Gazette Daily News Podcast, August 11

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This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Wednesday, August 11.

Wednesday’s weather will continue the theme started on Tuesday: it’s going to be hot, it’s going to be humid, and there will be a chance for rain.

According to the National Weather Service there will be a 30 percent chance for showers and thunderstorms in the Cedar Rapids area, although this will primarily be before 8 a.m. Then it will be mostly sunny and dangerously hot. The high temperature will be 97 degrees, with heat index values as high as 106 degrees.

Eastern Iowans looked back Tuesday on the one-year anniversary of the derecho wreaking havoc on property, power lines, and acres of devastated tree canopy. They also used the occasion to announce some new initiatives that could help as people continue to recover from the storm.

The Cedar Rapids City Council on Tuesday approved a $1 million allocation to help low- to moderate-income households grappling with storm damage repair their homes.

The council authorized a $1 million grant of federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to the Housing Fund for Linn County’s PATCH Program, a locally administered initiative that has helped homeowners repair their derecho-damaged homes since it launched soon after the storm.

As for the aforementioned tree canopy, officials announced on Tuesday that private investors have contributed over $1 million to a Cedar Rapids campaign to replenish the trees that the derecho’s hurricane-force winds destroyed.

Corporate and individual donors have raised over $11 million since this spring for the city of Cedar Rapids’ ReLeaf public-private partnership with Marion-based nonprofit Trees Forever to replant trees across the city. The city already has committed to providing $1 million a year for 10 years, and Trees Forever is looking to meet that contribution with $5 million in private funds.

The derecho’s ferocious winds downed an estimated 70 percent of Cedar Rapids’ tree canopy, leaving crews to spend over 10 months clearing approximately 4 million cubic yards of tree debris from along streets as officials began to pursue long-term replanting efforts.

A proposal that would send over $4.2 billion in federal funding to Iowa for road and bridge construction and repairs received a split vote Tuesday from the state’s two U.S. senators in Washington, D.C.

Republican Chuck Grassley voted for, and Republican Joni Ernst against, the overall $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which had strong bipartisan support: it passed the Senate by a 69-30 vote, with 19 Republicans joining all Democrats in support.

The bill now heads to the U.S. House, where it faces an uncertain future, where work remains to be done on the final passage of a bill.

Grassley said he has heard often from constituents about the need to improve infrastructure and although the bill is imperfect, he found it more palatable than earlier versions proposed by Democrats. Ernst said that she could not support the bill over concerns it would add to the National Debt.