Friday, May 31

Today we made our way to Storm Lake, a town that is the focus of the book of the same name by Art Cullen. We first met with Chief Prosser, director of Storm Lake Public Safety, to get his story on how the town has adapted to the influx of immigrants. 

Chief Prosser has made mistakes but he openly admits and talks about them. These are learning opportunities and one can see their result by looking at how Prosser runs Public Safety in Storm Lake. Storm Lake is home to many immigrants from all over, many working at the Tyson processing plant in town. Over 30 languages are spoken in this small town. Knowing that with such a diverse community there are cultural differences, Prosser and the Public Safety go through training anytime a new ethnic group moves to town. Prosser says that the tactics taught at the Police Academuy cannot be used when dealing with a diverse community.

Through the years Chief Prosser has seen crime increase, but not for the reasons some think. After immigrants began being blamed for the increase in crime, Storm Lake began reporting crime based on gender and ethnicity. They found that no one ethnicity was committing the majority of crime. The crime had simply gone up because the town’s population had increased. Now Storm Lake has seen decrease in its crime rate–it’s currently at a 27-year low in major crime, and the town more diverse thanit has ever been.

I felt like Storm Lake could owe part of this decrease in crime in the way Prosser conducts Public Safety. The police department regularly builds relationships with the community. They also engage the community by having informal meetings to talk about concerns. This is a grassroots approach that we have seen at other places, and I feel that it is a good practice.

Next we met with Councilor Jose Ibarra, who is the first Latino city councilman in Storm Lake. Councilor Ibarra mirrored Chief Prosser in his sentiments. They both mentioned being engaged in the community and Councilor Ibarra is urging other Latinos in Storm Lake to do so. For now the very diverse Storm Lake is not represented by a diverse city council. Maybe this can change as relationships are built by Chief Prosser and Councilor Ibarra in the community.

Saturday, June 1

After meeting with Art Cullen, author of Storm Lake, for a much more political conversation we traded Storm Lake for another kind of Lake–Lake Okoboji. We met with Mary Skopec of Lakeside Laboratories to do some water testing. After donning our rubber boots we took a walk to a small ecosystem. We tested the water for oxygen, phosphorus and nitrates. This particular water was protected upstream by a wetland and therefore it tested high in oxygen and low in both phosphorus and nitrates.

In comparison we drove 20 minutes away to another water source and tested. The results: this water had both phosphorus and nitrates. We have heard all about different methods on how to clean our water such as wetlands or prairie strips while in Iowa. It was nice actually be able to test the water protected by these methods and prove to ourselves that they actually work.

After our water quality testing we had free time to just enjoy Lake Okoboji and pretend that we were on summer vacation. I chose to spend my time kayaking on the glacier-made lake.