![]() Of course the livestock industry has their “Master Matrix” regulation, if you want to call it that, that prevents the counties from regulating the livestock industry. On what planet (other than Ucornus) does this make sense?Įvidently the Homebuilders of Iowa have finally learned a thing or two from their countryside compatriots, Hogbuilders of Iowa. The most puzzling thing about this hog and pony show is the fact that Des Moines Water Works, who knows context better than anybody, has now apparently decided to be a contestant on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire’s Patsy”, Iowa’s longest-running TV gameshow. But, this shiny contraption for sure will make a nice prop for public figures to stand next to at the State Fair and ride in Suburbanville’s 2022 4 th of July parade, peacocking their water quality cred. I’m told that dispersing the cover crop seed into a standing corn crop with an airplane is just about as effective and costs $7/acre. Bear in mind you (and yes I mean you) still have to buy the seeds, and the thing needs to be carted around which surely cannot be cheap. Cost for farmers to buy that lost nitrogen in the first place: $67,000. Best case scenario is the planter will reduce that 0.1%, or about 80,000 pounds. The average nitrate-nitrogen load traveling through the city of Des Moines in the two rivers is 105,000,000 pounds, per year. There about 6 million acres in the two watersheds, 75% of it cropped. They *hope* to plant cover crops on 10,000 acres using the machine. “Our hope is for the machine to travel around and get some excitement.” And, “We recognize the value this project can have in sharing some of the responsibility to protect our public waterways and watersheds.” And, “What happens upstream impacts the safety of our drinking water and the recreation in our rivers and lakes for everyone in Polk County.”Ĭontext people, context. Some of the quotes on this story are just golden. Polk County announced they are buying a $600,000 cover crop planter, because apparently the owners of the most valuable farmland on earth are unable to part with enough of the beer money they saved for the winter in Fort Myers to get pollution-reducing cover crop seed in the ground in the Raccoon and Des Moines River watersheds (2). Interestingly, Dyersville is home to the National Farm Toy Museum, which is a nice segue to the next story. Voila, water infrastructure comes to a ball diamond carved out of corn field. A person can only imagine that the governor or some other titan of Iowa business or politics rang up Commissioner of Major League Baseball Rob Manfred last August and said “Dude, we just looooved that 3-hour long corn commercial”, and Manfred replying something to effect of “Well, (Yankees star) Giancarlo Stanton has a $135 million contract, and neither he nor Kevin Costner likes having to crap in a porta potty. I think the city of Dubuque is in pretty good shape.Ĭall me cynic if you must, but I feel like the manager just called a squeeze play or a double steal or a pitchout or whatever baseball lingo works best here. ![]() “The project will serve 114,000 Iowans across two counties and create approximately 350 jobs.” Indeed, the combined population of Dubuque and Delaware county is about 114,000, but Dubuque city (population 59,000) and most of the rest of the municipalities in the two counties already have water and wastewater treatment, not that some of them couldn’t use some upgrades. Governor Kim Reynolds announced that Iowa was going to use $38 million from the Water Infrastructure Fund to fund three water quality and infrastructure projects across Iowa (1), with $11 million going to the Dyersville East Road Utilities Project at the Field of Dreams site, for water distribution and wastewater collection infrastructure. ![]() ![]() I’m not putting these in the order of occurrence, I’m just letting that aneurytic pressure drain out through my fingertips organically. Alas, I’m still wondering WHAT THE HELL, so here goes. Since my reaction after each event was WHAT THE HELL, I thought it best to wait a few days to write something, giving the pressurized aneurysm time to dissipate. Yes, I’ve been told to be less evocative. A trio of events occurred this week that produced a visceral reaction in my viscera, which I now know must be in the middle of my brain because each event made my brain feel like a bulging aneurysm was about to burst forth with such magnitude that the blood would spray out each ear like an astronaut losing his pressurized helmet in some gory sci-fi movie taking place on the planet Ucornus.
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