Seth Boyes joined the Dickinson County News staff in March of 2017. In his first week at the DCN, he covered a train derailment near Graettinger. The tankers carrying ethanol burst into flames. Seth's photo of the event won first place for Best Breaking News photo at the 2018 Iowa Newspaper Association Convention and Trade Show. Since, Seth has won nearly a dozen awards for writing, photography and multimedia content. Seth graduated from Iowa State University in 2009 with a degree in Integrated Studio Arts. His original cartoons run regularly in the Spencer Daily Reporter and the DCN. Both he and his wife Janet hail from Clear Lake and have come to expect summers to be full of the hustle and bustle of tourists and visitors.

Past and present

Posted Monday, April 30, 2018, at 5:00 PM

I've recently read about some successes in wind energy. An entire town in Texas is powered entirely by wind energy (and has a Republican mayor in case you're interested) and a business which installed wind turbines and ended up producing more power than it used. Frankly, from my own reporting on the matter, I know Iowa is second in the nation when it comes to wind energy production. Texas is first, mainly because it's simply got us on shear size. And while there is a wind project in the works here in northwest Iowa, we're a bit behind on the turbine trend. When I was writing in Clay County, the County Board of Supervisors told me there was literally a single wind turbine in all 573 square miles. But there are a few loud voices of opposition to wind expansion in this part of the state. I can understand some of the concerns, but the one that still makes me scratch my head is the claim that the turbines will make the landscape ugly.

That and when the corn farmers who say they won't support an industry that's government subsidized...but I'm sure they're fine with government subsidies that make ethanol (a.k.a. corn juice) cheaper at the pumps.