Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
A Department of Agriculture program that provided low-interest loans for rural coal power has been suspended. Iowa’s largest coal-burning plant, Council Bluffs No. 4, received $177 million from the USDA in 2004.Last week, The Washington Post reported that a Department of Agriculture program that loaned money for coal plants to rural electric cooperatives has been suspended. The program, Rural Utilities Service (RUS), is not expected to make any more low-interest loans during fiscal 2008 or 2009 and will await a new administration and congressional guidelines on energy programs.
Critics of the program contended that RUS subsidized coal power, one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and failed to account for the financial risks of burning the cheap fuel.
RUS administrator James M. Andrew, in a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said, “Since there is no clear consensus on what emission standards will be enacted and associated costs, attempting to make decisions on loans absent a factual base is speculative at best.”
In 2004, the Department of Agriculture presented three checks totaling nearly $177 million to Iowa electric cooperatives to complete transmission and distribution lines at Council Bluffs No. 4 (CB No. 4), now the largest coal-burning power plant in Iowa.
RUS loaned $101.6 million to Central Iowa Power Cooperative, $74 million to Corn Belt Power Cooperative and $956,000 to Franklin Rural Electric Cooperative.
MidAmerican Energy is the developer and operator of CB No. 4. Partners include: Central Iowa Power Cooperative; Corn Belt Power Cooperative; the Iowa cities of Alta, Cedar Falls, Eldridge, Montezuma, New Hampton, Pella, Spencer, Sumner, Waverly and West Bend; and the Lincoln Electric System and the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska.
RUS has not made available any money for proposed plants in Marshalltown and Waterloo. The last RUS loan for a generating plant was made in 2006.
More than $1.3 billion in loans for new plant construction had been granted since 2001 by the program.
In July 2007, Earthjustice, an environmental law group, filed a federal lawsuit seeking to stop the loan program.
Earthjustice attorney Abigail Dillen said that the lawsuit was filed “to make sure that taxpayers do not bear the burden of a misguided investment in dirty coal plants.”
Environmental litigation was cited as one of the reasons the loan program was halted.
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