(LE MARS)–Efforts to increase recycling in Le Mars are getting another financial boost.
Assistant city administrator Bill Cole today announced the city was awarded another 20-thousand dollars from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Solid Waste Alternatives Program known as SWAP.
The funds awarded as a forgiveable loan are for the Le Mars Recycling Totes project. According to an interview with Cole on KLEM earlier this month, the goal is to get more blue recycling totes to Le Mars residents without charge and reduce the number of weekly garbage collections because waste is being recycled.
According to the notice from an Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the next step in the process involves drafting the contract for the forgiveable loan funding .
(ORANGE CITY)–A musical and music are part of the 70th annual celebration of Dutch heritage in Orange City May 13-15th.
The annual Tulip Festival is signaled by thousands of tulips blooming in primary colors to delicate pastels and deep hues.
The annual musical, “Bye, Bye Birdie,” is presented for the first time on May 12th with performances through Saturday night.
An Andean band, Ecuador Manta, performs on the Sioux County courthouse lawn May 15th.
After all the parades, street scrubbing, Dutch costumes , a car and quilt show, fireworks will light the night sky Saturday night, May 15th, closing out the Orange City celebration.
STORM LAKE, Iowa (AP) Storm Lake police have begun using a program that will extend an immigrant’s visa if he or she is needed at a trial.
The program allows police to endorse the extension of a U-visa if the immigrants meet several requirements, including assisting authorities in pertinent investigations.
The department’s use of the program is part of an effort to get better cooperation with police within the growing immigrant community in Storm Lake.
Storm Lake Public Safety Director Mark Prosser says the program could get more “good information” to law enforcement agencies.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
(SAC CITY)–Two Sac City residents face more charges.
Sac County authorities arrested 28-year-old Travis Jon Lenz and 26-year-old Mandi Brenner on April 20th. Items were seized at their residence when they were arrested in Sac City.
According to sheriff Ken McClure, the items have been identified as having been taken from a rural Sac City farm place. They face additional charges of felony burglary in the third degree and possession of stolen property.
Lenz and Brenner are being held in the Sac County jail.
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HAMPTON, Iowa (AP) A former tenant is suing the apartment complex where her toddler son and another woman were killed in a fire.
Renya Alonzo de Arroyo has filed suit against the two owners of the Hampton complex, saying they were negligent because there was no fire extinguisher in the apartment and no safe way to get out of second and third floors of the building during a fire.
The 22-month-old boy, Luis Rey Alonzo Garcia, and a 25-year-old woman, Mackenzie Blandau, were killed in the Feb. 14 fire.
Arroyo wasn’t in the apartment during the fire.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) The discovery of a disease that has killed about one million bats across the U.S. led the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to close three state caves and recommend private caves to do the same.
White fungus appears on bats that suffer from the disease, called white nose syndrome. It causes them to fly more often than usual, leading to lower body fat, wasting, and eventually death.
It is not a threat to humans.
The closure of caves in Maquoketa, Burlington and Jones County could force the closure of the three state parks that support them. The caves are generally the parks’ largest tourist attractions.
State zoologist Daryl Howell says about 2,000 bats live in Iowa caves between October and March.
WAVERLY, Iowa (AP) A South Dakota man was killed early Friday morning when he fell out of a truck on a northeast Iowa highway.
The Bremer County Sheriff’s Office says in a release that they found 25-year-old Nicholas Hudelson of Sioux Falls, S.D. on Highway 218 with fatal injuries at about 1 a.m. on Friday.
Hudelson was pronounced dead at the scene. The sheriff’s office says no foul play is suspected.
The Iowa State Medical Examiner’s Office will conduct an autopsy on Hudelson.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) An overflow of wastewater from a construction site spilled into a creek and farm field on Thursday, forcing authorities build a dike to contain the sewage.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources says in a release that about 1,000 gallons of sewage reached the creek near the Iowa State Fairgrounds.
A contractor was adding sewer lines to connect communities in the larger Des Moines metro area to the city’s Metropolitan Wastewater Reclamation Authority when a sudden surge of sewage overflowed the portable pumps at the construction site.
The DNR says the sewage reached a low spot on the creek and some of it reached the water.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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