Molly Messick / StateImpact Idaho
Jim Tiede and Hans Hayden in Power County, in southeast Idaho.
Some of Idaho’s most fertile farm ground has been hit by the drought that’s crippling crops nationwide. Farmers who have deep wells and irrigation are faring well. Those who don’t aren’t. It’s one indication of the very different economics of dry-land and irrigated farming.
Courtesy Port of Lewiston
Sec. LaHood visits the Port of Lewiston Wednesday.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will be in Idaho Wednesday, days after the Obama administration announced plans to send unspent transportation dollars to states.
As The Associated Press reported Friday, $470 million will be made available to states for infrastructure projects as long as states “promise to use the money to create jobs and improve transportation.”
The AP reports it’s an effort by the Obama administration to sidestep Congress. Continue Reading
Molly Messick / StateImpact Idaho
Farmer Hans Hayden says this spring wheat field is an almost total loss.
In Idaho’s arid, high desert, the drought has a mixed effect. There’s a big divide between farmers with deep wells and irrigation, and those without.
Hans Hayden is a rare find: a talkative farmer. He likes to explain things. But when it comes to the wheat he planted this spring, there’s not much to say. This field needed rain it didn’t get.
Molly Messick / StateImpact
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Andrew Burton / Getty Images
Idaho's jobless rate ticked down two-tenths of a percent from June to July.
Almost 20,000 more Idahoans had jobs this July compared to last. The Idaho Department of Labor reports July’s seasonally adjusted jobless rate dropped two-tenths of a percentage point from June to 7.5 percent. That’s a three-year low, and it’s better than the national rate of 8.3 percent.
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Idaho and Rhode Island were the only two states, to post a decline in the jobless rate from June to July. The District of Columbia also saw a decrease. Continue Reading
Peggy Greb / USDA
Researchers Godfrey Miles, ARS, (left) and Venkatesan Sengoda, Washington State University, evaluate symptoms in fried chips made from potatoes infected with zebra chip. (USDA)
Starting Friday, fresh potatoes from Idaho, Oregon and Washington can no longer be exported to South Korea.
As Capital Press reported earlier this week, Korea’s export ban results from concerns over an insect-borne disease that causes light yellow potato flesh to darken and stripe — the zebra chip.
According to the Idaho Department of Agriculture, the state exported $469 million worth of vegetables in 2010. Potatoes were, by far, the state’s the single largest vegetable export.
Still, Idaho Potato Commission president Frank Muir says just one Idaho potato grower sends fresh spuds to Korea. “At this point it doesn’t hurt Idaho’s economy because we didn’t have that much product shipping,” Muir says. Continue Reading
Molly Messick / StateImpact Idaho
When Rockland voters went to the polls in May, 80 percent supported the school levy.
The Nampa School District has discovered a budget problem.
Last school year, due to an accounting error, it spent $2.8 million it didn’t have. Boise State Public Radio’s Adam Cotterell has the full story.
The given reason for the error is worth special note at StateImpact.
Superintendent Gary Larson tells Cotterell the miscalculation came about because the district’s finance team is understaffed. As state funding for districts fell in recent years, Larson says, he decided to leave some finance department positions unfilled.
“At the time it was a signal that we are in this together, the district office and the schools,” Larson says. “Well, as a result it impacted our finance department and I think we got too thin, and because we were thin I think we made these human errors.” Continue Reading
Chris Gladis / Flickr
A small home in Japan's Kyoto Prefecture
Our recent story on Japanese homebuilding preferences and how they’ve helped one North Idaho sawmill led me to a guy named Roger Williams. He’s an architect based in Seattle, but he’s done a lot of work in Japan. He’s made dozens of trips there over the years.
I was trying to understand why there’s such a focus on wood quality in Japanese home construction. I wondered about the origins of that emphasis, and what it has meant for the Japanese housing market. Continue Reading
Molly Messick / StateImpact Idaho
Demand from overseas helped sustain small and rural timber towns as new home construction foundered.
Last week StateImpact told the story of Idaho Forest Group’s Laclede mill, which experienced its first shutdown in decades when the housing bubble burst, decimating lumber demand. The mill reopened thanks in large part to the company’s new focus on the export market.
The Wall Street Journal this week reports that the export market is helping to spur a similar turnaround in California timber towns, where timber revenues are on the rise. Continue Reading
St. Luke's Health System
St. Luke's CEO David Pate started blogging on health and policy issues in the fall of 2011.
The CEO of Idaho’s largest health system, St. Luke’s, is asking readers of his blog what they think Idaho should do about expanding Medicaid.
Dr. David Pate began his blogging endeavor almost a year ago as a way to reach more of St. Luke’s 10,000 employees spread across six hospitals and 100 clinics in Idaho.
He says so far, it’s been a success. And he’s recently experimented with informal online polls to better gauge how St. Luke’s employees and the community feel about cornerstones of President Obama’s health care reform law.
Since the Supreme Court upheld the health care law, states now have choices to make on how to implement an online marketplace for purchasing health insurance and whether to expand Medicaid eligibility. Continue Reading
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