A financial penalty of almost $650,000 has been levied against a firm that a federal agency has found in violation of several child labor rules, for employing too young workers while cleaning the Seaboard Triumph pork plant in Sioux City.
The penalties from the U.S. Department of Labor were revealed in a court-approved consent order, as the firm on Monday agreed to pay the penalty and to no longer hire underage workers.
The Sioux City Journal first reported on the development with Fayette Janitorial Service, which is based in Tennessee. The Fayette firm began providing janitorial services in 2023, and Seaboard Triumph no longer uses the company’s services.
The Fair Labor Standards Act that dates to the 1930’s prohibits youth under the age of 18 from being employed in hazardous occupations, which includes meatpacking plants.
A Labor Department search at the plant revealed that Fayette employed nine children of minor age from 14 to 17. Some of the children worked overnight hours cleaning saws used in processing the livestock.
In other news, the town of Minden in western Iowa was substantially destroyed by a tornado 10 days ago, then on Monday another tornado hit properties just east of Minden.
Pottawattamie County officials said eight rural properties were impacted by that second tornado, but there were no injuries to people.
A National Weather Service field assessment team on Tuesday was surveying the damage, seeking to determine the tornado’s speed and duration.
At the same time, federal and state emergency management organizations are still assessing the damage from the April 26 tornado. A 63-year-old man died the next day at a hospital in Omaha.
Additionally, the City of Sioux City is helping developers finance two apartment projects, including one that repurposes a former school, in order to meet some of the city’s housing needs.
The Sioux City Council on Monday agreed on setting the final financing piece that will allow a new housing project to be carried out in the building that used to house East Junior High School.
According to city Neighborhood Services Supervisor Amy Keairns, the city will direct $750,000 in money that comes from a federal home program associated with the American Rescue Plan. The new East High Loft project will create 41 affordable housing units in the Morningside area.
The project will be carried out by a Wisconsin firm, at a cost of $18.3 million.
Of those 41 units, five will be used as housing for people experiencing homelessness, as a result of the city redirecting the $750,000 to the project. The majority of the other funding will come from a series of housing equity tax credits and other means.
*In other news, Iowa has been in a drought that has allowed ground-applied chemicals like nitrate to build up in the soil.
Officials of the Iowa Water Quality Information System say the recent heavy rains have washed these chemicals into surface waters, impacting their safety for drinking water and degrading their quality in the ecosystem.
The University of Iowa’s David Cwiertny directs the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination.
“Particularly as our weather becomes less predictable through climate change with these extended periods of drought followed by these intense short bursts of rain we can see so because it does have implications for access to drinking water. It does have implications for the health of our ecosystems. And those are things we should care about," Cwiertny said.
He added that the same process that washes nitrate into water sources also flushes other chemicals like pesticides into surface water.
Higher nitrate levels will mostly impact towns that use surface water as a drinking source, such as the Des Moines Waterworks.
Federal law limits the amount of nitrate present in drinking water to below 10 parts per million.
