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11/25/2009
IOWA NEWS UPDATE
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) The union that represents Iowa law enforcement officers has approved budget cuts to comply with Gov. Chet Culver's order for a 10 percent reduction in state spending this fiscal year. .
The State Police Officers Council approved the agreement on Tuesday.
Executive Director Sue Brown says in a news release that the agreement will include pay cuts and furloughs.
Culver says in a statement that all 640 members of the union will take five furlough days between now and June 20, 2010, and forgo the state match to their deferred compensation. The savings will protect 43 positions.
The union represents Iowa state troopers, Iowa gaming agents, fire inspectors, Department of Natural Resources park rangers, conservation officers and special agents in the Division of Criminal Investigation.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) According to unofficial results, Democrat Kirsten Running-Marquardt appears to have scored a landslide win in the special election in Iowa's State House District 33.
With voting completed Tuesday night, more than 75 percent of the voters appeared to have chosen Running-Marquardt over Republican Joshua Thurston.
The district includes downtown and southwestern Cedar Rapids.
Running-Marquardt will replace Democrat Dick Taylor, who has retired from the legislature.
Election officials say only 1,935 of the district's 20,472 registered voters actually voted. Of those, 1,508 voted for Running-Marquardt, and 420 for Thurston. There also were six write-in votes.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) It didn't take long for proposals to house Guantanamo Bay detainees at a nearly empty Illinois prison to spark tough talk by Republicans across the Mississippi River in Iowa.
Rep. Steve King claims the plan would lead to a ``terrorist enclave' near Iowa. And Rep. Tom Latham has introduced legislation prohibiting the transfer of the detainees to Iowa, Illinois and nine other Midwestern states.
Sen. Charles Grassley says he understands why Iowans would be worried about the plan.
Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Bruce Braley have focused more on potential jobs.
Drake University political science professor Dennis Goldford says the proposal by President Barack Obama raises significant questions, but he fears politics are getting in the way of seriously examining the plan.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) Municipal officials say the city of Cedar Rapids will be ending the curbside collection of residential flood debris.
The service had been provided through funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but that funding ends this month, so authorities say the final curbside pickups will be done on Wednesday.
In a release, authorities said Tuesday the City of Cedar Rapids Solid Waste and Recycling Division has coordinated the removal of 41,771 tons of residential flood debris since the flood of 2008.
With the ending of the curbside pickups, property owners must find alternate means of removing flood debris from their property.
DE SOTO, Iowa (AP) Authorities say a weekend spill of dairy cream near De Soto has now reached a Dallas County stream.
A semitrailer hauling 5,000 gallons of dairy cream overturned Saturday while exiting Interstate 80. Emergency workers used sand to contain the spilled cream at the site for the Oklahoma-based trucking company to clean up later.
But as of Tuesday, the company had not removed the cream, and rain weakened the sand berms holding it. As a result, some of the cream flowed into a drainage ditch and south through the town of De Soto to Bulger Creek, a tributary of the South Raccoon River.
While the Department of Natural Resources did not observe a fish kill in the creek or river, it said cream can threaten fish and other aquatic life.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it aims to stop agricultural runoff in 41 watersheds in 12 states from ending up in the Mississippi River.
The departments says it has $320 million for farmers who want to slow runoff.
The agency is targeting watersheds in Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. In all, those areas make up more 42 million acres of land, or about 5 percent of the Mississippi River basin's land area.
Agricultural runoff leads to high nutrient and sediment levels in the river. The river's high nutrient load leads to an area of dangerously low oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico every summer known as ``the dead zone.'
© 2002 Associated Press.
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