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DNR says ice fishing season has been a good one

March 3, 2010 By

A spokesman for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources says ice fishing has been “gang-busters” in Iowa this winter. Mick Klemesrud says this has been “one of the best” ice fishing seasons Iowa has had in a while.

“As soon as the temperatures dropped we got good ice onset. People were out in big numbers and from some of these smaller lakes in southwest Iowa all the way up to Clear Lake and Spirit Lake, it’s been a really good year,” Klemesrud says. “…A lot of panfish caught over most of Iowa and then you have some walleyes and perch and other fish caught across the northern half of the state.”

The warmer weather of the past few days hasn’t put an end to the state’s ice fishing season according to Klemesrud. “We had such a good layer of ice put down, plus most of the state still has at least a foot of snow-pack on top of it, so I think our ice conditions are going to be good for the next few weeks,” Klemesrud says.

“The thing that can change the equation is if we get a lot of rain and a lot of runoff, that can eat the ice away from the edges of our lakes.” Sometimes the ice fishing season in Iowa is just a few, short weeks, but this year it’s stretched into a few months. There’s a thick layer of ice on lakes in the northern third of Iowa, which means another three to four weeks of ice fishing there according to Klemesrud.

Klemesrud says while ice in southeast Iowa didn’t get as thick, southwest Iowa lakes have been popular ice fishing sites this season.

“We’ve had such thick ice in southwest Iowa that people we’ve heard even a few weeks ago were driving vehicles out (on the lakes) down by Creston and that area,” Klemesrud says.

There is rain in the forecast for this weekend. Klemesrud describes rain as the “enemy” of Ice and warns while ice may remain thick in the middle of many lakes, the shoreline ice will become weak. The ice on rivers is 15 to 20% weaker than ice on lakes.

“The rivers are going to be the first ones that are going to receive all the rain and the runoff, and then that will make it very unstable and unsafe,” Klemesrud says. “I would recommend that if we do get the rain that they’re forecasting I would stay off the rivers because you don’t know when they’re going to rise and you’re going to see ice jams and you’re going to see break-aways, so I would recommend staying off the rivers if we do get the rain.”

Officials in Cedar Rapids issued a warning this morning, urging citizens to stay off thin ice in area waterways. According to Cedar Rapids officials, “the recent warming trend has melted a significant layer of the ice and some area waterways are not safe” and “outdoor enthusiasts should be particularly careful near bridges, thoroughfares, culverts and wherever else there may be currents flowing underneath as ice in these areas may be very thin or nonexistent.”

Filed Under: Environment & Conservation Tagged With: ,

Congressman Braley says Senate needs to show it has health care votes

March 3, 2010 By

Iowa Congressman Bruce Braley, a Democrat from Waterloo, says it’s up to the U.S. Senate to get their support lined up on health care bill before the House will take action. Braley says his colleagues in the house are going to want to see “a very clear indication” that senate majority leader Harry Reed has the votes to fix the problems in the senate bill before they move forward on voting on the Senate bill or a reconciliation bill that would combine efforts of the house and senate.

Braley says a verbal assurance from the Senate will likely not be enough. “I’m guessing that there’s gonna have to be some sort of written documentation that indicates the Senate can deliver, or else it’s going to be extremely difficult to convince House members,” Braley says, “that as much as we want to see health care reform, putting your name on a bill without an assurance it’s going to pass, especially when there are 290 bills sitting at the Senate that we’ve already passed in the House, that’s a tall challenge.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Health & Medicine, Politics & Government Tagged With: ,

Des Moines domestic incident leaves man and woman hospitalized

March 3, 2010 By

Police in Des Moines are investigating a domestic incident that’s left a man and woman in the hospital – both with life-threatening injuries. Police Sergeant Lori Lavorato  says officers were called to a home on the city’s southeast side just before 7 o’clock this morning by a man who reported his girlfriend had been badly beaten.

The man told the dispatcher he would meet police in the garage. “When officers arrived on the scene, they went to the garage and found him attempting to hang himself,” Lavorato said. “They got him cut down and attended to him. After that, officers went inside the home and found a female with multiple injuries.”

The man and woman are both hospitalized in critical condition. They are identified as 50-year-old Richard Yazell and 48-year-old Ora Tigner. Lavorato says it appears Tigner may have been beaten with a baseball bat. “The male did tell dispatch that possibly a bat was involved,” Lavorato said.

Court records show Tigner had requested protective orders against Yazell three times in three years. Lavorato says police were called to Tigner’s home on three previous occasions since 2006. Two of those calls were for violations of no contact orders and the other was for a domestic dispute. Lavorato says no charges have been filed. Officers are monitoring the conditions of both Tigner and Yazell.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Update: more info on Rock Rapids man’s shooting death

March 3, 2010 By

A man wounded in a weekend shooting in Rock Rapids, in northwest Iowa, died Tuesday. Fifty-year-old Levi David Hofer was shot Sunday evening at a residence he shared with two others. The other occupants of the home face various charges in the death of Hofer. Fifty-one-year-old Laura Jeanette Lowe is charged with felony attempted murder. That charge is now expected to be upgraded to murder.

Lyon County Sheriff Blythe Bloemendaal says a disagreement may have led to the shooting. He says they know for a fact that there were some heated arguments going on at the time. When officers arrived, Bloemendaal says the two remaining people in the house told officials that Hofer was suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Sheriff says the investigation raised suspicion.

Bloemendaal says the entrance wound was in the top back side of the head and he says the gun used was a rifle and he says that was “definitely disturbing. I’m not saying it’s physically impossible to pull it off, but that’s phenomenal for somebody to do that.”

The sheriff says investigators worked over the rest of the crime scene and then talked with Laura Lowe, who admitted to shooting Hofer in the head. Lowe was treated for a hand injury. Sixty-year-old Larry Duane Griffin, who lives in the basement of the residence, is charged with accessory after the fact of an aggravated misdemeanor.

Matt Crosby, KQAD/KLQL in Luverne, Minnesota

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Second federal disaster declaration approved for winter storm

March 3, 2010 By

The president approved a second winter storm-related federal disaster declaration Tuesday for Iowa. Iowa Emergency Management Division administrator David Miller says the first declaration included 21 counties involved in the storm that began December 23rd.

Miller says that declaration included counties that had record or near record snowfall, and it will give them some help in paying for the snow removal. The declaration will allow the covered counties to receive some federal money for overtime costs of snow removal.

Miller says it pays for small window of snow removal in a 48-hour continuous operation. He says it’s important in this storm as it stretched through the Christmas holiday and a lot of local governments incurred high overtime costs to remove that snow. Counties included in that declaration are: Adair, Audubon, Calhoun, Carroll, Cass, Cherokee, Clay, Crawford, Emmet, Franklin, Fremont, Guthrie, Harrison, Ida, Monona, Page, Pottawattamie, Sac, Shelby, Sioux and Woodbury. The second declaration covered the storm in the middle of January.

He says the difference in that January 19th storm from the December storm was that it was mostly ice damage, with a little snow. Miller says the private non-profit electric utilities, like rural electric coops and municipal utilities, will have most of the claims for this declaration as they seek to recover the cost of repairing the ice damage.

The counties covered under the second declaration are: Adair, Audubon, Calhoun, Carroll, Cass, Crawford, Guthrie, Harrison, Madison, Pottawattamie, Sac, and Shelby. Miller says the federal emergency funds will only pay a fraction of the costs in each of the disasters, but he says it will help.

Miller says the snow removal budgets for local and state budgets have been severely stretched and officials have had to look at moving things around in their budgets to continue removing the snow. “The snow part of the declaration will give them some assistance — but frankly I don’t think it will begin to really allow them to recover their true cost of snow removal from this historic winter,” Miller said. Miller did not have the entire cost estimates available on the two storms, but says it will be in the tens of millions of dollars.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Politics & Government Tagged With:

Prison system will review Becker’s mental status as part of normal process

March 3, 2010 By

A spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Corrections says Mark Becker won’t be treated differently from any inmate who enters the state’s prison system. The 24-year-old Becker faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Aplington-Parkersburg football coach Ed Thomas.

Corrections Department spokesman Fred Scaletta says Becker will go through processing at the facility in Oakdale, just like every other new inmate. “Obviously, we may take some additional precautions in this particular case since we’re aware of some issues and we’ll address those immediately upon entrance,” Scaletta said. “But it’s really the same process for everybody.”

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Filed Under: Crime & Courts Tagged With:

Up to 20% of Iowa electricity from wind

March 3, 2010 By

A new report concludes between 17 and 20% of the electricity that’s generated in Iowa is now coming from wind turbines.  “That ranks us with the world leaders,” says Teresa Galluzzo of the Iowa Policy Project, the report’s co-author. “Denmark reached that capacity mark of 20 percent a couple of years ago and now Iowa as a state is up there with the world leaders.” 

The Iowa Policy Project report shows Iowa’s wind industry is generating nearly 3700 megawatts of power annually. ”We can’t say exactly where this generation is being consumed,” Galluzzo says. “But if it were all to be consumed in Iowa it would serve the equivalent of 75 percent of our homes with this capacity.” 

According to Iowa Policy Project executive director David Osterberg, wind turbines in the state now generate nearly six times as much power as the state’s lone nuclear plant. “There’s a load of wind out there that can be gleaned,” Osterberg says, “and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface even at 20 percent.”

Iowa was recently ranked number seven among the states in wind energy potential. In terms of actual wind energy generation today, Iowa is second to Texas in generating electricity from wind turbines.

Filed Under: Environment & Conservation, Politics & Government Tagged With:
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