Olivia Cohen

Days after MidAmerican Energy deployed workers to Ohio to help restore power to customers affected by Hurricane Helene, the company announced its crews will relocate to North Carolina to assist with “repairing catastrophic grid damage” in the state.

About 150 Alliant and 70 MidAmerican line workers and crew members were sent to Virginia and Ohio, respectively, to help energy companies there restore customers’ power that was knocked out by the severe storm.

Acting assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, in Cedar Rapids, calls the project a “win-win-win.”

On a typical day, Cornell College’s cafeteria is stocked with meals that are 20 to 30 percent locally sourced. But Tuesday, all the food served to Cornell students — breakfast, lunch and dinner — came from within 150 miles of the Mount Vernon campus.

Fewer acres in the Conservation Reserve Program and bad winters contributed to declining pheasant harvests. But the 2023 pheasant harvest was still the best in 16 years.

The state previously had been ‘drought-free’ since May after four years of at least some drought conditions.

The Iowa Utilities Commission this week approved increases to the gas and electric rates paid by Alliant Energy’s Iowa customers. The increase is less than the company proposed last year.

Around 1,250 fish were killed this week when a broken water main released chlorinated drinking water into McLoud Run, a trout stream in Cedar Rapids. It is the second time this year that chlorinated water has reached the stream through a broken main.

About 65 percent of the state is currently experiencing abnormal dryness, up 22 percent from last week, according to data from Thursday’s update of the U.S. Drought Monitor.

University of Iowa professor worked on a study measuring the dusty plumes from gravel roads after cars drive by.

The fall 2024 session’s “host counties” are Linn and Johnson counties

A farm in Grundy County is provided space for researchers from the University of Iowa and Iowa State University to test a system that slows the flow of water under grassways in fields, allowing sediment to absorb nutrients before the water exits the field

Since July, Willis Dady Works has taken in 100 old mattresses. There, they are diassembled, and their pieces are recycled or repurposed. The program provides work for people who need it, and it diverts mattresses from landfills, where they present unique challenges.

The National Weather Service is warning that “dangerously hot conditions” will persist through Tuesday, with heat indexes reaching 110 to 115 degrees.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has successfully trapped and collared only one of the rare and elusive gray foxes in the state. Now researchers are expanding their pilot program to find out why the gray fox population is declining.