Erin Jordan

State officials want to develop a drought plan that would include a trigger point to call for precautions, such as water rationing. Iowa has been ruled highly vulnerable to drought in part because crops are not irrigated.

The Iowa Center for School Mental Health, founded last summer with $20 million in federal pandemic relief money, will be renamed the Scanlan Center for School Mental Health after the gift from the Chicago-based Scanlan Family Foundation.

“If you look at Iowa City as a place that is fast-growing and diverse, it will need more deliberate actions for neighborhoods to develop,” said Ayman Sharif, Iowa City’s new outreach & engagement specialist.

The Iowa Department of Transportation this month will submit a plan to the federal government for how Iowa would spend $51 million over five years to expand electric vehicle charging capacity along interstate highways, including I-80, I-380, I-35 and I-29.

A Missouri resident has been infected by a microscopic organism that causes a rare, life-threatening brain infection after swimming at Lake of Three Fires State Park in southwest Iowa.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources last month awarded Carroll the Brass Bluegill award from its Fish Iowa! program. The award has been presented every year since 1996 to an outstanding local program.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has fined a northwest Iowa dairy owner the maximum $10,000 penalty for releasing 376,000 gallons of manure into a creek from a new anaerobic digester that hadn't been properly sealed or certified.

Residents of Linn, Johnson, Cedar, Clinton and Scott counties will have a chance in September to share their thoughts about another proposed CO2 pipeline -- this one connecting ADM ethanol plants.

Summer in Iowa is prime time to get outdoors and hike, swim, boat, fish or garden. The Gazette’s Erin Jordan is starting an Environment & Outdoors newsletter to share stories about Iowa’s natural environment and the things that impact it.

Most years, Iowa corn is far taller than “knee high by the Fourth of July,” but this year’s crop -- set back by late planting and too little rain -- fits the old adage.

Black farmers and some agricultural groups in Iowa are working hard to show young people of color how they can make a living from the land.

Iowans whose property may be in the path of the proposed Navigator Heartland Greenway carbon dioxide pipeline are invited to informational meetings in 12 counties, including Delaware, Buchanan, Fayette and Bremer.

With blood donations down 21 percent during holiday weeks, the American Red Cross is seeking blood donors as we approach the July 4 holiday weekend.

Grant Hilbert, 21, of Ankeny, made enough money from YouTube videos of him playing the Farming Simulator video game to help him buy 250 acres in Mahaska County that he now has planted in corn and soybeans.

Quentin Blazicek is one of four Cedar Rapids fathers who enrolled last fall in the Caring Dads program, a 17-week support group offered by Waypoint for dads who want to improve their relationships with their children to end or avoid controlling, abusive or neglectful behavior.