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 publisher and editor of The Storm Lake Times Pilot in northwest Iowa (stormlake.com). He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017 and is author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from America’s Heartland.” Email times@stormlake.com.
From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2023
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