Tim Wichman, leasing manager for TWE, has been working with county officials since March 2008 and contacting the roughly 600 property owners for possible property rights. Wichman told Dan Ehl of The Kalona News that some leases have already been signed and that area farmers are receptive to leasing their property.

The wind generators planned for Washington County will rise 385 feet from the ground and will produce up to 500 megawatts of electricity, each capable of powering from 500 to 1,000 homes. If all 335 are built more than $1 million per year in new revenue would be garnered for property owners, and $3 to $4 million would be generated for local school districts in new property taxes.

The project will also generate jobs for the area. An estimated 150 construction workers would be needed to erect the generators, a process that takes two years. An additional 10 to 15 permanent employees would be required to perform maintenance on the wind farm. If all goes as planned, TWE plans to begin construction in three to five years.

Elk Run Energy Associates, an affiliate of LS Power, announced Tuesday that it will forgo further development on the proposed 750-megawatt Elk Run Energy Station. The project, one of two new plants proposed for Iowa, lost financial partner Dynegy Inc. on Jan. 2.

The Waterloo plant was one of two controversial coal plant projects in Iowa.  The second, in Marshalltown, received permission from the Iowa Utilities Board to move forward last April.

Barack Obama speaks at Carroll High School just before the Iowa Caucuses.

Some of 2008’s best stories are not finished yet.  The Iowa Independent has been following the stories below over the past year, and we expect them to help shape the news again as we enter the new year.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is victorious in Iowa Caucus

Everyone, of course, knows the headline: Obama Wins Caucuses by Unexpected Margin. Iowa — the state long derided by national media as the “Wonder Bread Basket of the Midwest” and unworthy of its hard-fought first-in-the-nation status — saw fit to catapult not only a young man, but a young African-American man further into the national spotlight and well on his way to capturing the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

While we all now know that Obama reigned victorious in much more than the Iowa contests, and will be taking at least two Iowa politicos with him to the beltway, it is unclear if Iowa’s early endorsement of the unlikely candidate will be enough to protect the state’s first in the nation status in eight years.

Iowa becomes focus of national immigration debate

There was a possibility, early in the presidential primaries, for the Republican Party to choose a candidate who would happily place the immigration pawn onto the national chess board. But when Republicans selected Arizona Sen. John McCain, a lawmaker known for backing immigration reform, as their nominee, hopes of using the issue as a primary focus were dashed. Perhaps it was partly because of that climate — one where immigration worries and reform discussions were regulated to whispers — that the unprecedented Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on May 12 at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville became such a quick national focus.

Campaign contributions, racial disparities, the blind eye of Lady Justice, civil liberties and, yes, even anti-Semitism were placed on daily display as news reports rocked out of Postville and onto the national stage. Even as local and national media may have yearned to move onto other stories, Postville kept calling. Three members of the U.S. House of Representatives Hispanic Caucus traveled to Postville. Thousands of protesters and counter-protesters marched on local streets. Management at Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking plant, either fled the country or were arrested. At least one state lawmaker lost his bid for re-election under scrutiny that he had not taken a hard enough stance against what became known as the ongoing saga of Postville.

Natural disasters, economic downtown prompt state budget cuts

Flooding on June 12 in downtown Cedar Rapids.

There are some who say they have no interest in politics. After suffering through June’s tornadoes and massive flooding, and now being greeted by across-the-board state budget cuts, very few Iowans fall into that category.

In the immediate wake of the natural disasters, lawmakers went to bat on behalf of victims. Republicans looked for ways to help businesses who had been impacted; Democrats allowed Gov. Chet Culver, amid promises that he could most effectively route money to victims, call the shots.

As task forces delivered recommendations, and state officials became more vocal in their calls for fiscal restraint, several state agencies began to view the flood as a potential savior in upcoming budget debates. While state and federal money has been allocated into the devastated areas of Iowa, much remains to be done. It remains to be seen how  lawmakers will maintain a balanced budget while providing additional assistance.

Iowa Supreme Court hears oral arguments in same-sex marriage case

Kate and Trish Varnum, lead plaintiffs in Iowa's same-sex marriage case

The 2008 general election was a heartbreaking day for those who believe marriage should be opened to same-sex couples. Voters in Florida, Arizona and California passed ballot measures denying gay and lesbian couples the right to marry. Because a judge ruled in 2007 that the portion of the Iowa Code defining marriage as between one man and one woman was unconstitutional, the nation’s eyes turned to Iowa as the next battleground state in the same-sex marriage debate.

The Iowa Supreme Court, while allowing unprecedented media coverage into its courtroom, heard oral arguments in the case this December. Both sides of the battle agree that the court could take months to render its opinion and are now battling before the court of public opinion.

Iowa Democrats saved once again by early voting

Iowa absentee ballot with outer envelope and secrecy envelope

With each presidential campaign, state parties are required to shift their focus. This is because the person at the top of the national ticket is provided the ultimate decision-making authority. If a candidate wants to buy into the plan put in place by the state party, then all goes without much grumbling. When a candidate seeks to change the playbook at halftime, however, there can be discontent — or at least a wide target for last-minute blame games.

As election night ticked down this November, and celebrations began for the Democratic White House victory, a few Iowans still watching Iowa House races began to panic. Their thoughts immediately turned to the disbanding of the Iowa Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign, which was replaced by the Obama team.

There is one thing Iowa Democrats do much better than their Republican counterparts: They get early votes in the can via Iowa’s liberal absentee voting program. This year, however, the Obama campaign as the new head of the state’s coordinated effort, chose to put time and effort into satellite voting locations instead of absentee ballot chasing. State lawmakers or candidates who wished to continue chasing absentee ballots were, for the first time in recent Iowa history, on their own.

The result was victory, but not by nearly the margin that had been predicted. Early election results showed at least three incumbent Democratic state reps losing their seats. It was not until the absentee ballots were counted that Democrats could issue a sigh — and place the blame game on hold.

Iowa GOP hunkers down in face of losses, implodes

Photo Credit: Nick Brandt

One of the few political stories of 2008 that has drawn the interest of traditional media and citizen journalists has been the ongoing bickering and restructuring within the Republican Party of Iowa.

This isn’t the first time state politicos have been in an uproar. In 1992, when Republicans launched a successful take-over of the Iowa House, local Democrats went through reassessment of their vision, message and impact. The current conflict, however, is on a new level.

Republican operatives, some fiscal conservatives and others social conservatives, are having difficulty finding common ground. The conflict has been brewing for several years as social conservatives struggled for and seemingly won more party influence. But it came to head even before the November election when Iowa’s female representative for the Republican National Committee, while acting in her role as executive director of Iowa Right to Life, approved a hit piece against the Republican candidate for U.S. House District 2. It continues as members of the Republican Party of Iowa debate who will serve as the group’s next chairman (no women are being openly considered).

Culver vetoes labor legislation

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, left, and Gov. Chet Culver shake hands

While the actual veto was a news draw, the real story is what the veto represented: a persistent and sometimes ugly power struggle between the governor and the Democratic leadership in the legislature. Blame the veto on the leadership’s refusal to move on Culver’s bottle bill. Blame it on Culver’s apparent focus on who supported whom in the 2006 gubernatorial primary. Blame the actual bill that the legislature passed, or blame the governor’s staff for not warning legislators of the governor’s opposition in advance.  Blame whatever you’d like because it makes no difference in the end.

For another two years, Iowa Democrats have the majority in both legislative houses and control of Terrace Hill. There will be party advocacy groups — labor unions, environmental watchdogs, civil rights hopefuls — who will watch closely to see if campaign promises are kept. If they aren’t, and if Democrats can’t successfully continue to convince constituents that “the other guy” is responsible for dropping the ball, these next two years of complete Democratic government could be Iowa’s last.

According to the story, Harkin pushed through an exemption for the sewage treatment plant so that it could receive federal funds even though it would only serve Agriprocessors and not the surrounding community.  Most of the sources quoted seemed to agree that the meatpacking plant, which was by far the biggest employer in Postville, would not have survived without the exemption.

The money, nearly $8 million, came from an environmental program from which Agriprocessors normally would have been disqualified. The grant and loan were used to build a sewage-treatment plant that serves only the meatpacker.

The environmental program, run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is designed to help small towns improve their sewage systems. The new sewage-treatment plant is technically owned by Postville, but it doesn’t serve the town’s residents. Department administrators say that fact usually would have prevented it from receiving money from the program. But Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, used his influence to exempt the project from those rules in 2004.

Harkin was reelected by a wide margin last month, and, should he decide to run again, he does not face another election until 2014.

The real story is not that Harkin helped the plant secure funding for the sewage treatment plant, but rather that the funds included a loan that Postville finds itself unable to pay back.  The Iowa Independent’s Lynda Waddington wrote about that three weeks ago, when Sen. Chuck Grassley said he would push to extend the USDA loan’s payment terms to make the debt more manageable for Postville.  “You can’t get blood out of a turnip,” Grassley said at the time.

There are also the very real environmental concerns that made the sewage treatment facility necessary in the first place, and those are still not completely resolved.  In October, a cow’s skull, a hide, and two dismembered legs were found in the plant’s wastewater lagoon, though the Iowa Department of Natural Resources did not assess a fine at the time.

The current maximum fine for such a spill is $10,000, but environmental officials are hoping that the fine amount could be increased based on past issues, a prior unpaid fine and the severity of this incident. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has said the spill at Monroe “Monty” Branstad’s farm ranks among the 40 deadliest that has been experienced in Iowa since 1995.

While Vilsack has promoted respectable policies with respect to restraining livestock monopolies, his overall record is one of aiding and abetting Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) or factory farms and promoting genetically engineered crops and animal cloning. Equally troubling is Vilsack’s support for unsustainable industrial ethanol production, which has already caused global corn and grain prices to skyrocket, literally taking food off the table for a billion people in the developing world.

The group has started a petition that they hope will receive 100,000 signatures opposing Vilsack.

Tom Vilsack interviewed outside Mineos pizza in Pittsburgh (Photo: Vilsack for President/Flickr)

On matters of agriculture, Vilsack was a pragmatic centrist, content with incremental changes and reluctant to take steps to significantly disrupt the status quo. When he successfully ran for his first term as governor in 1998, the generally pro-Republican Farm Bureau decided not to oppose him, choosing instead to endorse both him and his opponent. That was an impressive feat for an underdog Democrat running for governor — especially for a trial lawyer who had never farmed a day in his life.

He has clearly thought about what he would do in his new position. In an interview with a Minnesota college newspaper just before Election Day, Vilsack said Agriculture is “a department that impacts every American.”

In the interview, he cited the international food crisis as an opportunity to use America’s “soft power.” He suggested promoting renewable energy was part of the job. “How do you accelerate the research and development that gets you to second-generation bio-fuels?” he asked.

He also mentioned the school nutrition program, saying “you have to be focused on whether we are doing right by our children in schools across America in terms of nutritious food that we subsidize and we provide in school lunch programs.”

He even spoke of controlling forest fires which, it turns out the Agriculture Secretary has a role in.

While he was governor, Vilsack remained largely above the fray of ongoing feuds over the placement of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) near rural communities. Groups on the left who would like to give local communities stricter control over where the CAFOs are allowed felt betrayed by their governor’s unwillingness to help, but his stance kept agribusiness interests relatively quiet.

Vilsack’s most noticeable impact on rural Iowa did not involve changes to agricultural policy or stricter environmental regulations, but rather tax credits and business incentives. His economic development efforts — most notably the Iowa Values Fund, which was designed to create grants, loans, and tax incentives for businesses who choose to locate in the state — have been credited for short-term successes in many corners of the state, but critics in his own party argued that they amounted to corporate welfare.  In any event, the long-term benefits remain difficult to measure.

Vilsack was a pragmatist by necessity. For all eight of his years at Iowa’s helm, he faced a Republican-controlled legislature.  His allies on the left say his record might have looked different if Democrats won control of the statehouse a few years earlier.  He chose not to run for a third term in 2006 despite his relative popularity, opting instead to explore a presidential bid that quickly flopped.

As a presidential candidate in a crowded Democratic primary, Vilsack, who served as chair of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council until only months earlier, seemed to move farther to the left on environmental issues, embracing an ambitious but seemingly arbitrary requirement that, by 2020, all new power plants constructed must be carbon-free. His campaign even bought carbon credits to offset its campaign activities.

Vilsack also subtly tempered his enthusiasm for corn-based ethanol over the course of his candidacy, shifting to a more tenable position in favor of all forms of cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels, using corn ethanol merely as a “transitional fuel.”

From the few glimpses we have gotten of Vilsack’s federal agricultural policy positions, it is clear that he supports stricter limits on farm subsidies than Congress was able to pass in the 2008 Farm Bill. That puts him in line with the President-elect and Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Perhaps unfortunately for Vilsack, it will likely be another four or five years before Congress passes the next farm bill, and that is longer than a typical cabinet secretary has to wait.

In the interim, Vilsack will be tasked with many administrative and regulatory responsibilities, and he seems intent on pushing other policy goals in line with the Democrats’ agenda.

Expect the incoming Secretary of Agriculture to achieve tangible results that are easy to explain, because that is Vilsack’s style. He will immerse himself in a few specific issues, come up with a few policy ideas, and set to work building a political consensus, diluting the original ideas when necessary.

Don’t expect Vilsack, a consummate pragmatist, to turn America’s food system upside down anytime soon.

Read the whole profile here.

According to information released by the state, Judge plans to “review support the state has provided and is available to the community, discuss steps the state is taking to working with residents on short and long-term needs, and get input from residents on other issues.” Judge also plans to announce new aid to the community and those affected by the string of incidents at Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking plant which was once the region’s largest employer. Three AmeriCorps-VISTA members are anticipated to begin work with community leaders and residents next week.

The meeting will begin at 1:30 p.m. at Turner Hall, the site the city has proclaimed to be a neutral site for all types of emergency and long-term assistance for former workers and residents in need. At last estimate there were 600 individuals remaining in the community — several hundred of them Jewish — in need of assistance.

Judge comes into the community on the day that Agriprocessors’ bankruptcy trustee has resumed limited poultry production at the plant. Joseph Sarachek, the court-appointed trustee, faced high emotions yesterday as former workers demanded to know the process by which workers were selected to come back into the plant. Their requests for information, however, were not sated by Saracheck.

The Associated Press reports that the agency saw 33 of its 48 parks damaged by wind and water this year. This on top of $800,000 in lost fees for fishing and hunting licenses.

The losses mean the state might not be able to afford regular park cleanup, might have to cut 100 summer positions and will likely leave four permanent positions open.

More than half of the losses could be covered by federal aid and state insurance money, but the conservation and recreation division will likely be liable for at least $4 million.