Cleaning up the Confluence!

4th Annual Confluence Trash Bash 2012

Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, Spanish Lake, MO

March 24, 2012

Rivermile 0-5 – River Stages: St Charles – 23.4 ft; Alton – 14.5; St. Louis – 19.5

Hosted by Confluence Partnership, St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District, St. Louis Audubon, Arnold Stream Team 211, Grace Hill Americorps, Piasa Palisades Sierra Club and a bunch of other businesses, municipalities and organizations

text by Steve Schnarr, photos by John Ruskey and Melanie Cheney, paintings by John Ruskey

We finally got one. After three years of flooding and miserable cold/rainy/snowy weather, this year the Trash Bash landed on a glorious spring weekend. You can’t help but feeling unsettled by the mild winter and early, uniformly beautiful spring. But you also can’t help but get out and enjoy it.

Every year, we keep the option of camping somewhere down at the Confluence for this event, but cold and rain keeps putting us up in cheap hotel rooms. This time, we hooked up with our friends at Big Muddy Adventures (on an adventure that will be described later) and set up camp on the tail end of Duck Island, tucked on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River just downstream of the Confluence. After scouting our sites for the next day’s cleanup, we landed on the island only to be greeted by a beautiful rainbow.

Our Duck Island Camp. photo by John Ruskey

Our part of the Trash Bash is to take a group of volunteers out on the river in boats to clean up the Confluence itself.  Being blessed with perfect weather this time, we were able to go a little further than in Trash Bashes past, actually getting the St. Louis side of the Confluence as well as the mouth of Coldwater Creek, a major urban tributary entering the Missouri at Fort Bellefontaine Park. We were joined this year by two Army Corps of Engineers biologists Megan Kerrick & Ben McGuire and their boat.

Other sites in the Trash Bash include North Riverfront Park, sites along the Maline, Watkins and Coldwater Creeks, some areas on Chouteau Island on the Illinois side, Creve Coeur Lake Park and a massive tire dump on Fee Fee Creek.

Melanie was leading a site along Maline Creek, so she and I headed to the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge where all the NW St. Louis sites were meeting. We gathered our crews together, did a safety talk then headed to our sites.

Melanie's Crew on Site 12 on the Maline. photo by Melanie Cheney

Half our our volunteers were from the Washington University Alpha Phi Omega Service Fraternity. Great kids from a great organization. APO chapters across the state come to help at our clean-ups, always bringing more than 20 folks out to make it happen.

We had a sizable River Relief crew, with even our buddy Mike Smith from Washington, MO, coming to help. Friends from Missouri American Water, Boeing and Biomerieux showed up and we hit the river. All in all, we had 50 volunteers at our site, hitting three four different locations.

Because we had done a really big cleanup last year, this time we focused on spots missed last fall. There was plenty of trash to be hauled out of there, and couldn’t be a more beautiful day to do it.

Volunteers roll countless tires from the floodplain. photo courtesy Arnold Stream Team 211

The best thing about the Trash Bash is that you get to see the impact made in your area, but simultaneously there are groups all over the region making a similar or even greater impact. Our friends with Arnold Stream Team 211 gathered a team of really hard workers to remove tires from the floodplain along Fee Fee Creek. Our board member Francis Baum joined in the effort. These tires are thought to have been scattered from a landfill during a past flood and have been flooded several times since, scattering the tires throughout the riparian forest. This will be a project that takes several massive efforts.

A really great lunch was served up by Confluence Partnership, and then we hit the river again to haul all that trash in. Everything was loaded in boats, which were then trailered and hauled up to the dumpster. We hauled scrap metal and tires back to the Chain of Rocks Bridge to be added to the huge piles there. Including a massive metal tank of some kind dug out of the bank at Columbia Bottom which needed about six people to move.

Trash is unloaded from the trailered boat into a dumpster. photo by Melanie Cheney

After we cleaned up the ramp, we headed out to the Confluence to drift among the swirling junction of the continent’s two longest rivers. The Missouri was cresting, and was pushing huge swirls of muddy water far out into the Mississippi. Massive flocks of cormorants streamed above as we were tossed about in the eddies. We drifted down the Mississippi side of Duck Island, viewing the eagle nest there from afar to not disturb the nesting couple there.

Eventually we ran into John Ruskey and Mark Peoples filling one of their Bell canoes with driftwood. It was their second load and they had moved our campfire down to the sandy point of Duck Island. We parked in a foamy eddy at the point and gathered for a some serious river time with a group of our favorite river lovers. Some lunch leftovers were donated to our camp and were supplemented with healthy snacks. Everyone took turns wandering the island and a driftwood bonfire drew everyone in. Ominous clouds gave way to a beautiful sunset. Cleanup organizers Natalie Johnson and Laura Cohen got ferried over for a moment of relaxation after the firestorm of 750 volunteers.

The sun sets over the Mississippi River and a forest of planted driftwood. photo by Melanie Cheney.

After nightfall, we set up a projector and screen (with a generator tucked far away behind a sandbank) and watched a film about John Ruskey’s adventures last year riding the crest of the Great Flood of 2011 through the state of Mississippi. With a backdrop of the river itself, this film festival had the venue down!

Another short film we watched was about the Circumnavigation of St. Louis. This is the expedition that the Big Muddy Adventures Crew is still doing. Big Muddy Mike Clark, Driftwood Johnny Ruskey and Mark “Rivers” Peoples, “Queen Bee” Betsy Tribble and David Hanson from Seattle were working their way up the Mississippi River in light glass canoes. Their journey had started at the confluence of the Bourbouse and Meremec Rivers, scribing a circle around the greater St. Louis metropolitan area on a highway of rivers.

After pausing at Duck Island for a day, taking a group of Trash Bashers to the island by canoe to remove trash, they would be heading around the Confluence and 70 miles up the Big Muddy. Their virtual passengers were from 7 grades of St. Ann’s of Normandy School, following their adventures online and researching their own topics related to the trip. I’d be joining them Sunday morning, just as David Hanson was getting off and heading back home.

The Circumnavigation Crew heads upstream toward the 367 bridge. photo by John Ruskey

You can read all their expedition journals, check out their amazing photographs, view John Ruskey’s watercolors and see the postings of St. Ann student at the Big Muddy Adventures Schoolhouse Blog.

Around 11 on Sunday, our River Relief crew had packed up and headed to shore. I hopped in a canoe with Mike and Betsy and up we paddled. I stayed on for two days, getting up to St. Charles. It was a powerful and humbling experience, and I hurt for days after. These guys kept going to Washington, MO, 68 miles up the Missouri. From there they would be portaging their canoe overland for 10 miles to hook up with the Bourbouse and finish their trip around St. Louis with a brisk downstream float.

John Ruskey's watercolor of the Circumnavigation (in dark blue). 

John Ruskey watercolor of a side chute on the Missouri River.

Cleaning up with the St. Lou Crew - Chapter 1

Duck Island Clean-up with River Kids and Big Muddy Adventures
Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, Spanish Lake, MO
August 20-21, 2009
text by Steve Schnarr, photos by Steve Schnarr

For four years, we’ve been going to help out at Operation Clean Stream, the oldest community river clean-up in the state (this is its 42^nd year). This year we make a little more out of this trip. Several of our St. Louis friends had been asking for us to come work with them, so we decided to pile on several clean-ups at once.

River Kids and Big Muddy Adventures

The coolest river organization I know is the River Kids. It was started at New City School by teacher Ben Griffiths and a group of students that were inspired by Chad Pregracke’s Living Lands and Waters. It has become a student-run/student-organized force for river education and action. These are fourth to sixth graders by the way! They started a non-profit and do restoration and clean-up work, helping out at other organization’s cleanups, adopting their own stretches.

As Ben said, “It’s gotten to the point where you hear third graders saying, ‘I can’t wait until I can be a river kid!’ Plus the older kids are coming in and mentoring the younger ones, showing them how to do this even better.” Ben shakes his head, amazed at where the kids have taken this small idea.

The River Kids have been working with Mike Clark, the force behind Big Muddy Adventures, the only Missouri River paddling outfitter I’m aware of in the St. Louis area. Mike has been taking the River Kids once a month out on the Confluence, showing them how to paddle the big river, then cleaning up Duck Island, a beautiful sandbar-ringed island just downstream of the Confluence on the Mississippi.

This Thursday, with school just about to start, only two River Kids showed up, but they were awesome. Mary is a River Kids veteran, while this was Parker’s first time. Together with Ben, they cleaned up the upstream beach, while Tom Ball and I cleaned downstream. Meanwhile Mike Clark readied a bed of coals for some fresh organic sweet corn and a weenie roast. Our friends Karla Wilson from EcoWorks Unlimited, Christine Favilla from Piasa Palisades Sierra Club, Tom Ball – river worker extraordinaire, all set up camp and gathered firewood.

Soon, music was playing, bellies were full, kids were laughing and the stars came out.

A beautiful night on the river followed by a beautiful sunrise.

Check out the River Kids Blog - http://www.ncsriverkids.org/

& the Big Muddy Adventures website - http://www.2muddy.com/ (BMA just got back from a raft trip down to New Orleans with a German film crew – they’ve got some great stories on their blog about this amazing adventure)

Cleaning up with the St. Lou Crew - Chapter 2

Confluence Clean-up with Whole Foods Market
Columbia Bottom Conservation Area
August 21, 2009

text by Steve Schnarr, photos by Melanie Cheney, Steve Schnarr and Valarie Brunjas

The St. Louis area has two Whole Foods Markets – one in Brentwood and a new one in Town and Country. In July, they invited Missouri River Relief to set up booths at each store for a day to tell customers about the Missouri River and the work we do. In return, they donated 5% of their proceeds for the day to us – it came out to an amazing $7,550!!!

That day, the idea kept bubbling up that we should do a clean-up with the Whole Foods team members. Take a bunch of energetic nature and health conscious folks on the Big Muddy to pick up trash? That’s a no-brainer! So we decided since we were already going to St. Lou for the Operation Clean Stream, we’d do this the day before. Perfect.

We were joined by several area friends. Christine Favilla of the Piasa Palisades Sierra Club has been organizing a clean-up in Alton every year (This year it's part of the Earthtones Festival in Alton on Saturday, Sept 19). She brought her expertise to the house. Karla Wilson has been an organizer and crew member with us for years and helped with set up. Tom Ball, a lifelong river educator and cleaner, was on board from the minute he heard about it. Jeff Barrow, Anthony Pettit, Melanie Cheney and me all came from Columbia.

The Whole Foods crew showed up right on time. Marcia Whelan and Jill Duncan organized the affair, and we had 14 team members show up. Which is an awesome number for a spur of the moment clean-up during the work week! Plus, it was perfect, because we could have one group for each boat – which makes for a better group bonding experience.

We split into to groups: one headed straight to Confluence Point State Park (“The Awesomes”) while the other headed upstream to finish cleaning a rack-pile we’d started in March (“The Copperheads”). Pretty soon the bags started rolling in…

After we dropped off most of the Copperheads, we kept two of them and headed downstream a little ways to clean-up the fishermen accesses. It was a treat, because they were cleaner than ever before. I think people are catching on! Then we snagged a Coast Guard buoy from an eddy where it had washed up.

We returned to the main group just as they were finishing up. We loaded up and headed down to the Confluence, so they could see the joining of the nation’s two biggest rivers – an experience everyone in the area should have. Because the Missouri was so high, its current headed straight out into the Mississippi – quite a sight. Tom Ball gave a talk about the area, and some of the industrial pollution it has suffered in recent memory. Then we headed to Confluence Point to meet up with the others. On our way in, we got a lesson in silver carp – they were jumping around us like popcorn but none got in the boat!

Everyone took a picture at the Confluence, then we boarded boats and headed back to Columbia Bottom ramp.


Lunch was served: yummy Whole Foods sandwiches, fruit and snacks. Everyone got a Missouri Stream Team shirt, and then we were on our way. The best reward, in addition to the over ½ ton of trash we picked up in short order, was a remark by Marcia Whelan. She said she was almost driven to tears several times by the experience. “It was just amazing to be out here, to be out on the river. This is real life and we got to come out and help clean the river.” Real life, indeed!

Check out our flickr file of photos from the day:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8478409@N03/sets/72157622139374624/

Special thanks to St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District for donating the dumpster and to Crown Excell for delivering it.

And, as always, thanks to Columbia Bottom Conservation Area for giving us permission to run our event out of their awesome ramp. This area is a gem – featuring seasonal wetlands, bottomland forest and wet prairies, it is a haven for migrating waterfowl, amphibians, small mammals and deer and pollinating insects. And it’s part of a much larger (and growing) complex of public lands managed for wildlife in the Confluence Greenway area.

Here’s a little piece of news about Columbia Bottom: a local developer is considering putting in a casino and resort complex just south of this amazing wetland and floodplain resource. For more information, check out the Belleville Daily News story:
http://www.bnd.com/news/state/story/877841.html

Cleaning up the Confluence...

Confluence River Clean-up

September 13, 2008
Columbia Bottom Conservation Area
text by Steve Schnarr, photos by Vicki Richmond & Tom Ball

Our cleanups at the Confluence are always special events. This year was a great mix of old pros and brand new, interested people coming to help out. I’d just like to highlight a few of these groups and stories.

Arnold Stream Teams –
In the world of Stream Teams, the “Arnold boys” (as we tend to call them) from Stream Team #211 are legends. These folks seem to be out there cleaning up trash from the Meremec and other rivers just about every weekend in addition to several large events they schedule each year.

They often come with their own battery of tools, and we try to find a project that only they have the skills and expertise to handle.

This year, we put them on the removal of an old shed partially buried in sand at the Jones-Confluence State Park . We’d noticed the shed on our 2006 MegaScout trash survey and wanted to get it taken care of once and for all. If you want it done, you send the Arnold boys! This year, it was Bernie Arnold and Chris and Brian Waldrop.

They were joined up with Tom from the DeSoto Body Shop Stream Team in Arnold. By the time lunch rolled around, they had the shed wrapped up. So then they hopped on a boat for the trash haul and stuck around until the last boat came in. Thanks guys!

Confluence Greenway –
For the last two years, Confluence Greenway and Trailnet have been lucky (in our opinion) to have Tom Ball as their Americorps Stream Team Asst. Tom (self-portrait on right) is a one-man stream advocacy machine. If you need to know what’s going on regarding water issues in the St. Louis area, this is the guy to ask. He worked hard all day Saturday, topped off with a three hour canoe clean-up with Mike Clark from Big Muddy Adventures, Then he came back Monday to help us haul our tires to TRI-Rinse for disposal. After the crazy hurricane rains, he went back to work, leading in a post flood clean-up on Deer Creek. Here’s some links to his Facebook albums, with some great clean-up pictures. Canoe clean-up album, Clean-up album #1, Clean-up Album #2.

His Americorps replacement, Barbara Maynard came to help too, and she looks to be another asset for the Confluence. Confluence Greenway looks to bring groups and citizens together to restore and appreciate the Confluence area. Check out their cool website: confluencegreenway.org

Big Muddy Adventures
Last year, we were running a chase boat for the Greenway Network’s Race for the Rivers when we saw a canoe outside of the channel not paddling at all. We tried to figure out from a distance if it was one of our racers and couldn’t see a racer number. “It’s probably Mike Clark,” I said. Sure enough, as we drew closer, it was the legendary local river rat.

Mike is out paddling in the Confluence area almost every night. He also runs Big Muddy Adventures, the only canoe outfitter in the area that specializes in paddling adventures on the Missouri River. (check out his website – www.2muddy.com)

After running a popular exhibit at the Confluence Watershed Festival on Friday, he came back with his big “Clipper” canoe that night to take some of us on a moonlit canoe ride upstream to a tiny sandbar. With seven paddlers, including his friend and fellow river rat Scott Mandrill, that massive canoe moved upstream with no problem. We went for a swim in the moonlight and listened to Mike’s stories about sneaking up on a heron rookery by canoe during the flooding of Columbia Bottom earlier this year.

On Saturday, he came back after lunch with the Clipper again. He took a crew of die-hards downstream to cleanup Duck Island on the Mississippi, but they filled the canoe with trash before they even got there. After a clean-up at the Canoe/Kayak access, they returned victorious.

Student groups –
Some of our biggest supporters in the Confluence area are student groups and teachers that come year after year. Jacki Janovsky organizes the Nature Nuts at Parkway North Middle School, and brought a crew this year. I don’t know if it’s because they work so hard or they can’t avoid a mud fight, but year after year these kids come back smeared with Mighty Mo mud. Jim Denner rounded up a huge crew of Lindbergh High School students again this year. The Alpha Phi Omega Service fraternity at Washington University came out in force.

Columbia Bottom Conservation Area staff –
Mike Caby (right) drove the skid steer until the last load came in, hauling trash directly from the boats to the dumpsters up the ramp (saving a bunch of backs in the process). Ron Cooper and Tom Ledwon worked hard and loved it, and naturalist Pat went along on the canoe cleanup. Behind the scenes, they supplied straw bales, helped move tires out of the way when the river rose on Sunday, brought extra trash cans and let us store our boats in their maintenance yard.

Other groups –
We had great support from some other long-time clean-up helpers. Ruth Berry from Bank of America brought another crew. Francis Baum, organizer of Boeing Employees for Environmental Protection, stuck around all day to help dig out an outrageous heavy equipment tire. All in all, 168 folks showed up to help and worked their butts off! Thanks to everyone!

Confluence Watershed Festival Photos

Confluence Watershed Festival
September 12, 2008
Columbia Bottom Conservation Area

photos copyright 2008 by Ruthie Moccia

Here's some more great photos of the Confluence Watershed Festival taken by MRR crewmember Ruthie Moccia. Enjoy!

Missouri American Water employees show how to change muddy river water into clear tap water.

Gateway Greening gave students seed and worm castings to plant them in. Students brought trays of planted seeds back to their classrooms to nurture into growing.

The Wild Canid Center taught about wolves, foxes and coyotes. Here was a real grey wolf pelt students could examine and touch.

Missouri Department of Conservation fisheries biologists showed how to identify fish, how to determine if they are legal size, and how to record creel data.

MDC agent Chris Morrow shows some rod & reel techniques for fishing in our big rivers.

Americorps Stream Team Assistants Melanie Cheney from Missouri River Relief and Stacy Arnold from Missouri Coalition for the Environment teach about macroinvertebrates by helping students conduct stream surveys on artificial streams.

Here students compare how different soils filter water differently, teaching about erosion.

Confluence Trash Tally!

Confluence River Clean-up

Columbia Bottom Conservation Area
September 13, 2008
photos by Jen Courtney & Tom Ball

Despite threats of rain, flooding, hurricanes, etc, our Confluence Clean-up was a great success. We had a lot of folks returning from past clean-ups, bringing new friends, and a whole slew of new faces. Here's some results from the day:

Total Volunteers: 168
MRR Crew: 19
Boats: 9 (2 US Fish & Wildlife; 2 MO Dept. of Conservation; 4 MO River Relief, 1 Big Muddy National Fish & Wildlife Refuge)
River Miles: 11 Missouri, 1 Mississippi
River Level: 15.1 feet (St. Charles gage)
Trash Tons (not including tires): 4.1
Tires: 65 – (including one monster tractor tire 4 feet in diameter weighing over 500 lbs-total estimated tire tonnage: 1.25 tons)
Names of River Teams – “Oscar the Trashman, the Wally’s, the Thunderbirds, the River Rats, Stream Team 211, BEEP (Boeing Employees for Environmental Protection), Water Girl, the Nature Nuts, Grassy Grassos, the Mud Bugs, Altogether, the Odd Balls, Bank of America, Girl Talk, Rocks the Boat”
Stream Teams – 519, 2793, 1782, 401, the mighty 211, 1995 (DeSoto Car Shop Team), BEEP, 1875, 439 (Parkway North Nature Nuts)
Other Groups – Lindbergh High School, Washington University Alpha Phi Omega, Washington University Physical Therapy, Girl Scout Troop #607, Bank of America Employees, Big Muddy Adventures.

Trash Tally!!!!
(partial list of trash collected)
152 Large Bags of Trash
65 tires (including one monster tractor tire 4 feet in diameter weighing over 500 lbs)
5 refrigerators
2 chairs
2 blue 55-gallon plastic barrels
3 metal 55-gallon drums
9 large styrofoam chunks
33 pieces of scrap metal
2 five gallon buckets
1 inflated green floaty ring
1 Tigger toy ball
1 full beer can labeled “211” found by Stream Team 211
1 German plastic toy soldier
1 green plastic shed
1 bike frame
1 blanket
1 tent
2 gas tanks
1 Sit & Spin toy
1 douche
1 mail box
1 toilet float
1 sand-buried, dilapidated metal shed
1 hot water heater
1 metal sign
1 baseball bat
3 propane tanks
1 fisherman’s jug w/ hook
1 bicycle (well past its prime)
1 bed spring frame
1 table
1 large metal ratchet
1-30 gallon metal tank
2-50 gallon plastic garbage can
3 barge cables
1 construction barrel
½ of a metal drum
1 barge turnbuckle key
1 car seat
1 TV picture tube
wood stakes
1 truck headlight
1 cooler
1 toilet seat