K-Dot Contractors on Monday will resume a work on a long list of repairs on the K-92/Centennial Bridge spanning the Missouri River in Leavenworth. The repairs were delayed by Missouri River flooding last summer and the seasonal winter shutdown.

Beginning on Monday, March 12 at approximately 9:00 a.m., and lasting through late August, eastbound and westbound K-92 traffic over the Centennial Bridge will be restricted to one lane total for both directions. Traffic will be directed across the bridge through the project work zone by temporary traffic signals located on either end of the bridge.

Repair work on the bridge will include: concrete surface repairs on the piers, structural repairs to various elements of the structural steel, and steel plate guardrail installation. Later on, they will shut down the bridge entirely to jack it up and replace some structural supports.

Officials are urging you to expect delays, and are recommending alternate routes across the Missouri River, via I-435 in Wyandotte County to the south, or US-59 in Atchison to the north.

Traffic on these highways could increase through the repair period.

Advance message boards will alert traffic to the lane closures. Updated traffic information for this bridge repair project can be viewed online here.

K-DoT Offered this map (click to enlarge)

Additional traffic impacts for the project include the complete closure of the bridge for the jacking of the bridge to replace some structural members. These closures will occur over two weekends, beginning at 7:00 p.m. on Friday evening and reopening to all traffic at 5:00 a.m. on the following Monday morning.  These closures are tentatively scheduled to occur in mid-summer 2012.  Notice of these weekend closures will be provided via a news release well in advance of the scheduled closures.  Marked detours will be provided during the weekend closures.

APAC-Kansas, Inc. is the primary contractor on this bridge repair project with a total contract cost of $2.683 million.  The scheduled completion date for the entire project is now fall 2012, weather permitting.

Attorney General Chris Koster says crammers have cost Missourians hundreds of thousands of dollars for telephone services they did not authorize. Koster says the best way to catch cramming is to read your phone bill carefully, which he admits can be a real chore.

Koster filed lawsuits this week against six companies accused of cramming in Missouri:Coast to Coast Voice of Concord, NH; Green Certification of Miami, FL; and Family Contact 911 of Clearwater, FL in Jackson County; and SBO Online of Los Angeles, CA; Odyssey Communications of Tenafly, NJ; and ID Life Guards, Inc. of Glendale, CA.

He seeks restitution for customers and injunctions against the companies to bar them from unfair practices. If you’ve been charged without your consent, all the Attorney General’s tollfree hotline at 1.800.392.8222.

The National Weather Service says this was the fourth warmest winter on record for the contiguous United States.

The winter season was also drier-than-average for the Lower 48 states.

The average temperature during the December-February period was 36.8 degrees Farenheit, 3.9 degrees above the hundred year average and the warmest since 2000.  Click here for more.

The St Joseph Fire Department had a busy morning Friday.

An investigation continues into the cause of a suspicious fire shortly after midnight at a vacant house in the 3400 block of South Eleventh Street.

Investigators say utilities had been shut off at the house, which ironically belongs to a retired firefighter who has moved to Oregon.

The home was a total loss.  Authorities closed all traffic on Eleventh street for nearly two hours as crews poured water on the burning home. We have photography below courtesy of Will Corlett.

Later in the morning, crews were dispatched to St Joseph Plastics on Fifth Avenue, where a plastic-shredding device caught fire.  The fire produced a large cloud of smoke, visible a mile away.  Crews were able to put the fire out within about 20 minutes.

There were no injuries in either fire.

The owner of a Gallatin, Mo., grain company was sentenced in federal court Thursday for a scheme to steal over $3 million from 100 northwest Missouri farmers.

Daniel F. Froman, 66, of Gallatin, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gary A. Fenner to six years in federal prison. The court also ordered Froman to pay $2,851,304.02 in restitution to his victims.

Froman was immediately taken into custody to begin serving his sentence.

On Oct. 18, 2011, Froman pleaded guilty to mail fraud. Froman operated Gallatin Grain Company, 107 State Highway 6, Gallatin, which stored and bought grain from farmers in northwest Missouri. Froman admitted that he defrauded 100 farmers whose grain was stored at his business by selling their grain in order to pay his debts.

Froman’s wife and co-defendant, Pauline K. Froman, 66, pleaded guilty on Nov. 10, 2011, to conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Pauline Froman was co-owner of Gallatin Grain Company. She is scheduled to be sentenced on April 17, 2012.

On Feb. 6, 2009, company’s attorney called the Missouri Department of Agriculture Grain Regulatory Services to report that the company no longer had any grain, trucks or assets. Two days later, Froman emptied the storage space at Gallatin Grain, loading 1,200-1,300 bushels of soybeans and corn into four tractor trailers. Froman transported the stolen grain as well as some farm equipment to Falls City, Neb., where the grain, farm equipment and tractor trailers were all sold for $100,000.

The mail fraud charge involves a fraudulent financial statement that Daniel and Pauline Froman mailed to the Missouri Department of Agriculture, Grain Regulatory Services. The financial statement falsely reported a net worth of more than $662,000 in December 2007, when in reality Gallatin Grain Company had a negative net worth of $936. The Fromans would have been ineligible to maintain his grain dealer or warehouse licenses with a negative net worth. The false financial statement was used to borrow operating funds from BTC Bank.

The Missouri Department of Agriculture has collected $400,000 in assets from the Fromans, which has been distributed to the victim farmers on a pro rata basis. The remaining loss, according to the Missouri Grain Regulatory Services, is $2,903,610. Daniel Froman was required to waive any interest he has in the $100,000 bond posted in the case filed by the state of Missouri in Daviess County for 22 counts of stealing grain and three counts of filing false reports. Those funds will be turned over to the state for distribution to the victims.

Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill joined Senate Republicans in a failed bid to fast-track the much-delayed international leg of the Keystone oil pipeline expansion.

McCaskill voted to support an amendment offered by Senator John Hoeven (R-N.D.), which would sidestep the need for presidential approval of the pipeline’s construction.

That move would instead have allowed Congress to approve the project.

McCaskill also supported an amendment offered by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) which would also have sped up the process for the approval of the pipeline and ensured that all oil transported by the pipeline would remain in the U.S. for domestic use.

McCaskill supports the project.

“When it comes to the Keystone pipeline, it’s not a matter of if it’s going to be built—it’s a matter of when, and where,” said McCaskill.

McCaskill recently praised the decision by TransCanada Corp. to continue the planned southern leg of the pipeline, from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Texas Gulf Coast, which she says means good jobs for American workers.

The first leg of the Keystone project already moves hundreds of thousands of barrels from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada across six states including Missouri to the refining hub in southwestern Illinois.

In what might have been the most prestigious gathering ever assembled at the St Joseph City Landfill, Governor Jay Nixon was on hand Thursday to help launch operations of the new methane power plant there.

The City of St Joseph and Kansas City Power and Light are partners in the project, which was financed by a $450 thousand bio-energy grant from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

KCP&L District Manager Matt Dority says there are currently 47 wells at the landfill, collecting methane gas, a natural byproduct of landfill operations.

The wells, anywhere from 30 to 90 feet deep, collect the gas and route it to the new 1.6-megawatt power plant.  The plant then generates enough electricity to serve about a thousand customers.

“To compete and win in the new economy we must encourage and embrace emerging science and technology,” Gov. Nixon said. “The world is just not the same world it used to be.”

“Now this project, creating a clean source of energy from a naturally-occurring byproduct in our landfills, brings together many of those elements that are vital to our economic growth.”

St Joseph Mayor Bill Falkner, retiring KCP&L CEO Mike Chesser, and Ray Kowalik of the architectural firm Burns & McDonnell joined the governor to cut the ribbon on the new plant Thursday.