Environmental News

Residents of Lake Ridge Estates, a mobile home park just south of Iowa City, last week found a 24-pack of bottled water and a notice at their front doors. “Lake Ridge Inc. has high levels of manganese. DO NOT GIVE TAP WATER TO INFANTS UNDER 6 MONTHS OLD OR USE IT TO MAKE INFANT FORMULA.”

Iowa’s Forest Reserve Program, which provides a tax incentive for property owners to maintain woodlands, remains intact after this year’s legislative session, but the Iowa Woodland Owners Association anticipates the fight to keep the program to continue.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources was unable to determine the cause of the 2024 fire, or whether it was set intentionally. A park manager and his wife saved the tree with buckets of water from a creek.

The annual forecast for the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, which President Donald Trump has renamed the Gulf of America, predicts the section of water where oxygen is unnaturally low will be about average in size this year. What’s not average is the uncertainty over whether government-backed efforts to reduce its size will falter as the Trump administration scales back federal agencies involved in the process.

Summer is a popular time for fishing trips across Iowa, but how can anglers be sure they’ll catch fish? And how does the state maintain a fish population that allows for fishing? Those questions can be answered by Iowa’s fish hatcheries, which fertilize, rear and stock fish species across the state each year.

A construction site near Swisher along Interstate 380 had insufficient erosion controls that led sediment to flow into a tributary of McAllister Creek.

The best times with a rod in hand is with family and friends

County ordinances in Iowa that restrict the placement of carbon dioxide pipelines are overruled by the authority of state and federal regulators and cannot be enforced, a federal appeals court decided Thursday.