FOUR ELK PUT DOWN AFTER WEEKEND ESCAPE
FOUR FEMALE ELK AT THE HILLVIEW RECREATION AREA IN HINTON HAD TO BE PUT DOWN AFTER THEY ESCAPED FROM THEIR FENCED IN AREA LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
NICK BEECK, DIRECTOR OF THE PLYMOUTH COUNTY CONSERVATION BOARD SAID ACCORDING TO PROTOCOL, THE ANIMALS WERE PUT DOWN TO KEEP THEM OUT OF THE WAY OF CARS AND FOR OTHER LIABILITY REASONS.
THE INCIDENT REMAINS UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE PLYMOUTH COUNTY CONSERVATION BOARD AND THE PLYMOUTH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE.
CITIZEN HEROES TO BE RECOGNIZED AT HALFTIME OF IOWA-NEBRASKA FOOTBALL GAME
Two men, credited with saving the lives of strangers, will be honored during Friday’s Iowa-Nebraska football game in Lincoln. The recognition of “citizen heroes” from each state has become a halftime tradition in the annual battle between the Hawkeyes and Cornhuskers. Mark Tauscheck, spokesperson for the Iowa Red Cross, says this year’s Iowa honoree is 40-year-old Jerry Goeders of Dayton.
Goeders and his family were at Lake Rathbun in southern Iowa this summer when they heard a girl screaming across the lake. She was struggling in the water with no one near her to help.
Goeders grabbed the girl, 8-year-old Jersie Ostino (ah-STEEN-oh), and got her safely to shore.
This year’s Nebraska citizen hero is 26-year-old Geoffrey Bennett, a soldier in the Army National Guard, who moved with his family to Norfolk, Nebraska from Illinois as a teenager.
Bennett was driving through Omaha last December, in a snowstorm, when he stopped to help a woman near her broken down car. The 34-year-old woman had been critically injured when she was struck by passing vehicle.
Bennett stayed with the woman and her friend, a 28-year-old man who was also badly injured, until an ambulance arrived. The woman’s leg was later amputated.
Bennett graduated from high school in Norfolk before attending Morningside College in Sioux City where he was a pitcher on the baseball team. Bennett joined the Army National Guard in 2011. He recently started a new job as a technician at Camp Dodge in Johnston (Iowa). He previously served as perimeter security guard at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha.
Earlier this year, fans of both schools were invited to nominate residents of Iowa and Nebraska for this “Citizen Hero” award. Staff and volunteers from the American Red Cross selected the winners.
SCHOOL’S SNACK PROGRAM GOES STATEWIDE
Iowa’s largest pork producer is launching a program in all 99 Iowa counties that aims to feed protein-packed sandwiches to needy children. Allyson Ladd is marketing specialist for Iowa Select Farms which is starting what it’s calling the Power Snack program.
The program is now going statewide after it had been tried as a pilot program in several Iowa communities and Ladd says the coupons were a success.
She says recent studies find one in eight children in Iowa are food insecure, meaning they’re not sure where their next meal may be coming from.
Learn more at the Iowa Select Farms Facebook page or at www.iowaselect.com.
WIND POWER USE INCREASES IN SOUTH DAKOTA
South Dakota has joined Iowa as the only states where wind power provides over 30 percent of in-state power generation.
Governor Dennis Daugaard says wind energy projects have created a big boost to the state’s economy:
The governor says the region has also reached a milestone in providing wind generated electricity for the midwest:
Daugaard says the wind farms also provide a safety net for farmers who have leased their land to allow turbines to be constructed there:
The governor says there are numerous other wind power projects being planned across South Dakota that will attract billions of dollars of new private investment, millions of dollars of new revenue for farmers and rural communities, and thousands of new jobs.
