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.
Nearly a year ago the small northeast Iowa town of Ely faced a problem that could stifle development and drive down property values. It stemmed directly from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s attempt to update sometimes decades-old flood maps to more accurately reflect existing circumstances.
Ely residents, many of whom had no water damage as a result of massive 2008 floods, told The Iowa Independent that they were shocked to learn that their properties were seemingly arbitrarily placed in newly identified flood zones by the federal agency. Although Ely local officials, developers and the roughly 50 impacted residents were able to convince FEMA to take a second look at the new maps to fully determine their accuracy, the Associated Press is reporting that other communities, both in Iowa and throughout the nation, continue to battle with the government over flood maps.
FEMA, now under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has been tasked with maintaining flood maps since 1978, and hasn’t been provided an adequate budget to accurately digitize older, often hand-drawn maps. In addition, the federal definition of what constitutes a flood zone has changed, pulling additional property that have never been previously identified into danger zones. The best way for communities to prepare for flood mapping, according to Bill Cappuccio with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Flood Plain Development Program, is to have their own detailed ground surveys completed that FEMA can use for its digitizing project.
“The better your topography, the better your approximation. In the case of Iowa, much of the approximation that’s been done to this point was done using 1960s- and 1970s-era [U.S. Geological Survey], 10- and 20-foot interval, contour maps. … But, where there is updated information, FEMA is using it,” Cappuccio told The Iowa Independent last April.
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