Gazette Daily News Podcast, March 15

This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Tuesday, March 15.

It should be another pleasant day Tuesday as the spring trend continues. According to the National Weather Service it will be mostly cloudy in the Cedar Rapids area with a high near 58 degrees and a light wind. On Tuesday night it will be mostly clear, with a low around 40 degrees.

At the end of this week looms another deadline for the Iowa legislature: the second “funnel” deadline of this year’s session. By the end of the week, in order to remain eligible for consideration moving forward, any bill must have passed one chamber — either the Iowa House or Iowa Senate — and a committee in the opposite chamber. The deadline does not apply to tax policy or spending bills.

So lawmakers — particularly Republicans in the agenda-setting majorities — this week will be prioritizing work on bills that have not yet reached that benchmark.

Among the bills to watch out for up for debate this week: a series of proposals focused on giving parents more control on content in schools; bans on businesses requiring vaccines or face coverings; and a bill that seeks to make the requirements to receive unemployment benefits more stringent. Also possible this week could be a proposed update to the state’s bottle recycling law.

A boy was injured Sunday evening in Cedar Rapids after a shooting in the 1600 block of Seventh Avenue SE.

Police responded to the area at 7:24 p.m. and found a boy suffering from a gunshot wound in his lower back. He was found on the enclosed porch of a house in the area, according to a news release from Cedar Rapids police.

The boy was taken to a hospital for treatment. Police described his injuries as serious but not life-threatening.

Recent testing by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources found “very low” but detectable levels of two types of industrial chemicals in Cedar Rapids’ public water supply, but the city reports that its water remains safe to drink.

The Iowa DNR is testing for PFAS, a family of thousands of chemicals used in industrial processes around the globe since the 1940s. They are called “forever chemicals” because they accumulate over time in water, soil, animals and humans. Prolonged exposure to these chemicals over time may cause various maladies, such as cancer.

Based on current data, the city says there is no indication Cedar Rapids water customers must take any special actions at this time. The city’s water remains safe to drink.

“At the city of Cedar Rapids, we take water and water quality very seriously. Our drinking water is safe and is well within the EPA and DNR standards,” Water Plant Manager Christine Knapp said in a statement. “We will continue to work with the Iowa DNR to monitor PFAS and will keep providing our community with safe, high-quality drinking water.”

Meanwhile Central City got some bad news in the same survey.

According to the Iowa Capitol Dispatch, Central City has concentrations of PFAS in its drinking water that exceed safety thresholds in other states and that are the highest so far identified by a new Iowa surveillance program.

That test result was for the two most-studied PFAS and is more than double the highest concentration previously detected by the tests conducted in Iowa. It approaches the current federal safety guideline of 70 parts per trillion.

It has triggered a more thorough review by the Iowa DNR’s Contaminated Sites Section to try to determine the cause of the elevated levels.

“Have there been train derailments? Any use of firefighting foam?” asked Corey McCoid, supervisor of the Iowa DNR’s Water Supply Operations Section. “It’s just to try to track down what may be some of the possible sources and whether that warrants further investigation.

The city’s well is within a mile of the site of a massive fire more than five years ago at a recycling business, Iowa Gold Distributing.

Support for this news update was provided by New Pioneer Food Co-op. Celebrating 50 years as Eastern Iowa’s destination for locally and responsibly sourced groceries with stores in Iowa City, Coralville and Cedar Rapids; and online through Co-op Cart at newpi.coop.