Radio Iowa

1 day ago | radioiowa.com | Dar Danielson

The annual Orange City Tulip Festival, celebrating the town’s Dutch heritage, is underway. Spokesperson Avery Kelch says thousands of tulips are blooming in this good weather. “Windmill Park is where a majority of our tulips are found, and then we also have quite a few tulips lining the streets as well,” she says. The Dutch Heritage Society brought in one special tulip this year, which is bred and named after Orange City.

1 day ago | radioiowa.com | Dar Danielson

The latest report from the Iowa Department of Transportation doesn’t show any slowdowns in rail shipments due to tariffs on foreign goods. The DOT’s Stuart Anderson gave an update to the Transportation Commission Tuesday. “You’ve probably seen some headlines about volume coming into some of the west ports is starting to decline. That is not apparent at least through March, and we do have some April data as well that shows the intermodal traffic is still high on the rail system,” Anderson says.

2 days ago | radioiowa.com | Dar Danielson

The implementation of the Real ID driver’s license requirement for flying led to record numbers of people visiting DOT driver’s license offices. DOT Motor Vehicles Division director Kathleen Meradith-Eyers says traffic picked up as the May 7th deadline approached. “Starting with a 20% increase in April, early April, then 30%, then 40%. And this past week we issued 56% more cards across the state than normal,” she says.

2 days ago | radioiowa.com | Dar Danielson

The Iowa DNR has released fish kill numbers from a spill last month in the south Branch of Lizard Creek in Fort Dodge. The DNR says 71,933 fish  were killed after a fertilizer byproduct leaked from the CJ Bio America plant and into the creek on April 14th. A statement from DNR fisheries biologist Ben Wallace says cooler water and higher flow reduced the number of fish impacted, and larger fish species may have still been in the Des Moines River and not the creek.

2 days ago | radioiowa.com | Matt Kelley

A free webinar will be held next week to help Iowans navigate the complicated topic of long-term care insurance. Rayna Stoycheva, director for retirement security policy at the Harkin Institute, says they’ll have a panel of experts, including the director of the Washington Cares Fund, the nation’s first state-level, universal long-term care insurance program.