Recent Articles

by Art Cullen, Iowa Capital Dispatch
November 7, 2025

First impression of Keokuk: beautiful and blighted, drained away with the currents of time at the confluence of the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers on Iowa’s southeastern tip.

You could forsake it were it not for the stubborn and resilient people who have laid claim to the place since 1837.

It was a major-league city with major-league ambitions. It was the Gate City to the river trade. It was a milling and foundry town. In 1875, the Keokuk Westerns played in the National League, compiling a 1-12 record and hanging up their cleats by June, never to play the Chicago White Stockings again.

The town boasted industrialists like J.C. Hubinger, a miller who had a huge mansion and amusement park overlooking the river and died poor in a boarding house. Now you could buy a manse along the river for $300,000. Forty percent of the historic brick buildings downtown are vacant.

Bettplex sports complex developers Doug Kratz and Kevin Koellner are among a dozen individuals and companies funding the political action committee pushing for voter approval of the $27-million referendum for a new police station.

The political action committee – Yes for Public Safety – has raised just over $52,000 to date while spending more than $48,000 on postcard mailings and signs.

In addition, the city has spent more than $30,000 on an "informational newsletter" and postcards mailings to residents.

by Cami Koons, Iowa Capital Dispatch
October 14, 2025

Environmental groups penned a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urging the federal agency to maintain its previously rescinded ruling that seven segments of Iowa rivers were impaired due to nitrate concentrations. 

The environmental groups said EPA’s decision to delist these segments was “inconsistent” with the law, failed to hold polluters accountable and would lead to increased regulatory costs for water treatment in Iowa. 

The decision from EPA followed a summer with near-record high nitrate levels in the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers near Des Moines and the first-ever lawn watering ban from Central Iowa Water Works on account of the high nitrate concentrations, coupled with summer water demand. 

Dani Replogle, staff attorney for the environmental group Food & Water Watch, called the EPA decision “baseless” and said it “does not inspire confidence in the federal agency meant to safeguard clean water and protect our health.”