Storm Lake gets sucked dry so the world gets cheap meat
If President Joe Biden wonders why his approval numbers stink, he should take a look at Storm Lake.
For the second time in two years, the city’s application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to rescue our failing water system was rejected.
That means Storm Lakers are likely to pay a disproportionate share of more then $80 million in improvements — including a $15 million water line that runs to Tyson Foods’ pork plant.
Tyson just signed a water service agreement with Storm Lake under which it will pay for a new water tower. Other capital improvements, like that water main, will be shared by everyone. Residential users already pay a higher rate than industrial consumers. The city is hiking rates 7% on all classes, but the compounding effect is greater on the higher rate payers — the folks who take a shower after work.
Storm Lake has huge water needs for a town its size. That’s because it’s a protein center for the world. The pork plant is one of the Top 10 in America. The turkey plant draws from three states.
Our little town is expected to float the boat so the world gets cheap pork and abundant deli meat.
This summer, when RAGBRAI rolled through with 40,000 thirsty bikers, two of our wells failed. We were awfully close to slaughter slowdowns or shutdowns. The brief pandemic shutdowns at Storm Lake, Sioux Falls and Waterloo during the spring of 2020 sent shock waves through the economy that still reverberate in the pork sector. State and federal officials ordered the plants and workers to keep running no matter. Talk about an emergency.
If you want to keep inflation in check, keep Storm Lake running.
FEMA says it’s out of cash from mounting climate casualties. Storm Lake is out in the cold.
Fat lot of good it did to enlist the aid of Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office. Rep. Randy Feenstra swore off earmarks. As a result, the Linn Grove bridge rebuild was paid by Buena Vista County local funds — a bridge undone by extreme flows in the Little Sioux River. Just upstream, rebuilding the dam also is likely to fall entirely on local taxpayers. If we don’t do something about the dam, that bridge won’t hold long.
Who in Washington or Des Moines cares about the Linn Grove bridge or dam?
Who cares about Storm Lake? The folks in Washington can say, “Let Tyson pay for the water system improvements.” Tyson has already outlined its commitment in the water contract. So we know what the city council’s options will be: Jack up the rates on Tyson and risk losing 3,000 jobs, or tell the line workers buck it up and pay for the improvements so they can keep their jobs.
That’s what it boils down to. FEMA is strapped — Maui is expensive. So is Florida. We get that. You would think that one of the helpful folks at the regional office in Kansas City could hook us up with someone friendly at the USDA, where there might be some of that climate-smart ag money that could be routed through Tyson. We already are routing millions of climate-smart ag funds through Tyson so it can address water needs of the beef industry. How about Storm Lake gets a little piece of that pie?
If Joe Biden sits in the Oval Office wondering why people can’t appreciate his impressive legislative record, he should spin the globe and pin Buena Vista County.
The local taxpayers are paying $9 million of the $13 million in road development costs to accommodate a soy processing plant near Lake Creek. This is mainly a benefit to the regional economy that is financed locally. What about those infrastructure funds again?
All the money flows out of Storm Lake while we local yokels are expected to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and not drink so damn much water. We will pay higher and higher rates to witch more water to feed agri-industry. Could we get a thank-you, at least? We will do no better with Donald Trump as president, but he makes no pretense about caring whether hard-working immigrants are carrying the meat business on their backs. Biden does. He is the one who set expectations that are not being met. Not here, anyhow.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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To quote baseball immmortal Yogi Berra, this sounded like "deja vu all over again" and I was right. Waterloo, home to a sister IBP/Tyson plant, has always had ample water supplies becase it sits on a big aquifer. But it felt -- or smelled -- Storm Lake's pain more than 30 years ago, That's when the city was forced to spend more than $3 million to build a covered anaerobic waste treatment lagooon to handle waste from our IBP (now Tyson) plant. IBP "contributed" $500,000 to its construction and paid "fixed" wastewater treatment rates over five years while Waterloo residential customers rates were increased 65 percent over three years. The lagoon was built in lieu of improvements to the city's main wastewater treatment plant -- the stated reason for the hikes at the time the rate increases were approved. But the city had been fined by the Iowa DNR because it was out of compliance with its wastewater treatment permit-- and faced the possiblity of daily fines if it didn't do something.
Three years later, the lagoon project cost had topped out at $4 million and the DNR also said the main plant still needed improvement. And the lagoon was also taking on waste not just from IBP but from a local tannery that has opened just before IBP. Some portions of the lagoon work had been pared out of the project due to the cost overruns.
Meanwhile the city, and citizens were facing colossal costs to upgrade the main sewer plant. But on Jan. 31, 1995, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin announced Waterloo would receive a $37 million matching grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to defray more than half the $67 million cost of plant improvements.
So apparently, there's a difference between Waterloo then and Storm Lake now: Federal help was available and there was a senator who bird-dogged the money through the legislative process.
I feel for the residents of Storm Lake and the cost of non proactive growth government. It is at this point sustainability that may be in question. Now I do feel that any blame towards Biden is unfair. His campaign promises are only as good as the tools he has to work with. Northwest Iowa have put themselves in this position. When you vote against your better interests you get no one on your side. When you have Feenstra, Nunn, Miller/Meeks, Hinson, Grassley, Ernst, Bird,and Reynolds all not going to do anything because they don't see the City of Storm Lake a priority. And certainly don't want to help the economy look better because it will make Biden look better, can't have that. How do we fix this? Well, give the voices in the dark, Rob Sand and JD Scholten teammates get ahold of Rita Hart with suggestions. We used to be able to count on a few Fred Grandy types but now we are looking at the otherside working on their project 2025 this will hamstring us all. To quicken your search it is a Heritage Foundation thing.
P.S. guess there is a couple of billion dollars left in the tax coffers oh, that's right give more tax breaks to big business and rich why build or fix anything.