Iowa Workforce Development says some Iowans will soon receive new federal unemployment benefits. The state agency said yesterday it will implement the new Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefit extensions program on Tuesday February 16, 2021…and eligible Iowans should receive funds within about a week. The agency said most claimants who were already on the original Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program did not see a lapse in payments.
The National Weather Service offices in the Quad Cities and La Crosse have issued the first of three flood outlooks for the upcoming spring. So far, chances for flooding on the Cedar, Iowa, and Mississippi Rivers are near normal. Despite the deep snowpack over much of eastern Iowa and the I-80 corridor east to Chicago, to the north and west where the headwaters of the Iowa and Cedar rivers are located, the snowpack is much lower. In addition, Coralville Lake is not seeing any high water issues, so even as the deep local snowpack melts, it will be able to retain much of the runoff.
The southwest Iowa town of Hamburg, which has spent much of the last decade fighting for federal approval to raise its flood protection levee, finally got it this week. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has approved the city’s plan to raise the levee there by about 8 feet. The decision comes nearly 10 years after the Corps scrambled to help the town of about 1,200 temporarily raise the levee to 18 feet in June 2011, when the Missouri River broke through one of its nearby levees. The quick work of the town’s people and the Corps saved Hamburg from devastating floods that year. But once the floodwaters subsided, the Corps insisted that the work be undone, noting that the hastily-erected earthen levee was never meant to be permanent. The town sought for years to get approval to raise the levee again, only to see historic floods in 2019 overtop the lowered levee and inundate the town. Hamburg will provide between $7 million and $8 million it has raised from state and federal funding for the project, the Corps said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed five more cases of the United Kingdom COVID-19 variant in Iowa yesterday, bringing the total number of variant cases to eight. The Iowa Department of Public Health confirmed the first three cases of the variant on Feb. 1, with one case in Bremer and two in Johnson counties. The department did not disclose where the latest cases are located.
All four of Iowa’s Representatives in the U.S. House are urging the Biden Administration to include Iowa’s federally qualified community health centers (FQHC) in a COVID-19 vaccine pilot-program. The four sent a letter to the Health and Human Services Secretary-Designate and the Centeres for Disease Control and Prevention director. FQHCs, as the centers are known, are community-based health care providers that receive federal funds to provide primary care services in underserved areas. The lawmakers say Iowa’s FQHCs are ready to administer COVID-19 vaccines quickly and efficiently to Iowa’s most vulnerable populations, noting many have already served as COVID-19 testing locations.
Authorities stopped a pickup truck involved in a chase through Black Hawk and Buchanan counties yesterday morning. Not many details are known; officers first tried to stop the vehicle following a disturbance at the Isle Casino Hotel in Waterloo. The truck drove onto U.S. Highway 20 and headed east. The chase reached speeds of up to 80 mph on icy roads made worse by blowing snow at the time. Officers used Stop Sticks, damaging at least one tire on the truck, but the vehicle continued on until coming to a stop just west of Winthrop. No one was injured.
