Garden Gate kids gettin' down & dirty on the River!!!

Educational River Trip and Clean-up
with Garden Gate School
Katfish Katies, Huntsdale MO
April 20th, 2010


Total Volunteers (students & parents): 22
MRR Captains & Crew: 4
Boats: 2
River Miles: 3
River Level: 12.7 ft
Landfill Tons: .29 tons
Tires: .045 tons
Total Tonnage: .3 Tons or 600 lbs of Trash!

Yesterday the Garden Gate School students & parents joined Missouri River Relief for an educational boat ride on the river and a river clean-up! A few weeks back, our Program Manager Steve Schnarr was able to go to their school and give a fun presentation on what our organization does, and what they could expect to see on their river trip in the weeks ahead.

It was a perfect & calm Spring day! The morning started out pretty cool but clear, by 10:30 a.m. the sun was blazing and the layers started peeling off as we life jacketed up the kids and prepared a short discussion & safety talk about the river.

Next we loaded up the boats and set off upstream of the Katfish Katies boat ramp. Not long after motoring up stream, boat capatin Jeff Barrow pointed up to a large dead tree, it wasn't hard to see what he was trying to show us, sitting regal in near his nest was brother eagle, who bravely did not budge as we slowed for a closer look.


Moving on we came upon a boat of our National Fish & Wildlife Service friends doing Pallid Sturgeon sampling. We were able to watch them pull their lines in for a closer look at these ancient fish that still inhabit this great muddy river.


As our boat headed upriver to look at the petroglyphs left by the Indians many years ago & the spring running out beneath the great Manitou Bluffs, our second boat got waived closer by the fish & wildlife guys who apparently gave a wonderful presentation on their river studies and were able to show the kids a few of the large fish they caught that morning for an even closer up front view.

Well it didn't take long before everyone started getting hungry. So we motored back downstream to the little island just across from Katfish Katies we like to call Airplane Island. The shoes came flying off & a warm sunny picnic lunch was devoured on this gorgeous little sand bar. Afterwards, the kids got to wander around the little island, dipping there toes in the water, building sand castles, finding bugs & trash, & doing their typical kids in nature things. It was fun to watch.

After a bit though, the kids all wanted to get wet & go swimming, so we rounded them up & headed just across the river to a young willow thicket that we knew always gets trapped with tons of trash! We spent maybe an hour gettin' down & dirty with the Garden Gate kids & made a pretty good haul!


Trash Tally!!!!

10 large blue Stream Team bags filled with mostly plastic bottles - soda bottles, anti-freeze jugs, motor oil bottles etc.
6 small mesh Stream Team bags
3 Tires
1 blue 55 gallon Plastic Barrel
1 30-gallon brown Plastic Tub
1 very large Tent that had to be dug out of the mud
an assortment of Balls – basketballs, baseballs, tennis balls, golf balls footballs, etc.
at least 3 Six-Pack Rings (that I personally picked up, there may have been more!!)
1 5-gallon plastic Paint Bucket
1 5-gallon metal Varnish Can
1 Light Bulb
1 long florescent Light Tube
1 plastic Milk Crate
1 plastic Plant Tray
1 dead Turtle

photos & text by Melanie Cheney

A huge thanks to a really fun, good natured, and inquisitive group of students & parents yesterday, we had a blast showing them our beloved river, and introducing them to what is likely to be many new river adventures ahead!

To see more photos about this fun river outing, check out our Flickr Photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8478409@N03/sets/72157623780900515/

Educational River Trips

High School Service Club takes to the River!
Huntsdale, MO
November 2, 2009

text & photos by Melanie Cheney

For 2 gloomy, cold & wet weeks, Douglas High School teacher John Reid watched the forecast, trying to plan for his service club's annual river trip with Missouri River Relief. Finally, the weather cleared & on a beautiful sunny November Monday, we got the chance to show these Columbia kids how beautiful the Big Muddy can be while doing the river an act of service in the process.

Although the peak of fall colors were long gone, our group of 8 students, 1 teacher, and 4 River Relief crew were still able to admire the crisp burnt oranges & browns along the Manitou Bluffs, shout a greeting to a lone bike rider on the Katy Trail & poke our heads into the Lewis & Clark cave by the spring. The leaves had fallen from the towering Cottonwoods, and I was able to point out two Eagle nests within a one mile stretch.

We turned off the motor & drifted downstream along the bluffs in the cool, gorgeous sunshine. An enormous amount of rain the previous week had raised the river to a strong 17 feet. Other than the swift current, the water was calm & clear of debris. We took advantage of the river level and took the boat into a massive drift pile I had been eyeing all year, normally blocked by a boxed-in wing dike. Along with the massive pile of wood debris, was a thick concentration of plastic bottles as far as the eye could see.

At the beginning of the trip, we had explained to the students what we did as a clean-up organization and how we used the very boat they were sitting in to haul tons of trash off of the river with the help of volunteers like themselves. Arriving at this site though, needed no further explanation, we had to clean the river up! It was just a mess! So we handed out trash bags & gloves & set the students to work. Within twenty minutes, we had collected enough trash to almost fill the boat. Leaving two neat piles of trash on the bank, we returned the Service Club to the ramp at Katfish Katy's. We enthusiastically thanked the students for helping us make a difference if not a big dent in the amount of trash on the river, and headed back to finish the final haul.

Here's a tally of what we ended up with:

16 Bags of Trash (mostly plastic bottles)
1 Truck Tire
1 Mower Tire
1 small Refrigerator
1 55-gallon Metal Drum
5 Light Bulbs
2 small Coolers
3 3-gallon Plastic Buckets
6 Flip-flops & Croc Sandals
15 Balls
1 small Coleman Propane Tank

An estimated .3 tons (600 pounds!!!) of trash

A special thanks goes out to their teacher, John Reid, for caring enough to take these kids out on the river year after year. It is such a pleasure to watch the transformation in these kids at the end of the day. Not just by getting them out on the river, but by introducing them to the beautiful natural surroundings that are less than half an hour away, something many people in "the city" often forget is right in their own back yards.
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