insurance.

“I wholeheartedly support this bill, but I just think it’s incumbent upon us to make sure we let Iowa farmers know: ‘Don’t rush right into this thing without checking wth the government agencies to make sure you don’t make yourself non-compliant,” Sexton says. The bill identifies two state agencies to oversee hemp growers, transporters and processors in the state. Iowa farmers would be allowed to grow up to 40 acres of hemp, starting in the 2020 growing season. Representative Jeff Shipley, a Republican from Fairfield, voted for the measure, but expressed some frustration.

“There still is a lot of red tape in this bill,” Shipley said. “Technically we are growing government with licenses and fees and it’s hard for me to comprehend that because my understanding of hemp is basically it is an inert plant and it’s very hard for me to wrap my mind around why we need government holding people by the hand to make sure they don’t make any mistakes here.”

Forty-one other states already have an industrial hemp program in place.

ANKENY, Iowa (AP) — When Todd Miller began his two-person solar installation business in a suburb of Des Moines, one of the challenges he faced was keeping up with customer orders, as tax incentives and plunging prices for the boxy roof panels created a booming demand for this form of clean energy. Four years later, Miller’s company has grown to 14 employees, but now he faces a real obstacle: action in the state Legislature that he says could put solar companies out of business.

The threat is coming from an unlikely source, a utility known as an alternative energy champion for its installation of thousands of wind turbines across the landscape. The wind energy darling is pushing lawmakers to tack on an extra cost to future solar customers, even if doing so makes solar energy economically uncompetitive. “Everything should be lined up for the best year we’ve ever had,” Miller said. “Instead, it’s been a lot of sleepless nights.”

For years wind and solar were friendly twins in the campaign for green alternatives to fossil fuels, but the relationship is getting ugly in a number of states, especially in Iowa, where more than 4,000 turbines generate 34% of the state’s electricity, the second highest rate in the country. About half of those turbines were installed by Des Moines-based MidAmerican Energy, a wind energy leader that proudly notes its towering blades spin enough power to equal its customer demand. The utility has taken aim at a growing solar industry made up of dozens of small companies across the state.

The acrimony comes as alternative energy sources are powering an increasing percentage of the country’s needs. Since 1990, the country’s wind energy capacity has grown from a tiny 0.2% to 6.5% in 2018, and in the past decade solar capacity has had an average annual growth rate of 50%. About 2 million solar systems have been installed on homes and businesses nationwide, with 3,700 in Iowa. As alternative energy becomes more popular, the questions are growing about the appropriate level of tax incentives and other rules designed to jumpstart such power sources.

MidAmerican has received billions of dollars in federal tax credits to build its wind farms. With those incentives being phased out, MidAmerican and other utilities are now challenging the special perks that solar receives. The federal tax credits covering solar installation costs will decline in the coming years, ending for residential in 2022 and sticking at 10% for commercial projects. A key to solar’s recent success in Iowa and many states is that when panels produce excess energy, state law requires it be sold to utilities at a premium price. Solar advocates argue that if the price is lowered or other fees added, as MidAmerican has proposed, the foundation of the industry’s expansion is threatened.

MidAmerican has pushed hard for the measure in the Legislature that would require a homeowner with an average solar array to pay about $27 a month, cutting deeply into the savings customers see if they install a system at a cost of $30,000 or so. While energy savings vary regionally, advocates contend that solar systems can roughly pay for themselves over 25 years.
The state Senate has approved the measure, mainly with Republican votes. It’s awaiting action in the House, but is opposed by legislators who note farmers are enduring tough times and that new fees would deprive them of an option for saving money. MidAmerican argues the new fees would go toward maintenance of the electrical grid, which solar customers use when they sell excess power back to the utility.

MidAmerican is a big contributor to both Republican and Democratic politicians in Iowa, and the state takes pride in the utility’s success in making Iowa a wind energy mecca.
Miller, who operates his solar business in the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny, said he thinks the issue is less about fairness and more about a profitable utility eager to limit competition and dominate solar as it now does wind power. Last year, MidAmerican reported a profit of $682 million. Miller noted that at a legislative hearing, a MidAmerican lobbyist promised that the utility would use the additional fee to invest in large-scale solar projects. “They’re using that as the stepping stone to take over any and all solar,” Miller said. “If energy is being produced, they want to produce it.”

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Legislature has approved a property tax bill that forces counties and cities to publicize and pass by a two-thirds vote any property tax increase over 2 percent. The bill was touted by Republican Sen. Randy Feenstra as a truth in taxation bill that creates transparency in the budgeting process at county and city levels. Democratic Sen. Pam Jochum says the bill flies in the face of the constitutional home rule amendment added in 1968 that grants cities and counties local control. She says there’s already adequate public input and visibility of local budgets and taxes.

Republican leaders began the session declaring property tax reform a priority but earlier bills that limited annual tax increases faded as criticism from local government officials intensified.
The bill passed the Senate on Wednesday 33-17 and the House took up debate at around 11 p.m. and finally passed it 53-46 just before 3 a.m. Thursday.

DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) — A Dubuque woman accused of stealing more than $35,000 from late father’s estate has been given probation. Dubuque County District Court records say 54-year-old Molly Behnke was sentenced Monday to a suspended prison term of five years and two to five years of probation. She’d pleaded guilty to felony theft and forgery.

Authorities say an estate attorney told police that Behnke, as one of the executors for her father’s estate, was authorized to withdraw money to pay his final bills. But court documents say Behnke made withdrawals from May to July last year that were not used to pay off the debts.