U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, says the reported success of a federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers in the rural western Iowa community of Carroll has been mirrored elsewhere in the state. Congress is now considering extending an $8,000 tax credit provided in the stimulus package. It has been set to expire at the end of November. Local realtors link the credit to a 28 percent surge in housing sales in the Carroll area so far in 2009. “I think a lot of us have heard back that this has been used very well in our respective states,” Harkin said. “I do know that generally in Iowa this has worked very well from what I’ve heard around the state.”

In response to questions from The Daily Yonder on a conference call with media Thursday, Harkin said he’s been heavily focused on health-care legislation and couldn’t handicap the chances for the housing credit extension. “I wouldn’t venture a guess on it,” Harkin said. “It’s just not clear.” But he supports the intent of the credits. “I’ve got to believe it would help and I’m all for people, as you know, first-time owners, buying a home and building up their equity in it,” Harkin said.

According to the Carroll Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which includes properties on the market in Carroll and neighboring areas, 127 homes have been sold through August. That compares with 99 over a similar time frame in 2008. While the number of homes sold has increased in a year-to-date comparison with 2008, the average sale price has dropped 19 percent — going from $110,000 in 2008 to $89,200 as of August this year. Carroll realtor and Chamber of Commerce president Mike Franey said the figures clearly are connected to the $8,000 tax credit for certain homebuyers provided through the federal stimulus package — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “This is good for me to hear this because I will talk with other senators when it comes up and I’ll be able to weigh in on it,” Harkin said.

Doug Burns

An Associated Press investigation has found widespread contamination in the drinking water at schools. The contamination was "most apparent at schools with wells, which represent 8 to 11 percent of the nation's schools," the AP reported. "Roughly one of every five schools with its own water supply violated the Safe Drinking Water Act in the past decade, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency analyzed by the AP." We suspect that most schools using well water are in rural communities. 

The AP reports that in "California's farm belt, wells at some schools are so tainted with pesticides that students have taken to stuffing their backpacks with bottled water for fear of getting sick from the drinking fountain." There are 132,500 schools and those with unsafe water represent only a small percentage of those. California had the most violations, followed by Ohio, Maine, Connecticut and Indiana. 

The AP said the problem of tainted school water has "gone largely unmonitored by the federal government." "It's an outrage," said Marc Edwards, an engineer at Virginia Tech University who has been honored for his work on water quality. "If a landlord doesn't tell a tenant about lead paint in an apartment, he can go to jail. But we have no system to make people follow the rules to keep school children safe?"

Greensberg, Kansas, was wiped out by a tornado in May 2007. Eleven people were killed and the town of 900 was flattened. It's since been rebuilt as a model of green technology. A report in the New York Times by Keith Schneider tells of the extraordinary efforts that have transformed the town into a gleaming example of new, energy saving and creating technology. 

The John Deere dealership has the highest green ratings available. “We had the chance to start over,” said Mike Estes, who owns the dealership. “What do you do when you start with a clean slate? You want to build it better. Right?” Right, indeed — not only for the Deere dealership but for the whole town. There's an arts center (above) powered by windmills and a bank of solar photovoltaic panels -- heated and cooled by a geothermal system. The courthouse is being renovated to the highest standards and a new hospital being built on the highway outside of town intends to be the first platinum rated LEED critical-access facility in the nation. The hospital even captures rainwater to use to flush the toilets. 

Will Greensberg survive after the rush of building is complete? The town has also seen the construction of a 10,000 square foot business incubator on Main Street. Funding was provided by Frito-Lay, the federal Department of Agriculture and the actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Two important rural journalism news stories: First, W. Horace Carter (above) died. Carter, 88, was editor and publisher of The Tabor City Tribune in North Carolina. In 1950, four years after he founded the paper, Carter began a series of stories and editorials about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in southeastern North Carolina. "The Klan, despite its Americanism plea, is the personification of Fascism and Nazism," the World War II veteran wrote. 

Carter and his family were threatened constantly over the years. "He was a God-and-country kind of guy," said his son, Russell Carter. "But he was committed to social justice, and he was not prepared for the fact that other people didn't see it that way." Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1953 for his anti-Klan articles and editorials.

Also, this week the MacArthur Foundation named Jerry Mitchell of Jackson, Mississippi, as one of its two dozen fellows. Mitchell is a reporter at the Clarion-Ledger newspaper and has been unrelenting in reporting on civil rights-era crimes. He will use his "genius grant" of $500,000 (paid over five years) to complete a book. "There are a lot of rabbit trails I want to run down," Jerry said. We here at the Yonder couldn't be prouder of both of these guys.