5 things to know today: Music teachers, Missing twins, Road construction, Eminent domain, In ‘vein’ – InForum

In less than two weeks, the West Fargo community of art and music teachers were able to come together and find the district enough qualified music teachers to prevent shortening elementary music programs.

This week, West Fargo Human Resources Director Brittnee Nikle said all of the music teachers needed by an Aug. 4 deadline have been offered positions after the district initially struggled to hire 4.5 full-time positions.

“Since we indicated through board action that the posting would remain open until Aug. 4, we are keeping true to that date while we await all signed contracts back from those selected and can get them all onto our next board meeting agenda,” Nikle said in an email to The Forum, Aug. 2.

At the West Fargo School Board’s July 24 meeting, staff planned to ask the board to not approve a motion to “trade in” the cost of hiring elementary music teachers and hire general education paraprofessionals.

Read more from The forum’s Wendy Reuer

A promising tip from a farmer who said he spoke with a missing West Fargo woman several weeks ago prompted an extensive search in Barnes County but yielded no signs of the woman.

Jonett Wanner, 50, of West Fargo, has not been seen or heard from since Tuesday, July 11, when she last signed off her work computer at home around 2:30 p.m.

Deputies from neighboring Stutsman County brought a boat and sonar equipment, a dive team, and drones to assist those in Barnes County on Wednesday, Aug. 2, searching a trio of lakes southwest of Valley City for any signs of the woman or her gray 2017 Nissan Rogue.

They searched in and around St. Mary’s, Moon and Sweetwater lakes, family members said. A Civil Air Patrol plane out of Bismarck also joined to search by air.

Read more from The Forum’s Robin Huebner

The Moorhead Main Avenue construction project is already giving drivers headaches, causing traffic jams and unexpected delays for most of the summer.

One of the metro’s busiest roads is cut down to one lane as the city of Moorhead works to retrofit its brick-lined sewer system, causing traffic to occasionally come to a standstill for minutes on end.

Soon, drivers will be further inconvenienced when the project begins a new phase. Main Avenue will be closed as workers repair a faulty section of sewer buried 20 feet under the pavement.

“We are going to have to shut down Main Avenue,” said Jonathan Atkins, traffic engineer for the city of Moorhead.

The shutdown is not expected to happen for at least a couple of weeks. The rest of the project is coming along on schedule, and Atkins said a quick break from the construction is expected soon.

Read more from WDAY’s Joe Leier

From the Des Moines Register via Forum News Service

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum says he wants to see carbon capture pipeline projects succeed to boost the value of Midwest corn and soybeans — and help revitalize struggling rural towns.

“The whole point of CO2” capture pipelines “is that it’s going to raise the value of corn for every farmer in America,” the Republican presidential candidate said while campaigning this week in Newton, Iowa.

It’s a hot-button issue in Iowa, where three companies have proposed building pipelines that will be used to capture carbon dioxide at ethanol and other industrial ag plants, liquefy it under pressure, and transport it to other states, where it will be sequestered deep underground.

Summit Carbon Solutions proposes sequestering carbon in North Dakota, where Burgum says the state permitted underground storage space for 100 million tons of carbon dioxide storage this year.

Carbon capture advocates say the projects are critical to ethanol’s future viability as California and other states push for low-carbon fuel to cut the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

Critics say the companies are trying to cash in on lucrative federal tax credits for sequestration and low-carbon fuel.

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Got a hangover? Did you try so hard to recapture your wild college days that your liver is now staging a coup?

While ramping up for WE Fest,

did you take Morgan Wallen’s advice to see the world through

“Whiskey Glasses?”

Denise Stewart believes a little jab will do ya.

The West Fargo nurse has launched a new business,

Nurses with Needles,

and will travel to your home, cabin or hotel room and administer IVs to help chase the booze blues away.  

She will be in the Detroit Lakes area during this week’s WE Fest, so will be available for house calls.

“I do have a couple of people booked already who have cabins in the area,” she says.

Stewart has 19 years of nursing experience and is a nurse practitioner, which means she legally can prescribe the medications that will show your hangover to the door.

She also worked for years in endoscopy, which required administering IVs to people who had just undergone a day or two of bowel prep for their procedures.

“They all came in dehydrated, so that’s how I got so good at IVs,” Stewart says, laughing.

Read more from The Forum’s Tammy Swift

Our newsroom occasionally reports stories under a byline of “staff.” Often, the “staff” byline is used when rewriting basic news briefs that originate from official sources, such as a city press release about a road closure, and which require little or no reporting. At times, this byline is used when a news story includes numerous authors or when the story is formed by aggregating previously reported news from various sources. If outside sources are used, it is noted within the story.