Tougher water regulations get final approval.

House committee passes prevailing wage bill.

Former aide to U.S. Rep. Steve King running for state attorney general.

Legislature considering requiring employers to offer sick leave.

The so-called Democratic health care bill already contains six very Republican provisions.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement rallied supporters in the lobby of Wells Fargo's downtown branch (photo by Michael Swanger/Iowa Independent).

While customers and bank employees looked on, five busloads of CCI members quietly streamed into the lobby of Wells Fargo Bank in downtown Des Moines, shouting in unison “Bust up big banks” and “Put the people first.”

“I’m just very angry,” said 81-year-old Ferol Wegner of Des Moines, a widow who lost her retirement savings in the financial crisis. “Everyone here has lost money in their 401ks or retirement funds because the banks have devastated our economy, yet the taxpayers paid for the bailouts of these large corporate banks. I’m here to stand up and see that justice is served.”

After a few minutes in the bank lobby, security and Des Moines police asked the protesters to leave, which they did. Wells Fargo officials were not available for comment.

The protesters, who were also joined by members of the Chicago-based National People’s Action, walked across the street and crammed themselves into the small lobby of Bank of America, where they repeated their protests before once again being asked to leave by police.

No arrests were made at either bank.

“The banks know that we are unhappy with what happened with the financial meltdown. They know it’s their fault,” said Mike McCarthy, a CCI member from Des Moines. “They think it’s business as usual. But it’s unjust for them to think they will continue the way they have been in the wake of the country’s financial meltdown. We are here to see that this doesn’t happen again to our children and grandchildren.”

Tuesday’s bank protests were the culmination of CCI’s “Showdown at the Statehouse,” a day-long event in which CCI members called upon elected officials to rein in corporate power and to support campaign finance reform. But the biggest issue of the day was CCI’s message to the banks.

Protesters rallied outside downtown banks in Des Moines (photo by Michael Swanger/Iowa Independent).

“Big banks, like Wells Fargo and Bank of America, and Wall Street crashed our national economy and our state budgets. They must do their part to fix it,” said Judy Lonning of Des Moines. “We want their bonuses.”

At the heart of CCI’s argument are reports of banks that have received federal government bailout money but are now reporting profits and doling out billions of dollars in bonuses to employees. Last week, it was reported that Wells Fargo in 2009 enjoyed a record-setting $12.3 billion in net income and total revenue of more than $88 billion.

In addition to setting record profits and paying lavish bonuses, CCI claims that big banks are funneling millions of dollars to lobbyists to block meaningful financial reform; increasing consumer fees; failing to modify enough loans to keep families in their homes; and financing payday lenders that “rip off our communities.”

“Wells Fargo and Bank of America are hurting hardworking families,” said CCI member Vern Tigges of Carroll. “Our state budget deficits could be wiped out if the big banks gave their total bonus packages — estimated to be about $140 billion — back to our states. For all intents and purposes, their bonuses are our bonuses because we bailed them out and put them back in working order.”

CCI contends that the $140 billion reported to be paid in bonuses, benefits and compensation by the nation’s six biggest banks — Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley — could nearly fill the $142 billion total budget gap for all 50 states in fiscal year 2010.

In Iowa, budget deficits have resulted in across-the-board cuts that have forced layoffs, employee furloughs and cuts to vital services.

“I think it’s wrong what they’re doing,” said Veronica Guevara, an 18-year-old student at Marshalltown Community College, who works part-time at a community bank in her hometown. “We bailed them out and have got nothing in return.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. (WDCpix)

Although the two Democratic bills share the central goals of controlling health care costs and covering millions of uninsured Americans, they diverge, in key places, over how to go about it. Some of the differences concern the very topics that have been most contentious throughout the debate, including whether to create a public insurance option, what to do with illegal immigrants and how to ensure that federal funds don’t subsidize abortions. The disparities leave Democratic leaders with the unenviable task of merging the proposals while preserving the backing of the fragile coalitions that ushered the bills to passage in November and December. As difficult as it was for Democratic leaders then to unite their party behind the most sweeping health care reforms since the 1960s, the final step may prove the slipperiest yet.

The Money Must Come From Somewhere

Unlike the Republicans’ sweeping health reforms of 2003, which were unfunded, the Democrats have proposed to pay for the cost of their health care overhaul. But the two chambers would do it differently. House leaders are pushing a 5.4 percent payroll tax hike on the nation’s wealthiest people — individuals making more than $500,000 per year and families earning more than $1 million. Senate Democrats have proposed a similar mechanism, hiking Medicare’s payroll tax by 0.5 percent on individuals pulling in more than $200,000 and families earning more than $250,000. But a larger chunk of funding under the Senate bill would come from an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans — a provision that’s wildly unpopular among a key Democratic constituency: organized labor.

Kids’ Care

Few federal programs have been as successful as the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which was enacted 12 years ago and now covers roughly 10 million people. Yet House Democrats have proposed to terminate the program at the end of 2013, shifting those kids into either Medicaid or private plans found on a proposed insurance marketplace, dubbed the exchange. The Senate bill, on the other hand, would reauthorize CHIP through 2019 and provide funding for it through 2015.

Many children’s welfare advocates have put their weight squarely behind the Senate approach, fearing that the move to exchange plans will lead to higher out-of-pocket costs for some of the country’s lowest-income families — a barrier discouraging those parents from buying their kids insurance at all, thereby threatening to reduce kids’ coverage in the name of expanding it.

Closing the Doughnut Hole

Democratic leaders in both chambers have vowed to close the coverage gap in Medicare’s prescription drug benefit — known as the doughnut hole — but only the House bill actually does it. The trouble is that the lower chamber would fund that provision by allowing states to haggle directly with drug makers on behalf of their lowest-income seniors — a proposal that Senate leaders and the White House have promised not to support as part of an $80 billion deal cut with the pharmaceutical industry earlier in the year.

That leaves conference negotiators with two choices: Break the deal with Big Pharma or find some other way to fund the elimination of the doughnut hole. A third choice — not to close the coverage gap fully — seems unlikely from a Democratic Party hoping to win over a skeptical senior population in the run-up to the 2010 elections.

Anti-Trust

Democrats have long eyed a repeal of the anti-trust exemption enjoyed by the insurance industry, and the House bill would do just that, overturning a 64-year-old law that allows companies to share cost and coverage information without federal scrutiny. The provision didn’t fly in the Senate, however, due to the opposition of Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), the moderate Democrat whose close ties to the insurance industry include a stint as CEO of the Omaha-based Central National Insurance Group. Although an earlier version of the Senate bill would have eliminated the anti-trust exemption, Senate leaders later bowed to Nelson by plucking that language from the bill.

Abortion Coverage

Concerned that taxpayer dollars would be used to subsidize abortion coverage on the exchange, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) led a group of moderate Democrats in threatening to kill the House bill unless it explicitly prohibited exchange plans from covering abortion. And they won.

The Senate restrictions aren’t quite so severe, allowing women to buy abortion coverage from exchange plans if they write two separate premium checks — one for abortion services and one for all other treatments. Though it was seen as a less stringent form of the Stupak amendment, the Senate language has still alienated many liberals who say it goes too far to restrict women from getting comprehensive care. Stupak, meanwhile, says it doesn’t go far enough. Satisfying both camps will require some delicate wording.

Illegal Immigration

Both the House and Senate bills would prevent illegal immigrants from getting taxpayer subsidies for insurance coverage on the exchange. But the Senate bill is the more restrictive of the two, prohibiting undocumented folks from buying exchange plans even if they pay full price. That provision has angered a number of liberal and Hispanic lawmakers, who have questioned how letting workers buy a product from U.S. companies with U.S. dollars could be a threat to the country’s well-being. The Senate provision, critics point out, would also encourage illegal immigrants to use emergency rooms for primary care services. Still, with the 2010 elections looming, Democrats will be tempted to go with the Senate provision for simple fear of lending campaign ammunition to Republican challengers.

Public Option

It’s been the most prominent of the hot-button issues surrounding health care reform from the start, and observers of the conference negotiations will be watching closely to see what Democrats will finally do with the proposal to create a public insurance option to compete with private companies. The House bill includes such a provision, but Senate leaders were forced to yank a similar proposal when Sens. Nelson and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) threatened to withhold their support. Many liberal lawmakers have said that the public plan is vital to reforming a health care system made more dysfunctional by for-profit insurance companies whose incentive is to deny care rather than pay for it. But with no sign that either Nelson or Lieberman will have a change of heart, negotiators will have little choice but to pluck the House provision for the sake of passing the larger bill.

“I expect the final bill will be pretty much the Senate bill,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told The Charleston Gazette last week, “simply because we have to get the 60 votes.”

Branstad, who has for months flirted with the notion of re-entering politics, will deliver a speech to students, faculty and staff of Des Moines University in a closed session, with a news conference to follow. He has served as president of the school for six years but is expected to announce his retirement during his speech.

The announcement comes as no surprise after Republican Party of Iowa Executive Director Jeff Boeyink quit his position with the party to run Branstad’s as of yet unannounced campaign earlier this week. It also follows Branstad forming a candidate committee with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board last week. The four-term governor has repeatedly said he would make an announcement about his plans by mid-October, and the conventional wisdom was that his campaign was a foregone conclusion.

Two developments today warrant some explication:

1. Political operatives don’t give up cushy jobs to work for a candidate who isn’t going to run for anything.

Republican Party of Iowa Executive Director Jeff Boeyink stepped down from his position today to work for Branstad’s campaign committee. The primary is less than a year away, so he wouldn’t have made this decision if Branstad was really still in the “exploratory” phase of his campaign. Any candidate that does not make a decision to run soon will miss the boat, and Boeyink would almost certainly have gotten assurances from Branstad before sailing into uncharted waters for the former governor.

Boeyink’s move also means that Branstad has alreaady raised enough money to pay his salary, which would be fairly significant, for at least a few months.

2. Calling yourself “NextGen PAC” doesn’t necessarily mean you represent a new generation of anything.

After the Draft Branstad PAC, which was actually a 527 group, was forced to shut down when Branstad filed papers to become a candidate for governor, 63-year-old former state Rep. Sandy Greiner announced the creation of a new committee called “NextGen PAC,” presumably to continue advocating (indirectly) for Branstad, who was first elected governor 27 years ago.

Many political committees have Orwellian names, but this one is a whopper. Do Greiner and Branstad really represent the GOP’s next generation of leaders? Who comprises the current generation of the GOP? Or the immediate past generation?

The new name clearly reflects a bit of conventional political wisdom: Turn your weaknesses into strengths before opponents have a chance to exploit them. If nothing else, this indicates that consultants and political professionals, not grassroots activists, are probably pulling the levers behind the scenes.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said federal regulations on the disposal of coal ash can be expected by the end of 2009.

But environmentalists believe if federal officials follow Iowa’s suggestions, the public will still be at risk for contaminated groundwater supplies.

Environmentalists have been pushing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate coal ash, the solid waste produced by coal-fired power plants, for more than 30 years. The ash contains high levels of arsenic, lead, mercury and boron, each of which has been known to cause cancer, neurological and development problems, and other illnesses. An EPA report released early this year found the cancer risk to be 1 in 2,000 from exposure to arsenic in drinking water for residents living near unlined landfills containing coal ash and coal refuse, which is 500 times the level usually regarded as safe by current federal regulations.

Yet for three decades, rules governing coal ash have been left up to the states, creating a patchwork of differing regulations with questionable effectiveness.

EPA Director Lisa Jackson told Congress earlier this year that her agency would draft new regulations for coal ash, releasing the draft rules by January, and state regulators have said they will hold off on all new rules until those regulations are made public.

In a letter to Matt Hale, director of the EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, Iowa’s DNR requested that any federal guidelines mirror the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act’s subtitle D, which would regulate coal ash at the federal level as a solid waste.

However, Hale told the Environmental Council of the States’ annual meeting in Whitefish, Mont., last week that while he believes subtitle D solid waste rules would protect public health and the environment, the EPA does not have the authority to enforce those requirements, according to InsideEPA.com.

Environmentalists say that Hale’s comments support their claims that subtitle D rules would be insufficient to protect the public because it would leave inspection and permitting to states.

“Essentially, if there were a subtitle D program it would not be that different from business as usual,” said Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. “The EPA could not require state’s to issue any further regulations than what they already have on the books. They would not be allowed to inspect the sites and would not be allowed to enforce the regulations.”

Under subtitle D, landfills that handle municipal solid waste are subject to regulations such as liners to prevent toxins from leaching off site, location restrictions, financial assurances and corrective action provisions.

Chad Stobbe, an environmental specialist with the Iowa DNR and the agency’s lead staffer on coal ash issues, said implementing RCRA subtitle D standards for coal ash disposal would significantly alter current disposal methods in Iowa.

“An important factor to consider is that implementing subtitle D standards for coal ash disposal would require both coal ash landfills and coal ash quarry reclamation sites to meet the same standards,” Stobbe said. “This would result in significant improvements in how coal ash is currently managed in Iowa.”

Currently, coal ash quarry reclamation projects, known officially as beneficial use sites, are not required to follow landfill standards. This is because the sites — three quarries and a mine — received a waiver from the state excluding them from strict regulations, including protective liners and groundwater monitoring.

Tests at sites that do have protective liners that were analyzed by Cedar Rapids-based environmental law center Plains Justice show toxins leaching out of the landfills, leading many to conclude the same is thing is taking place undetected at the unlined sites. Even the DNR’s Stobbe told The Iowa Independent in March that contamination could be taking place at the sites, but without monitoring there is no way of knowing.

Stobbe said that under subtitle D the sites that received a waiver would be forced to install bottom liners and leachate collection systems, which would sit on top of the liner and remove toxins for treatment and disposal. They would also be forced to conduct regular groundwater monitoring.

Environmentalists want the EPA to regulate coal ash using RCRA subtitle C, which would declare coal ash a hazardous waste.

“Under Subtitle C, states are required to adopt regulations that are at least as stringent as whatever federal standards are set up and the EPA will have the power to inspect sites and bring enforcement actions,” Hitt said.

According to the DNR’s letter to the EPA, enacting subtitle C requirements would make coal ash disposal prohibitively expensive in Iowa. But Hitt said those requirements give the EPA enough room to ensure the public health is protected without causing unnecessary expense.

“Subtitle C is not a regimented program that is just a cookie cutter that states will have to apply,” she said. “The EPA has a lot of flexibility under subtitle C. It’s not like they are going to treat this like nuclear waste. They will basically be able to mandate what types of landfills have to be used, what sort of protections have to be installed and they have the ability to enforce those rules.”

Nicole Molt, director of government relations for the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, said the regulations currently governing coal ash in Iowa protect the environment and public health. To prove this she points to a survey released earlier this month by the EPA showing sites in Iowa are not considered to pose any risk.

However, environmentalists point out that the survey focuses on wet coal-ash dumping ponds similar to the type that failed in Tennessee, spilling nearly a billion gallons of coal ash sludge. Those sites are not considered as dangerous in Iowa. It does not include Iowa’s beneficial use sites.

Despite the encouraging words from the EPA, Hitt said the fight to finally pass federal regulations on coal ash disposal is not over.

“The coal industry is going to fight this as hard as they can, and they have a lot of money and connections in Washington,” she said. “So we shouldn’t take anything for granted. At the same time, the EPA has been very clear that these federal regulations are long overdue and they intend to issue these new rules. I’m confident they are going to be true to their word.”

Calling Iowa’s senior senator “cantankerous and quirky,” the magazine walks through the early stages of Grassley’s health care effort, where Grassley and the other members of the Senate Finance Committee worked behind closed doors to craft a bill that could garner widespread support.

No Republican received more TLC from Barack Obama, who has met with Grassley three times at the White House and called him three times more just to keep in touch. White House aides reckoned that if Grassley, with his conservative credentials, could find a health-care deal he liked, a significant number of other Republicans might be persuaded to climb aboard. “Health care not only is 16% of the gross national product, but it touches the quality of life of every household as few others do,” Grassley declared back in April. “I’m doing everything I can to make the reform effort in Congress a bipartisan one.”

That was then. And that was before he came back to Iowa and delivered the now infamous tall tale about an end-of-life provision in a version of the bill passed in the House.

When the Iowa Senator actually gave credence to the absurd notion that the House version of the legislation might allow the government to decide when, in his words, to “pull the plug on Grandma,” Democrats decided he was past the point of any hope. And then came Grassley’s late-August coup de grâce, a campaign fundraising letter. “The simple truth is that I am and always have been opposed to the Obama Administration’s plans to nationalize health care,” Grassley wrote. “Period.”

Time goes on to surmise that the rightward drift of the Republican Party in Iowa may have played a part in Grassley’s change of heart. There have been rumblings for months that a social conservative primary opponent could jump into the race against Grassley. Those rumblings grew louder when Grassley gave a lukewarm response to a question about the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

Time also notes that if GOP leadership is upset with him he may not get the coveted spot as ranking Republican (or perhaps chair) of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2011.

Rants, a state legislator from Sioux City, said a Senate health care plan would add 335,879 adults on Medicaid, which, if the state was forced to pay its full share for that expansion, would result in a cost of nearly $630 million to Iowa’s state government.

“We are able to establish that number and cost because just a year ago the Iowa legislature commissioned a study by the Lewin Group to analyze the cost of exactly that change,” he said.

The number Rants cites comes from estimates of the number of Iowans who would be eligible for Medicaid under the Kennedy-Dodd proposal, which would lower eligibility to 150 percent of the federal poverty level. However, according to The Lewin Group, while 335,879 would be eligible to enroll, only 177,531 adults actually would.

These figures come from only one of three scenarios examined by the Lewin Group. In another scenario, which involves enacting a six-month waiting period before applicants can be eligible for Medicaid, only 137,108 adults would actually enroll in the program. Rants used the second scenario, where there is no waiting period. A third scenario looks at costs if there is not waiting period and low-income people already enrolled in other income-tested programs, such as food stamps, are automatically enrolled in Medicaid. Under those conditions, The Lewin Group estimates that more than 162,000 would enroll Medicaid.

Rants is not alone in his fear of the effects of health care reform on state budgets.

Because the states and the federal government share the cost of Medicaid coverage for low-income people, any increase in eligibility levels, benefits or payments to doctors would impose new costs on the states unless Washington agrees to absorb them entirely. This, coupled with what some predict will be large gaps in Medicaid funding after 2010 when stimulus money will no longer be available, caused many at the annual convention of the National Governor’s Association in July to worry about being stuck with an unfunded mandate from the federal government.

Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell told Time Magazine that the changes have the potential to “be enormously destructive to state budgets.”

Under a bill currently in the House, Medicaid would be expanded to cover all non-elderly people with incomes at or below 133 percent of the poverty level, or $29,300 for a family of four. The federal government would pay 100 percent of the costs for the newly eligible.

A version in the Senate Finance Committee has the federal government paying the additional cost for only five years, with the state’s assuming the cost after that.

It should also be pointed out that the organization that conducted the study, The Lewin Group, is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest insurers and is part of a subsidiary that, according to the Washington Post, was accused by the New York attorney general and the American Medical Association of helping insurers shift medical expenses to consumers by distributing skewed data.

UnitedHealth settled with the AMA and attorney general for $400 million.

Lewin was purchased by UnitedHealth in 2007.

An Iowa sisterhood formed out of shared grief, has no interest in increasing its numbers. In fact, the five founding Iowa women are hard at work to decrease their prospective membership pool.

Tiffan Yamen, Kate Safris, Janet Petersen, Jan Caruthers and Kerry Biondi-Morlan discovered one another in 2003 after each had experienced the death of an infant daughter. Although the circumstances surrounding their daughter’s deaths are different, the immediate understanding they had for one another’s grief sparked a friendship. And, from that that friendship, sparked a mission.

The women, all from Des Moines, founded Healthy Birth Day, an organization devoted to preventing stillbirth and infant death through research, education and advocacy. Their latest project, Count the Kicks, launched officially in June.

Petersen, a state representative who lost her daughter Grace in July 2003 to a true knot in the umbilical cord, first met Yeman, who had lost her daughter Madeline, also to a knotted cord, just seven weeks earlier. Through mutual friends the two women were introduced to Caruthers and Biondi-Morland, whose daughters Jayden and Grace, respectively, were also stillborn, and Safris, who lost daughter Emma to congenital heart defects shortly after her birth.

The Count the Kicks awareness campaign was developed by the five Iowa women pictured above who founded the Healthy Birth Day organization. Each of the women lost a daughter to either stillbirth or infant death and don't want other parents to experience the same.

“At that point we just looked at one another and said ‘enough.’ We knew we had to start doing something about this,” Petersen said. “There are a lot of things for bereavement available, but what we wanted to do is make sure that no one had to go through the same things we had gone through.”

The Count the Kicks awareness campaign is the group’s first effort to reach out directly to pregnant women with a plan of action that can alert families to possible complications. Radio public service announcements featuring celebrities were followed by whimsical posters and brochures intended for doctor’s offices and clinics. All materials produced by the group outline the importance of counting fetal movements daily during late pregnancy.

“Counting fetal movements isn’t something we came up with it,” Biondi-Morland explained. “The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have a brochure on it, and they are the ones who set the parameters. We just noticed patients weren’t actively seeking out that information and physicians weren’t actively promoting it. It is something that’s been known for a long time, we just want to promote it and place it at the front of pregnant mother’s minds.”

The women are promoting counting fetal kicks as a pro-active task women and their families can do, something that can help create an early bond with the baby.

“This is a positive message, not a scary message,” Petersen said. “I did have someone who worried that this message might scare women, but I don’t see that. Women are encouraged to a do a monthly breast self-exam. That message is not intended to scare them, but intended to save their life. The same is true of this count the kicks message.”

It’s a message that Iowa First Lady Mari Culver is proud to help promote. She and University of Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz recorded public service announcements that have ran statewide, encouraging pregnant women to keep track of fetal movements.

“Chet and I have been so fortunate,” Culver said. “We have had two healthy pregnancies that resulted in two healthy babies. We want all Iowans to experience that. So, the when the women approached me about doing this, I could see that there was a real need to get this preventative message out. I was glad to do it.”

And, the Count the Kicks program already has someone who can speak directly to the benefits of counting kicks. Jennifer McCune, of South Sioux City, was 37 weeks into pregnancy with her son, Danny, when she noticed that he wasn’t moving as much has he had been. Three hours later, Danny was born via emergency c-section, the umbilical cord wrapped four times around his neck. She credits a magazine advertisement by First Candle for the knowledge to seek medical help and her son’s life, and has agreed to help Count the Kicks promote their message.

The initiative is first being piloted in Iowa and the Pittsburgh area, funded in part by a grant from the Heinz Family Philanthropies. Once the organization has developed a workable plan, the Iowa women hope to expand the awareness campaign nationally.

Safris admits that in the beginning, the task of launching this campaign seemed quite daunting. She also says that being a part of it, even the parts that were outside of her immediate comfort zone, has renewed her faith in what average citizens can accomplish when they set out to make a difference.

“I remember my husband and I sitting in the car just a few weeks after Emma had died, and I was just so angry,” she said. “My husband looked at me and told me that I could not go through life like that, being that angry. At that moment I realized that I couldn’t be that way, and that wasn’t who I was. The fact that I had a loss was not going to define me in a negative way. I had to make something good of it.

“At the time of that revelation, I had not yet met these women, so I didn’t know yet what that ‘good’ was going to be. Eight years ago [when we lost Emma], I had no idea that I would be here and doing this. I wouldn’t change the fact that I had her and she was a part of my life. She has made me a better person and that has had an impact on other people.”

The women are quick to point out that although stillbirth and infant death aren’t openly discussed, its likely that most people have in some way been impacted by them. Across the nation, about one out of every 150 pregnancies ends in stillbirth.

“We want to remember and honor our daughters — we are all inspired by them to be advocates,” Petersen said. “We want to raise awareness of and advocate for better understanding of why pregnancies end like this, and what can be done to prevent it. We want Iowa to be the safest place in the world for babies.”

Betsy Rubiner, writing for Time Magazine, has provided those outside of Iowa an intimate look into the dual emotions of pride and frustration felt by those directly impacted by the flood.

“Survivors BBQ. Everyone Welcome,” read the hand-written sign tacked onto a recently rebuilt home last weekend in a Cedar Rapids neighborhood still ravaged a year after the city’s worst flooding disaster. “We’ve become stronger — more of a family,” says Toni Grimm, the home’s owner, talking about her neighborhood, Czech Village, a historic ethnic area bordering the now-tranquil Cedar River. Last June, the river swamped 10 square miles of Iowa’s second largest city (metro-area pop. 255,000). There are signs of life in the downtown business district, with factories and shops reopened. But whole swaths of neighborhoods along the river remain eerily lifeless, with one abandoned, water-logged shell of a house after another, some spray-painted with warnings and pleas: “We want a buyout,” “This is still my house. Stay out,” “Don’t forget us.”

…

Among residents, tension over the uncertainty is palpable. Some praise the swift early response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the state, which created a special program to help people awaiting buyouts make a down payment on another home. Residents also are thankful for the hard labor of countless volunteers. And in March, Cedar Rapids voters approved a local-option sales tax expected to produce $17 million a year to be used for buyouts. But the city’s plan to improve flood protection, redevelop the riverfront and rebuild public facilities remains another concern, for some. It includes buying out flood-damaged homes in the flood plain to make way for green space, flood walls and levees. “The city didn’t look after their people,” says Frank King, a neighborhood leader. “They have used this flood for economic cleansing, to get rid of the substandard housing that used to be homes for many people.”