Gazette Daily News Briefing, November 2
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for November 2, 2023.
According to the National Weather Service Thursday will be mostly sunny in the Cedar Rapids area, with a high near 52 degrees. On Thursday evening there will be increasing clouds with a low of around 37 degrees.
Red Star Yeast Company in Cedar Rapids has agreed to pay a $37,705 fine and buy local first responders $35,864 in equipment as part of a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over hazardous waste violations.
On Jan. 23, EPA inspectors visited the Red Star plant at 950 60th Ave. SW and found three 10,000-gallon tanks of hazardous waste, including one that held selenium-contaminated sludge and two others labeled as “hazardous waste,” according to the consent decree the EPA provided to The Gazette. Selenium is an ingredient added to nutritional yeast.
The fire department and hazmat team prepared a list of equipment that would help in their responses to hazardous waste or other chemical incidents and Red Star submitted that to the EPA as part of a supplemental environmental project. Red Star has 60 days from Oct. 23 to purchase the gear.
Oral-B Laboratories has agreed to buy Kirkwood Community College’s Iowa City campus for $6.4 million — pending 120 days of performing “due diligence” on the deal.
That pending sale, made Aug. 10 for the 6.3 acres at 1816 Lower Muscatine Rd., is about $625,000 under Kirkwood’s asking price of nearly $7 million, according to a Realty.com advertisement promoting the property as a “hard to find” large parcel in “highly-sought after Iowa City.”
In 2018, Procter & Gamble announced it would move its shampoo, conditioner and body wash product lines out of Iowa City — and eliminate hundreds of local jobs as a result. But then two years later, it said it would keep the product lines here after all. Its oral care lines, including Oral B, were not affected under the plans.
In January, Kirkwood announced it was going to sell the 32-year-old campus Former Kirkwood President Lori Sundberg said the move was made to cut costs and consolidate offerings as community colleges face challenges in adapting to the changing educational landscape.
Longtime Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz intends to continue coaching beyond the 2023 season, he clarified Wednesday evening on his weekly radio show.
“I hope to keep doing this for quite a while,” Ferentz said. “I’ve always loved being here. … Until they tell me to sit down, I’ll probably keep going.”
The longtime coach’s future came into question after interim athletics director Beth Goetz announced on Monday her intention to not retain offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz after the 2023 season.
Ferentz said on his radio show Wednesday he was “not trying to intentionally cause celebration for some people that would love to see me go start a stamp collection or go birdwatching.”
“That was not the intent,” Ferentz said Wednesday. “The intent was to try to steer this thing back to what is important right now.”
