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Thursday, June 16, 2016 Volume 92 - Number 24
The Grundy Register Grundy Center, Iowa $1 Newsstand Price
Uncontested Winds of change: Local student looks at wind energy in a whole new way designing the blades, Zinkula said. Kendall incumbents cruise By Michaela “Sometimes the blades wouldn’t The Grundy Register spin because they were too thin, so I GRUNDY CENTER – What to primary started out as a science fair project would have to go back and redesign for one Grundy Center student has them and thicken them up,” she victories locally opened the doors to a brand new said. “It took a really long time to
By ROB MAHARRY The Grundy Register GRUNDY COUNTY- Primary voters went to the polls in Grundy County last Tuesday, and there were no surprises: all of the local incumbents up for re-election ran uncontested and won, and the favorites for state and national office also cruised to victory. Three Grundy County supervisors—Jim Ross of district one, Chuck Bakker of district three and chairwoman Barb Smith of district five—won their Republican primaries handily. Ross received 82 votes, Smith received 66 and Bakker received 49. A total of seven write-in votes were cast. Sheriff Rick Penning, a Republican, coasted to a win in his primary race as he captured 393 of the 395 votes cast (there were two write-ins), and County Auditor Rhonda Deters won her primary with a clean sweep of all 392 votes cast in that race. No Democrats have filed paperwork to run against the incumbents in any of these local contests. Incumbent state representative Pat Grassley (R-New Hartford), who represents all of Grundy County, will once again be on the ticket in November as he secured his party’s nomination with 378 votes, and there were five writein votes cast on the GOP side. He will take on Doris Fritz of Grundy Center in the general election after she won the Democratic nomination See primary page 3
type of wind energy conversion. In eighth grade, Reegan Zinkula of Grundy Center stood in a hog confinement building, looking up at the pit fan. What she saw wasn’t just a fan, but a potential source of energy just waiting to be tapped into. And that’s when she found the inspiration for her eighth grade science fair project, which would ultimately turn into so much more. Zinkula decided that for her project, she would create a pit fan that could efficiently harness the power of the wind to create clean, renewable energy. “The agriculture industry is always targeted for being dirty and unfriendly to environment, so I thought, maybe we can clean that up a little bit?” Zinkula said. “That’s when I started to test if the pit fan can produce renewable energy, and I found out that it could.” “Those fans are always running, but they’re just wasting energy,” she said. And that’s when she decided to do something about it. Ever since then, Zinkula, who is now a sophomore at Grundy Center High School, has been working and reworking her prototype pit fan, presenting the new and improved version at each year’s science fair. She uses the 3-D printer at the high school to design each part of the fan from scratch before printing the pieces out and assembling the prototype fan. One of the hardest parts was
get everything right.” After assembling the initial prototype, Zinkula took a small motor from a starter wind kit and placed it inside the fan, which she would then wire to a generator. Right now, she’s still in data collecting stages, and is currently testing two different blade types on her prototype to figure out which one gathers the most energy. The first type is a thick, windmill blade and the second one is the thinner, turbine blade; for each of these blades she has a small, large and medium version so she can test which size of each blade will work best. It’s still too early to tell, but Zinkula predicts the medium sized windmill blade will gather the most energy the most efficiently. She hopes to have it figured out before the next science fair this spring, but until then, she will continue to spend an hour each day during school working on the project, as well as much of her free time at home. “My friends are like, ‘Wow, your crazy, why are you putting this much time into it?” she said. “But I really like this project. I’m really attached to it and I want to keep going.” Zinkula said that the hope is to one day create a commercially viable product that can be sold to farmers across the country to generate clean energy, and save them money on their power bill. But for now, she says she is just happy to be creating new things.
Reegan Zinkula is shown above with two of her pit fan prototypes, which will be used to generate renewable energy from the wind. She hopes to eventually take her prototype to market, and see them placed in hog confinements across the country. (Michaela Kendall/The Grundy Register photo)
Supervisors approve issuance of bonds for annex building By ROB MAHARRY The Grundy Register GRUNDY CENTER- After a brief public hearing with no written or oral comments, the Grundy County Board of Supervisors approved the issuance of bonds to be put toward the construction of the new county annex building at its meeting on Monday morning. The General Obligation Urban Renewal bonds will be issued in an amount not to exceed $1,400,000, and a motion from Jim Ross to approve the plan passed unanimously. New Grundy County Veterans
Affairs Director Mary Corwin of Dike was introduced to the board on Monday morning and officially resigned from her previous position as veterans affairs commissioner. The county office will be maintained in Reinbeck at a cost of one dollar a year to Grundy County. “I want to grow the outreach,” Corwin said. “I’m willing to go to veterans instead of them coming to me.” Supervisor Harlyn Riekena nominated Gary James of Wellsburg, a retired banker and Vietnam veteran, to take over as the commissioner. A motion to
approve his appointment passed unanimously. County Custodian Mark Jungling discussed some options on moving the county’s storage shed during the process of the annex being built, but no official action was taken. He agreed to speak with officials from the city of Grundy Center about the possibility of using the former Baptist Church property for storage on a temporary basis and come back to the board within the next few weeks. Jungling also noted that a damaged area of the courthouse See supervisors page 3
Shown above are local cancer survivors during this year’s Relay For Life Survivors Lap. (Michaela Kendall/The Grundy Register photo)
Rain cuts Relay For Life short, doesn’t put a damper on fundraising
By Michaela Kendall The Grundy Register GRUNDY CENTER – Despite the heat of around 90 degrees, this year’s Relay For Life of Grundy County still drew between 200 to 300 people throughout the course of the evening – until the rain came and cut the Relay short, that is. About halfway through the evening, the rain started – and then the lightning – and the Relay was shut down before the luminaries were lit and closing speech could be given. Because of this, the Relay For Life committee asked The Grundy
Register to print the closing ceremony speech for everyone who attended this year’s Relay, but didn’t get to finish the ceremony. The speech, which would have been given by committee member Sheila Steinmeyer, is as follows: Cancer is a disease that is unbiased. It knows no sex, no religion, no personality, no fairness, and no color. Cancer is described as a disease of cells that uncontrollably divide and invade the body. This division of the flesh and blood has created unity in our hearts and souls. Humanity has come together in one goal: to fin-
ish the fight once and for all. We all united here tonight to reflect together on how this disease has touched each of our lives, whether directly or through our family and friends. Our fundraising efforts, because of all of you, has provided around $30,000 at this point to the Grundy County Relay for Life. Donations can still be accepted after the event if you or anyone you know wants to contribute. On behalf of every Relay participant in Grundy Center, I’d like to thank all the teams, team captains, See Relay for Life page 3
Black Dirt Days 2016
The color guard from American Legion Post 681 led the Black Dirt Days parade in Conrad on Saturday morning. View more photos from the weekend on page two of this week’s Grundy Register. (Rob Maharry/ The Grundy Register photo)
The Grundy Register, P.O. Box 245, Grundy Center, IA 50638 Phone: (319) 824-6958 • Fax: (319) 824-6288 • E-mail: grundypublisher@midamericapub.com, grundyoffice@midamericapub.com, grundyeditor@midamericapub.com