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Scientist details role in discovery Jacobs grad worked with Homo Naledi find in South Africa By ALLISON GOODRICH agoodrich@shawmedia.com
H. Rick Bamman – hbamman@shawmedia.com
Kiddie Campus Director Brittney Segroves and students Kayla (from left) and Haleigh Hobday and Alyona Schoeler look out a window recently as they search for dinosaurs during playtime in McHenry. Kiddie Campus owner Jackie Jezierski is in dire financial straits as the state budget impasse affects the subsidies low-income parents receive for child care. Jezierski has had to take out loans and is more than a week behind on paying her staff.
Day care center feeling effects of program changes By KATIE DAHLSTROM kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com
McHENRY – The number of children enrolled at Kiddie Campus in McHenry has slumped close to the lowest it’s been in the day care center’s 50-year history, and owner Bonnie Bertagnoli said a change to the state’s subsidized day care program is to blame. An emergency rule affecting
the state’s Child Care Assistance Program has put a stop to new children enrolling in the program, drastically altered the criteria for children to qualify and increased the co-pay for students in the program. “It’s been a miracle for me and other day care centers to get through this,” Bertagnoli said. “We’re doing everything we can to stay open.”
Under the emergency rule, a new applicant has to fit into one of four categories to be eligible: a Temporary Assistance to Needy Families recipient; a teen parent enrolled full-time in school or GED classes; from a family with a special needs child; or a working family with a monthly income up to 50 percent of the federal poverty level. The former standards stipulat-
ed applicants would be eligible if they earned up to 185 percent of the poverty level. Some 90 percent of new applicants will be denied under the new guidelines, some advocacy groups estimate. “It’s horrible,” Bertagnoli said. “[The parents] are crying, ‘What are we going to do? We can’t leave our kids at home
A Lake in the Hills native and McHenry County College alumna spent five weeks in May making her way into paleoanthropological history. Jill Scott, a 31-year-old resident of Denver, Colorado, was among a group of roughly 30 international early-career scientists chosen and flown to South Africa to take part in a unique workshop. There, she and her cohorts became some of the first people to study thousands of fossil fragments belonging to a newly Jill Scott discovered species in human lineage, called Homo Naledi. Scott grew up in Lake in the Hills, attended Jacobs High School in Algonquin, and her anthropology background stems from an introductory course at MCC in the early 2000s. Having graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s in anthropology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Iowa, respectively, Scott described her experience in South Africa as “incredible” and “intensive.” Currently, she is a doctoral candidate in anthropology through the University of Iowa. “Just being able to be part of the first team to see and study this vast volume of skeletal material that was newly discovered ...,” she said. “It’s meaningful, obviously, in a variety of ways.” The new hominin species – found in a cave known as Rising Star in the Cradle of Humankind World
See DAY CARE, page A5 See DISCOVERY, page A9
Drinking water systems imperiled by failing infrastructure By RYAN J. FOLEY The Associated Press DES MOINES, Iowa – Deep inside a 70-year-old water-treatment plant, drinking water for Iowa’s capital city is cleansed of harmful nitrates that come from the state’s famously rich farmland. Without Des Moines Water Works, the central Iowa region of 500,000 people that it serves wouldn’t have a thriving economy. But after decades of ceaseless service, the
Inside How does Illinois spend its federal aid for water infrastructure? PAGE B3
utility is confronting an array of problems: Water mains are cracking open hundreds of times every year. Rivers that provide its source water are increasingly polluted. And the city doesn’t know how it will afford a $150 million treatment plant at a
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time when revenues are down and maintenance costs are up. “We’re reaching the end of the life cycle of some of the most critical assets we’ve got,” said Bill Stowe, CEO and general manager of the utility, where the downtown plant was built long before nitrates that can harm infants became a pressing concern. Around the country, scores of decaying drinking water systems built around the time of World War II and earlier are in need of replacement. The costs to rebuild will be stagger-
LOCAL NEWS
Village seeking feedback Lakemoor to host public meeting on proposed annexation of 70 homes / A3 STYLE
Huntley Outlet Center for sale Despite interest in center in wake of Route 47, Interstate 90 interchange, the mall’s future as a retail center remains hazy / D1
ing. The costs of inaction are already piling up. The challenge is deepened by drought conditions in some regions and government mandates to remove more contaminants. At stake is the continued availability of clean, cheap drinking water – a public health achievement that has fueled the nation’s growth for generations. “The future is getting a little dark for something as basic and fundamental as water,” said Adam Krantz of the Water Infrastructure Network,
a lobbying group that is fighting cuts to key federal water programs. Unlike pothole-scarred roads or crumbling bridges, decaying water systems often go unnoticed until they fail. But without big changes in national policy, local governments and their ratepayers will be largely on their own in paying for the upgrades. The amount of federal money available is a drop in the bucket. That will mean rising water rates on
See INFRASTRUCTURE, page A8
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Alternative to boarding McHenry County sitters take in dogs for vacationing families / Style 8
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