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Davenport's wastewater treatment plant dumped 317 million gallons of partially treated sewage into the Mississippi River in late June and early July after heavy rains and river flooding overwhelmed the treatment capacity of the plant along Concord Street.

Flood water and storm water runoff infiltrated sewer lines after the heavy rains and the plant began "bypassing" secondary treatment of the sewage, dumping an average of 10 million gallons of sewage per day into the river after only primary treatment of the wastewater. Primary treatment only involves removal of solids from the wastewater, essentially bypassing the normal secondary biological treatment of the waste.

The sewage "bypassed" by the Davenport plant was in addition to the 129 million gallons of sewage Bettendorf pumped into the river during the same period.

The University of Iowa Athletic Department has hired a marketing firm to find out why it can't fill each of Kinnick Stadium's 70,000 seats and attract more students to every home Hawkeye football game.

As the parent of a marching band member, I'm in a unique position to give an unbiased assessment to the university. I like football and the Hawkeyes, but I would not have attended any of the home games last year if not to watch the halftime show.

These are in no special order, so feel free to pick and choose my "solutions" to the falling number of fans, particularly students, at Hawkeye games.

• The games are slower than baseball. Television time-outs take any air of momentum out of the game and fans have way too much time to ponder why they are sitting in cramped hard seats in extremely hot or cold weather while football players stand around waiting to get the signal to play from a guy in a red hat who seems to control the entire contest. Seriously, last year in 90 degree weather, the first half took more than two hours. Last time I checked, a half in a football game was only 30 minutes long.

• Fans must be required to sit down, and stay seated, unless they are jumping to their feet to watch an exciting play. Why pay $50 for a seat, and then be required to stand the entire game to actually see the players on the field. I watched most of the game on the jumbotron replay because other fans were blocking my view. I contend most of the standing by fans is not related to excitement on the field, but seats the width of a small plate. . . on which most fans can no longer fit their derrière.

Iowa air quality monitors have recorded 42 exceedances of ambient air quality standards from sulfur dioxide pollution and 13 from fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) pollution during the first seven months of this year. During all of 2013, a total of 67 exceedances of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) were recorded involving sulfur dioxide along with 15 involving PM 2.5 (particulate matter of less than 2.5 microns) pollution. As with last year's air monitoring, the majority of the NAAQS exceedances occurred in Muscatine.