Home

The Chippewa River should be back below flood stage soon.  The National Weather Service says the river in Eau Claire will fall below flood stage tomorrow night.  The weather service expects the river to stop just short of the point that it floods in downtown Eau Claire.  There could still be some high water along the river, and forecasters say Chippewa will still be fast moving. 

The man accused of hitting and killing a group of girl scouts and a mother in Lake Hallie is being ordered to stand trial.  Colten Treu is also accused of huffing from an aerosol can before the accident, but his attorney had requested those charges be dropped.  A judge recently refused to dismiss the charges and ordered Treu to stand trial.  He’ll be arraigned on May 24th. 

A Chippewa Falls man accused of sexually abusing an eleven-year-old girl is pleading guilty.  Yesterday, Craig Belden pleaded guilty to two child abuse charges in exchange for having his child sexual assault charge dropped.  Belden faces up to 12-years in prison and will be sentenced in July.

An Eau Claire man is in custody on suspicion he beat and choked a woman until she was unconscious.  A criminal complaint claims Andrew Clark and the victim got into a fight recently over his infidelity and the victim threw a lamp at him.  This caused Clark to punch and choke the victim, causing her to pass out and convulse.  Clark is facing two felonies and is being held on five-thousand-dollars bond.

A woman is accused of breaking into the Village Hall in Edgar Village and stealing venison.  A criminal complaint claims Eve Koldeway went into the hall with a man in February looking for a police officer.  The man tells police they couldn’t find an officer so Koldeway stole venison meat because the hall didn’t have cameras.  Koldeway was arrested and the man hasn’t been charged.  She’s yet to make her initial appearance.

The City of Chippewa Falls is borrowing over two-point-four-million-dollars to pay for infrastructure improvements.  If you happen to be paging through the paper then you might have seen that The Chippewa World Herald reports the borrowing package will be over five years and the city will pay about 165-thousand-dollars a year in interest.  The official borrowing rates will be approved next month.

Governor Tony Evers wants a new deal with Foxconn because he doubts the company will ever hire 13-thousand people.  The governor yesterday said the current deal to bring a factory to southeast Wisconsin is ‘no longer in play.’  Evers isn’t saying what he wants to change about the package that offers up to four-billion-dollars in tax breaks if Foxconn hires enough people.  The governor would only say he wants to protect taxpayers, and protect the environment in Wisconsin. 

Eau Claire and Chippewa counties are on the positive side of the latest Census Bureau count.  New numbers show both counties have grown over the past decade.  Eau Claire County added 56-hundred people since 2010, while Chippewa County added just over 15-hundred.  Dane County is the fastest growing in Wisconsin.  It added more than 50-thousand people.

A conservative group in Madison wants a judge to stop the city of Eau Claire from giving redevelopment benefits to a downtown building owner.  The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty yesterday filed the suit over Eau Claire’s TIF district.  The suit says Eau Claire claimed it needed the TIF to lure developers to the Water Street area.  But WILL says there were already plans to develop the area, and there was no need to divert money into the TIF. 

The plastic straw ban at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse isn’t saving much money, but students say it is working in other ways.  UW La Crosse Student Association President Ben O’Connell this week said thousands of straws have not been used across campus since the school banned them earlier this school year.  University managers say the ban only saved about a thousand dollars, but O’Connell says it’s more about saving the environment than saving money.