CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – A group of Cedar Rapids High School students are making sure people without a home have the essentials this winter.

Gavin Cornwell and his team of Iowa Big students filled 100 bags this week with a little bit of everything.

“We have some fruit roll-ups, some gushers, and a granola bar,” said Cornwell.

For this team, it’s more than just a class. Once done, the bags will go to the unsheltered population living at the winter overflow homeless shelter.

“People really don’t understand, everyone has their own story,” said Cornwell.

These care packages will go to each person who stays at the low-barrier shelter this winter.

“We kind of grabbed the basic necessities to include in these care packages to give them some cheer this holiday season,” he said.

The homeless population in Linn County grew by more than 40% in 2024. Denine Rushing oversees operations at the overflow shelter and said the bags provide items that those who sleep at the shelter might not otherwise get.

“Being able to have these bags that they can just throw in their backpacks or in a bag or just carry with them and utilize throughout the day,” said Rushing. “I think it is going to be really helpful for people.”

Rushing expected to see more people utilize the shelter this year, especially during snow events and bitter cold temperatures.

“You really have to kind of have things on the go, things that you can kind of just grab and take with you while you are out and about throughout the day,” said Rushing.

Cornwell said they planned to hand the bags out this Monday at the shelter. A place this Prairie High School senior is now closer to, a place that was more visible thanks to this school-based project.

“You might drive by and you might see somebody experiencing homelessness but you don’t really know what they’re experiencing,” said Cornwell.

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Returning to Hilton Coliseum was just what the Iowa State women needed, as the eighth-ranked Cyclones held off Drake Sunday afternoon in Ames, 80-78.

Returning sophomore standout Audi Crooks had the game-winning bucket with just :00.3 seconds left in the game, finishing off a 33-point effort to lead Iowa State (5-1). 

Crooks, a preseason honorable mention All-American, added four rebounds to her night while shooting 15 of 25 from the field. 

Emily Ryan had a double-double, scoring 11 points while dishing out 12 assists. Addy Brown added 13 points and Mackenzie Hare chipped in 10. Brown led the team with eight rebounds while Ryan had six with two steals. 

Arianna Jackson had three steals and no turnovers in almost 31 minutes of action. 

For Drake, another former Iowa prep standout put up a big number vs. the Cyclones, as Katie Dinnebier knocked down eight 3-pointers and scored a game-high 39 points. Anna Miller had 18 with eight rebounds, as Dinnebier also had five rebounds, two steals and two assists. 

The win marked the 300th non-conference victory for Iowa State under Bill Fennelly all-time, as he improved to 616-314 with the Cyclones and 782-367 overall in his coaching career. 

Iowa State added to its NCAA-record streak for consecutive games with a made 3-pointer, stretching it to 933 straight. 

Up next for the Cyclones will be defending national champion South Carolina on Thanksgiving at 12:30 p.m. on FOX. The Gamecocks had their 43-game win streak snapped with a 77-62 loss in Los Angeles.

Iowa leaders do not have to abandon or betray pro-business stances if they want to do better for Iowa water and for Iowans.

• Monitoring: DNR wrongly omitted rivers from impaired-waters list, EPA says
• Regulation: Availability cannot be the only consideration in water-use matters
• Enforcement: Attorney general should step up its enforcement
• Spending: Time to finally raise sales tax for the outdoor trust fund
• The stakes: Protecting water is Iowa law

The battle for clean water in Iowa has been locked in a stalemate for years. Advocates jump up and down pointing to obvious evidence that dangerous chemicals pervade streams, rivers and lakes, threatening people’s health and taking away recreation opportunities. The state’s elected and appointed officials, citing various measures of their own, say things are getting better thanks to their strategy of working together with agricultural and industrial polluters. Little changes (except continued damage to waterways).

A pair of developments this month, though, call into question Iowa’s entire approach to managing water. A state administrative law judge and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, in unrelated writings, say the Iowa Department of Natural Resources thinks too narrowly about water pollution.

If state leaders take the criticisms seriously, they can chart a different course of more aggressive protection and restoration of this precious resource. New approaches to monitoring, regulation, enforcement and spending can spur a better future for the welfare of Iowa and its people.

More: EPA: Iowa needs to add more rivers to impaired waters list, including in Des Moines

Monitoring: DNR wrongly omitted rivers from impaired-waters list, EPA says

The EPA chided the DNR in a letter this month, saying stretches of the Cedar, Des Moines, Iowa, Raccoon and South Skunk rivers should have been included on the DNR’s list of impaired waters in the state. The assessments involved are technical, but the gist is that Iowa improperly treated nitrate pollution as though it does not have toxic effects on humans. Nitrates are a form of nitrogen that commonly results from manure and fertilizer runoff.

The rivers involved supply drinking water for large cities, including Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. It is distressing to learn that the DNR could miss the mark on such a crucial question of public health – all the more so when considering the possibility that the EPA might cease to be an effective backstop on such questions. New York congressman Lee Zeldin, Donald Trump’s announced choice to take over the EPA, pays lip service to conservation, but he, Trump and other voices likely to be influential in the new White House have made plain their top priority is removing restrictions on business. In the future, responsibility could fall solely on the DNR to correctly look out for drinking-water interests.

Regulation: Availability cannot be the only consideration in water-use matters

Another of the DNR’s tasks is to manage water-use permits for farms and other businesses that use a lot of it. According to an order by state administrative law judge Toby Gordon, the DNR’s management mostly focuses on availability of water. Gordon, reviewing a permit for a controversial feedlot in northeast Iowa, says that’s contrary to state law, which calls for environmental impact to be considered, too.

More: Judge says Iowa DNR should consider environment, public health when weighing water permits

Indeed, here’s Chapter 455B of the Iowa Code: “The general welfare of the people of the state requires that the water resources of the state be put to beneficial use which includes ensuring that the waste or unreasonable use, or unreasonable methods of use of water be prevented, and that the conservation and protection of water resources be required with the view to their reasonable and beneficial use in the interest of the people.”

DNR Director Kayla Lyon can accept Gordon’s order or seek changes. She should agree to it in this case, but more importantly, she and her department need to adopt this reasoning in all contexts, not just water-use permitting. They should more often push back on the operations in Iowa whose proposals risk — or promise — damage to the environment.

Industry, including agriculture, drives Iowa’s economy, of course. And that will still be true if DNR personnel insist more often that industry take responsibility for side effects. The DNR has the authority it needs; it’s a matter of discretion.

Before voting no on Lyon’s confirmation this spring, state Sen. Pam Jochum, a Dubuque Democrat, told colleagues that “I think that Kayla Lyon — if she was allowed to do what a director can do, provide policy direction to this body on what the problems are and how to fix them and the funding that needs to accompany that to solve those problems — this state would have clean water.”

Many tools are available to Lyon, her DNR and state boards responsible for the environment: They can reject applications. They can impose more conditions on permits. They can fine offenders more often. They can refer more severe offenders for prosecution.

Enforcement:  Attorney general should step up its enforcement

In egregious cases, the Iowa Attorney General’s Office can take over enforcement actions and seek penalties of greater than $10,000, the statutory limit for the DNR’s administrative process.

If regulators believe that some Iowa businesses count those meager fines as merely a cost of doing business, then they should more freely get the attorney general involved.

Attorney General Brenna Bird’s office should have the resources to pitch in. Unlike almost all other state agencies, which have as usual requested status quo budgets for 2025-26, Bird is asking lawmakers for $1.7 million in new money to hire seven attorneys and a paralegal for various needs. In addition, Bird has unquestionably fulfilled her 2022 campaign promise to use the office’s resources to litigate furiously against the Biden administration – which won’t exist after Jan. 20. Maybe dashing off memos and briefs in favor of Donald Trump’s agenda will take just as much time. Or maybe some time could be sliced off for work more directly relevant to Iowans’ lives and communities.

More: What has Iowa AG Brenna Bird sued the feds over in her first year? Quite a lot

Spending: Time to finally raise sales tax for the outdoor trust fund

Even if Iowa transformed its regulatory scheme on a dime into one that reliably preserved water quality, the problems that have accumulated over decades will require investment for mitigation and restoration. State appropriations and other sources can be a piece of that puzzle. But Iowa also has a ready-to-go mechanism for spending on conservation and recreation priorities: the Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund, approved by 63% of voters in 2010 and stubbornly empty since.

Filling the trust fund’s coffers requires increasing the sales tax, which the Iowa Legislature has refused to do. Gov. Kim Reynolds proposed this in early 2020, but the idea fell apart when COVID-19 tanked most of that year’s legislative session. Lawmakers’ bills to take similar steps also have fizzled.

With Republican majorities passing income tax reductions and proposing to take a new bite out of property taxes, there’s no time like the present to fund some necessary government work, including conservation, with a higher sales tax.

The stakes: Protecting water is Iowa law

Private environmental groups have done laudable work bringing the DNR’s shortcomings to light and collecting wins in court and in administrative proceedings. They’ll continue to do that even if the EPA gives up on water quality. But those battles are costly, and the environmental groups lack the authority of government.

Lyon and the DNR, as well as Bird, Reynolds and majority leaders in the Legislature, do not have to abandon or betray pro-business stances if they want to do better for Iowa water and for Iowans. But they need to realize that doing better for water quality and for people is part of their charge. It’s been there in state law for decades.

Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Carol Hunter, executive editor; Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

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