Home Care In Keystone, IA

ELKADER, Iowa (KWWL) -- For the first time in more than a year and a half, the Keystone Bridge is back open in Elkader after having been closed for renovations since April 2022.

For the last 19 months, crews have been working to repair the Keystone Bridge. It runs right through the center of town and crosses the Turkey River. The community is thrilled to have it back open.

Elkader Mayor Josh Pope said, "It's had its ups and downs. There's no doubt about it."

The last 19 months haven't been easy for the community, but traffic is once again flowing over the 134-year-old landmark.

Turkey River Mall owner Becky Dietzler said, "It just means everything to have the bridge open and the flow of traffic again."

The bridge has been a pillar of the community since it was built in 1889.

Mayor Pope said that the iconic bridge, "is the centerpiece of the community. It will bring both sides of the river together."

Over the last 19 months, crews resurfaced and repaired the bridge.

Mayor Pope revealed, "As that progressed, we found other things that needed to be fixed and it grew from there."

The repair work made it harder to access downtown. For businesses like the Turkey River Mall, it has been a challenging 19 months.

Dietzler said, "It's been a struggle for our customers who are used to coming in and crossing the bridge and then having to find a new way into town."

The city of Elkader hopes getting the bridge back open in time for the holiday shopping season will give them a boost.

Dietzler added, "It's just going to make the flow of traffic easier and everybody's happy that they can get into town quicker."

The project is intended to stabilize the bridge for the next 50 years.

Mayor Pope said, "If it lasts 50 years, that'll be awesome, but we hope it lasts another 135."

The city is raising money to pay for the repair work. After federal and state grants, the city needs to secure around $1.5 million.

An official rededication ceremony will take place in May of 2024 in conjunction with the bridge's 135th anniversary.

Benton County, Iowa — There are new solutions Tuesday evening for the Keystone residents caught up in a saga with the city over an order to get rid of their dogs.

This is a story we've been covering now since late July.

Then, three weeks ago, the city gave that order for owners to get rid of the dogs, citing an ordinance banning pit bulls and dogs that look like pit bulls.

They've been begging city council to change course ever since.

Now, there are compromises for each case individually.

Two of the pet owners in question will have to pay for a DNA test certifying their dogs are the breeds they say they are, and not pit bulls.

But it's a different story for Makinzie Brecht's three pit bulls.

She brought her lawyer with her to Tuesday's meeting, along with a letter from her psychiatrist, certifying the trio as emotional support animals.

Legally, that means the city has to come up with accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, allowing Brecht to keep the dogs, despite the ordinance banning them in the city.

Brecht will have to jump through some hoops though, including making sure the dogs are registered, insured, and in an enclosed space, or under leash and muzzle, at all times.

"Oh it's stressful, I am agreeing to the reasonable conversations that we talked about and I’m glad that we could come to at least this," Brecht said. "I wish I didn’t have to come this far, I wish we could’ve just did this on our own and not have to go through all this, but I am glad that it went the way that it went."

Iowa's news now spoke with the mayor off camera Tuesday night.

He says they never wanted to take people's pets away to begin with, so he's happy with Tuesday night's agreement.

The city attorney advises that the council needs to get the ordinance straightened out so they don't have to deal with a mess like this again.

The earliest that could happen is November.

Elkader, Iowa (KCRG) - People in one Northeast Iowa community will soon be able to start using a century’s old landmark again.

The Keystone Bridge has been a part of Elkader ever since it was constructed in 1889.

On December 1st, the city will reopen the bridge for the first time after a more than year long renovation.

The bridge runs through the center of town and crosses the Turkey River.

This closure has impacted downtown business owners such as Lee Akin.

Lee Akin has owned the Elkader Cinema for the last 20 years and he says outside of the COVID-19 Pandemic, this is one of the largest disruptions his business has ever faced.

“In general we’ve had a down couple of years because of it,” said Akin.

On April 4th 2022, the city started work on a more than 7 million dollar renovation to resufrace and improve the Keystone Bridge which city officials say had become a safety concern.

“There were a couple of stones that had cracks in them some of the stones had no density and the ability to hold any pressure,” said Elkader Mayor Josh Pope.

For almost 19 months, crews worked to repair the bridge, but this cut off the main street through the heart of town.

“The biggest thing with this bridge is there is two sides of the city one on the east side of the city on on the west side and this really connects the two,” said Pope

Akin says a lot of businesses felt the effects.

“I think the whole downtown is a little more quite than usual,” said Akin

The city is looking to pair the reopening with the holiday shopping season to provide a boost to downtown businesses.

“We’re trying to capitalize on that we’re actually during this time of year the chamber runs a promotion our punch card promotion and we’re doing a double punch weekend so we’re really encouraging those outside of the community come into town,” said Elkader Area Chamber of Commerce President Amanda Schneider.

Akin says he knows the rebuild will help more than just downtown merchants, it’ll benefit the entire community.

“Elkaders back, yeah,” said Akin.

A reopening ceremony is planned for Friday, December 1, 2023 from 4pm-6pm in the Central State Bank lobby in Elkader.

An official rededication ceremony for the Keystone Bridge is scheduled for May 7, 2024 in collaboration with the bridge’s 135th anniversary.

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The punishing economic sanctions imposed by the West on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine have roiled global energy markets, with a U.S. ban on Russian oil imports further pushing up gas prices for Americans. Now, GOP leaders are blaming surging fuel costs in part on a decision by President Biden early in his administration to block the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who has urged the Biden administration to ramp up domestic oil production, said in a tweet the day before Russia's February 24 attack that the Keystone project would have produced 830,000 barrels of crude per day.

"Stop importing from Russia, start producing more," he tweeted in early March.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem went a step further than Crenshaw, writing in a February 24 op-ed for Fox News that in halting the Keystone XL pipeline Mr. Biden was "signaling to the world that American energy independence is no longer a priority."

"Keystone would have helped ease those fears while giving America the flexibility to counter Russian aggression by expanding energy exports to Europe," she wrote.

With Americans facing the worst inflation in 40 years, would expanding Keystone offer much relief at the pump?

Root of the problem

It's important to understand what's contributing to the high prices of oil in the first place. Gregory Nemet, professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin Energy Institute, pointed out that the cost of oil has steadily increased since last fall, when it was around $70 a barrel, to more than $130 last week before settling back at around $100 a barrel on Tuesday. That initial jump in the cost of crude was driven by the ongoing economic recovery, which boosted demand by consumers and businesses that had been dampened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"A lot more transportation and people flying around, people driving, more demand for oil," he said. "And supply doesn't always quickly respond to that kind of shock in demand."

The war in Ukraine also plays a role, although it was not the instigator of the increase.

"Whenever there is political instability in places that produce a lot of oil, markets react," Nemet said. "And it's not necessarily that they're saying, 'Oh there's not enough oil.' It's, 'Oh, there's a lot more risk now than there was before.'"

Russia is the world's second-largest exporter of crude oil, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But the U.S. imported an average of 209,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Russia in 2021, according to the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, as well as 500,000 barrels per day of other petroleum products. This amount makes up 3% of U.S. crude oil imports and about 1% of the crude oil processed in U.S. refineries.

Keystone XL, an expansion of an existing North American pipeline, would have carried 830,000 barrels of crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska daily at its peak. At the time Mr. Biden halted its construction, the $8 billion expansion was only about 8% complete, according to Reuters.

Yet many experts agree that moving ahead with the pipeline wouldn't have prevented U.S. gas prices from climbing to a record high. Expanding the Keystone would have increased global oil production by less than 1%, an amount, they explained, is "almost negligible."

"I can see why people make that connection," Nemet said."But in terms of gasoline prices and global oil prices, it's just something it's better to just ignore because it would have no impact."

More production, but higher costs for Americans

Even if the pipeline was already built, it wouldn't help with the price at the pump, Nemet added, noting that the U.S. has already doubled its oil production over the last 15 years. "And yet, we still have $100 per barrel oil."

With inflation soaring, gas prices have been increasing for months — hitting an average of $4.33 a gallon on March 11, according to AAA.

"The key lesson there is the U.S. is not the whole story here. It's a global market," Nemet said. "And so we've got 8 billion people that are consuming oil and many countries that are producing it, and it all goes into one market."

The Biden administration has repeatedly pushed back against proposals to revive the pipeline expansion. On March 7, Fox News' Peter Doocy asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki whether Mr. Biden would "ever undo his executive order that stopped the construction of the Keystone XL" in an effort to lower gas prices.

"The Keystone was not an oilfield — it's a pipeline," she responded. "The oil is continuing to flow in, just through other means. So, it actually would have nothing do with the current supply imbalance."

Psaki added the Department of Energy predicts that in 2023 the U.S. will "produce more oil... than ever before."

David Kieve, president of advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund Action, also told CBS News that building out the Keystone pipeline would not have softened the impact the Ukraine crisis is having on fuel prices.

"The Keystone pipeline, under the best of circumstances if you were a proponent of seeing it completed, wouldn't be completed yet," he said. "It wouldn't be online and wouldn't be pumping oil until the year 2023. ... So the idea that somehow the president's position on the pipeline that would still not be pumping oil emboldened Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine is so far-fetched as to be incredible."

Even if the Biden administration were to immediately offer new oil leases to drillers, it wouldn't help with the costs Americans are bearing today. It would take six to 10 years for oil from a new lease to hit the global market, Kieve said.

Less oil, clean energy fans say

By contrast, Mr. Biden's decision with the International Energy Agency to release 30 million barrels of oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve puts downward pressure on gas prices in the short-term, Kieve said. The agency will release a total of 60 million barrels of crude to help ease some of the supply disruptions caused by the war Ukraine.

"You won't see a lot of environmental organizations jumping up and down and saying, 'Hey, this is the best thing ever,'" Kieve said. "But there is a recognition that those types of actions may have some impact on the prices that Americans are paying at the pump."

In the long run, the best way to protect Americans from spiking oil prices is to accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, Nemet and Kieve said. Unlike oil, renewable energy relies far less on fixed and limited natural resources. Energy from solar panels, wind turbines and other low-carbon technologies also tends to get cheaper the more widely it is used, they said.

"Instead of having international competition for a scarce resource where everybody wants the oil and there's a fixed amount of it, it's different," Nemet said. "It's that as we produce more and more of these clean energy technologies...they get more affordable for everyone."

"We're all mindful of the pain that Americans are feeling at the pump right now, but the best way to eliminate pain at the pump in the long run is to get rid of the pump altogether," Kieve said. "Clean energy that we harvest here at home and work to figure out a better way to store is going to power us here at home."

Li Cohen

Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending content writer for CBS News.

Just a day after Donald Trump signed executive orders to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects, a pipeline rupture spilled 138,600 gallons of diesel fuel in northern Iowa.

Magellan Midstream Partners, an Oklahoma company with more than 10,000 miles of oil and ammonium pipeline, acknowledged that the spill began on Wednesday morning in Worth County, Iowa, and said it was “unsure of the cause of the incident at this time”.

The oil has pooled in an agricultural field, according to Karen Grimes of the Iowa department of natural resources (DNR), but cleanup efforts are being somewhat hampered by heavy winds and snow.

The spill does not appear to threaten any waterways and has not caused any injuries or evacuations, according to the company and the DNR.

While the spill in Iowa is “not a major disaster” compared with other spills, said Greenpeace researcher Jesse Coleman, it does draw attention to the risks of pipelines.

Proponents of oil pipelines argue that it is a safer method of transporting fuel than trains. More than 7m gallons of oil were spilled in more than 1,000 pipeline leaks between 2010 and 2015, according to an analysis by High Country News.

“This really speaks to the central problem, which is that we’re not even surprised that this company spilled something out of a pipeline because it’s inevitable,” Coleman said. “That’s what’s really frightening about these larger pipelines.”

“You can never really rehabilitate an area that got soaked in gasoline. Even this spill, it can’t be cleaned up,” Coleman added. “That gives you some idea of what will happen when the Dakota Access pipeline or the Keystone XL pipeline fails. It’s irreversible.”

“The problems Magellan has had just show that pipelines spill and they’re not safe,” said Wally Taylor, the legal chair of the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club, which has joined other Iowa environmental groups in campaigning against the Dakota Access pipeline.

The Magellan spill occurred just days after the company reached an $18m settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.

On 19 January, the EPA announced that Magellan had agreed to spend $16m on “injunctive relief” and pay a $2m fine over three pipeline spills in Texas, Nebraska, and Kansas. The injunctive relief includes completing cleanup efforts in Nebraska and improving damage prevention training.

Representatives of the EPA either declined to comment or did not respond to queries from the Guardian. On Monday, the Associated Press reported that EPA staff have been barred from speaking to reporters.