{Reconnaissance and Relief}

St. Joseph Missouri River Clean-up

Saturday, May 17, 2014

French Bottom Boat Ramp, St. Joseph, MO

Blogmaster's Note - This blog was originally posted by our amazing writerly volunteer Tina Casagrand on her personal blog "The Gasconader". Check out more of her insights there. 

Text and photos by Tina Casagrand

Ahoy! Results are in for Missouri River Relief‘s cleanup at St. Joseph, Missouri (you can find them here)  This was my third away-team cleanup as a crew member. My first experience with the group was back in 2009, and despite attending dozens of events as a regular volunteer, it’s impossible to know just how much work goes into preparing for these things.

First, there’s the matter of time and location. Where’s a good boat ramp to conduct a cleanup, and where can we camp that’s reasonably close? At St. Joe, we lucked out with Remington Nature Center hosting us on its grounds, just a parking lot away from the boat docks. We cut driftwood behind the building and established a kitchen underneath it, pitched tents by Roy’s Creek, and built a campfire laughably close to the city’s riverside bike trail.

Sunrise on Roy’s Creek.
I wouldn’t mind unzipping my tent to this every day.
Photo by Tina Casagrand

And then there are logistics of the cleanup itself.

Since an aerial trash scout in 2011, it’s been a little easier to spot dump sites on maps. Even so, there’s a lot of foot work for crew members to find litter that’s washed in by recent floods. The day before a big cleanup, we scout for sites up and downstream, about five miles each way, on both sides of the river. A few people are elected dispatchers and assistants, a couple drive the boats, and the rest of the group piles in to check out the damage.

The river was low that week, meaning steep and muddy banks. Melanie, Jennifer, and I scrambled up them into the woods to find trash caught behind logs and foliage. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a lot to find, maybe because the river is so straight and swift in this channelized stretch by the city. I did, however, eat a bowlful of lamb’s quarter, watch several Common Yellowthroats flitting through the woods, and even scared up a Nighthawk! Seeing a Caprimulgid in the daytime was a first for me. Just one of the little serendipitous joys in getting outside.

Boots get muddy. Boats get muddy. Mud gets muddy.

That was Friday. A pretty easygoing day, although the scout does get tiring after a while. We assign jobs for the crew the night before, and get started really early the next day. Like, 6 a.m. breakfast early. On a Saturday! Then follows this volley of set-up, registration, driver meeting, volunteer orientation, safety talks and finally–rejoice!–getting out on the boats.

It’s a lot to do before noon, but we pull it off flawlessly, crew members filling in wherever they’re needed. Because turnout was fairly light this day, the drivers and first mates got to stay with their boatful of volunteers instead of leaving to get another group. That was awesome for me, as I got more alone time in nature, and was able to hang out with a totally precious gang of 7-year-old bicyclists. On the way back, when I ate an orange and tossed the peel in the stream, one of the kids looked totally disappointed. “Eli, what’s wrong?” He threw his palms in the air and said, “You’re littering!” in such a dismayed voice that I’m sure my response of, “don’t panic, it’s organic” would fail to redeem my sin.

After the cleanup, we give lunch to our volunteers, host and judge a trash contest, chill for a while, then peel out in the boats again to pick up the trash. Volunteers leave their bags, tires and other stuff on the shore. We pick it up in the afternoon in a streamlined fashion.

This, my friend, is a well-orchestrated daisy chain of trash.

John Brady is our premiere frontloader communicatuer.
Here, he’s telling the driver to smash down on this refrigerator.

I’m a little exhausted just writing about this. Which is ok, because feeling exhausted means you did a lot of hard work, eh? And what better frame of mind for a sunset walk on a trail by the river? This was one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen, seriously. Even my fancy new iPhone (hey world, I finally upgraded!) couldn’t capture it’s glory, but here. I tried.



You can catch me at the next river cleanup at Leavenworth, Kansas, and Weston, Missouri the weekend of June 7. Seriously, come if you can (free boat ride and fuzzy feelings), and if you can’t, follow my Twitter and Instagram. (Yep, Instagram. That’s new for me. Give me something to follow!) I’ll bring you along for the ride.

We Love St. Joe!

We arrived on Thursday to start setting up our camp, conveniently located right underneath the Remington Nature Center, and began to ready our crew for the trash scout on Friday.  The ladies at the Nature Center were really nice and let me stop in there a few times to get out of the rugged cold.  I loved seeing the huge Wooly Mammoth that greets everyone at the front door!  What a cool place for learning right there on the river.

The dumpsters started to arrive, and we began to pile on the layers of clothing as a chilly wind blew, and the clouds robbed us of warm sunshine.  Jerry, one of several Master Naturalist volunteers that showed up to help, joined the scout.  And off we went.

Even though the weather was bitterly cold, I enjoyed as always seeing the beauty of the river while scouting for trash.  While we were motoring around, every now and then I would see a small duck head pop back underneath the water, only to pop up again close by.  I never saw the ducks body... how strange.  Jerry told us that they were called "Pie Billed Grebes".  Then I also noticed some "Coots" easily identifiable by their black round body and white bill.  But the best "bird" highlight of the weekend was the Pelicans!  There was probably over 100 pelicans that kept us company all weekend just across the river flying high above the tree line around & around in circles.... they never went anywhere, never perched on anything or swam down the river that I saw... they just glided around and around.  Oh, and how can I forget, the Swan!  We saw the same exact lone swan swimming around the riverfront two years ago.  Local ambassador, Ken Reeder tells us that the Swan has lived there at the river front for something like 11 years!

 

This was Missouri River Relief's 3rd cleanup in the St. Joe area.  Together with our community clean-up partners and volunteers, we were able to remove 6.9 tons of trash from the banks of the river!

Thank You St. Joe!

It has been 2 years since we helped clean the river in St. Joe, and with 1 major flood in the mix from 2011, we weren't sure how much trash we would find.  Sadly, we found a ton.  Well, I guess 7 tons actually.  Highways are built right alongside the river, with lots of railroads, and pockets of land for a walking trail and riverfront park.  So what we were actually finding was highway and railroad refuse, trash littered from well used beaches and fishing accesses, illegal dumps and abandoned homeless camps.  We prayed for a great turnout so that we could get all of this junk off of the river.

Well, if the sun had just come out, we might have seen over 270 volunteers like in 2010.  But after a freezing night hovering in the 30s, a stiff breeze and no sunshine, we were just amazed that 125 brave souls showed up to get out on the river!  Brrrr!!! ...and clean the river they did!  Just check out the amazing trash tally !

After bringing the volunteers back for lunch just a couple hours later, one of the favorite parts of our lunch program is the "Git that Garbage" Trash Contest!  As each boat load started to trickle back in, much to everyone's relief, the lunch that was being provided by the St. Jo Frontier Casino had been moved inside!  It was like heaven.  What a treat.  On top of that, we had a wonderful trash contest MC'd by our own Steve Schnarr, followed by a captivating river "love" story by story teller and Ozark songstress, Maridith Sisco!

 

We got all warmed up - no actually Meredith got us fired up - and we went back out to finish hauling in the trash from the river that we learned was really our life blood, every bit a part of us.  Meredith joined us later that night around our campfire where she graced us with her historic rendition of the song "Shanendoah" after telling us the story of its history and how over time it had been changed to a sailor's tale.  It was amazing.
Everything was smooth sailing after lunch, and we had an incredible clean-up and weekend in St. Joe!

A huge thanks to Scott, Thomas, Darby and Jason, the Mo. Dept. of Conservation biologists that brought their boats to shuttle volunteers. Much thanks to MDC employee T.J. Peacher for bringing an ATV and trailer to help haul trash by land. And thanks to Ron Gillette from St. Joseph Parks for running the back hoe used to get trash from boats to the dumpsters.  And to our local ambassadors, Ken Reeder and John Wood who took good care of us while we were in town.

To read more stories about the St. Joe Missouri River clean-up and see more photos from the event, check out our blog and photos on Flickr!

It takes a real leap of faith to get down & dirty on the Mighty MO and we can't thank our St. Joe sponsors, partners and volunteers enough for all of the support they showed us while we were in town!

photos by Melanie Cheney, Steve Schnarr and Rachel Beck  http://rachelbeckphotos.com/

St. Joe Missouri River Clean-up 2012

St. Joseph Missouri River Clean-up

French Bottom Boat Access, St. Joseph, MO

October 6, 2012

Results:

Total Volunteers:  125

MRR Crew:  22

Boats:   7  (4 Missouri River Relief, 3 MDC)

River Miles:  8  (Rivermiles 446-454)

River Level: 5.6 ft

Tires: 52 Tires (.83 tons)

Landfill Tonnage:  3.05 tons

Scrap Metal:  3.01 tons

Total Tonnage:  6.9 Tons

Groups & Agencies Involved:  

The Missouri River Relief Crew, Missouri Master Naturalists - Loess Hills Chapter, Cub Scouts Webelos Pack 17, Cub Scout Webelos Pack 219, Boy Scout Troop 219, Venture Crew #6, Buchanan County Juvenile Authority, St. Joseph Parks and Recreation & Public Works, Rachel Beck Photography, Remington Nature Center, River R. Reeder Foundation, Missouri Dept. of Conservation, St. Jo Frontier Casino

Names of River Teams:  Iron Man, Gate, 219, Beast Mode, Mud Ducks, River Monsters, Major Major, Crew 6

Trash Tally!!!!

126 Bags of Trash

52 Tires

1 Refrigerator

1 Freon Tank

1 Air Compressor Tank

1 Gas Stove in pieces

1 Gas Stove

1 Furnace

1 Perfect Toilet

1 Chunk O’ Styrofoam

2 – 5 gallon Plastic Buckets

3 ½ - 55 gallon Metal Drums

5 – 55 gallon Plastic Barrels

2 Plastic Waste Baskets

5 Mattresses

1 Crib Mattress

3 Box Springs

1 Bed Frame

1 Couch

7 Chairs

1 Plastic Crate

1 Exhaust Pipe

1 insulated Angle Bar

2 rolls of Carpet

1 Board

1 Spool End

20 feet of Snow Fence

19 Metal Pipes

1 Fishing Rod prop

8 pieces of Rebar

2 Fence Posts

1 Paint Can

1 Metal Shelf in pieces

1 Metal Table Top

1 Cable Wire

15 pieces of Scrap Metal

2 Gusset Beams

1 Cable Support

2 ½  TV’s

1 Stereo Speaker

1 Sleeping Bag

5 Tarps

1 Tent

2 inflatable Swimming Pools

1 Vacuum Cleaner

1 Car Grill

1 Tennis Shoe

1 plush Yellow Duck

Trash Contest Entries!!!!

Weirdest Trash

1 Nintendo Gun

1 Plastic Wishbone

1 Creepy Naked Baby Doll

1 Toothbrush

1 part to an Electric Car

1 purple Transformers Magnet

Biggest Trash

1 Boat Bumper

1 Bedframe

1 Couch

1 Barrel

1 Center Console to a Car with cup holders

Most Fashionable

1 pink zebra striped women’s Briefs

1 nice Watch – Wilson’s Glow in the Dark

1 leopard print Cat House

1 old Leather Satchel

1 white strappy baby sandal

1 Hoop Earing

Most Artistic

1 Ceramic Painted Dish

1 CD still in the wrapper “The 4 Most Important Things I Know” by Pastor Brian Zahnd with the Word of Life Church in St. Joe, MO

1 Ceramic Pepper Shaker

 

photos by Rachel Beck, rachelbeckphotos.com

Karl's Big River Adventure

St. Joseph Missouri River Clean-up

French Bottom River Access & Boat Dock, St. Joseph, MO - Rivermile 450
October 16, 2010

text by Steve Schnarr, photos by Vicki Richmond and Kris Lancaster (EPA)
For more clean-up info and results, click here

At our St. Joseph clean-up, we had a special visitor. Karl Brooks, the Regional Administrator for Region 7 of the US Environmental Protection Agency came for lunch and to help us out with the trash haul (by the way, if you click that EPA link above and scroll down, you can see their news release on the clean-up).

The trash haul is one of the most rewarding parts of the day. You get a good boat ride through the whole reach of the clean-up and get to see all the piles of trash volunteers collected throughout the morning. Then you pick those piles up and load 'em into a boat. When Karl told our director, Jeff Barrow, that he wanted to help at a clean-up, Jeff suggested he come for the trash haul.

Karl was a hard worker (yeah, it looks like he's lounging in this photo...but a big pile of trash bags is a great place to recline in between hitting trash sites!). And a really pleasant part of the crew. This gave our board president Dave Stous a chance to explain what Missouri River Relief does for the river and the citizens that live along it. Good stuff!

Karl immediately "got it". Although he'd lived for many years in Lawrence, KS, on the banks of the Kaw River, he'd never been on the Mighty Missouri before. "I can't tell you how many times I've driven over this river on bridges," he said, echoing the response we hear from so many volunteers. "But getting out on it in one of these boats is completely different. You can feel the power of this amazing river, and feel that it's actually alive."

That's such a big part of what we do - exposing people to the world class resource we have right under our noses in a way that is so personal, so hand-on that it changes people.

It was an honor to show the Big Muddy to Karl Brooks and the EPA crew.

Speaking of the EPA crew, EPA biologist Deanna Collier led a group of EPA boat operators that morning, hauling volunteers out on the river. They did a wonderful job, and we'd be sunk without the help of river experienced pilots like EPA, MDC, USFWS and more.

By the way, Karl wanted us to pass on his appreciation to all of you who have given up your Saturday mornings and more to clean-up our Big Muddy Missouri River.

So Thanks!

St. Joe Trash Tally!

St. Joseph Missouri River Clean-up

French Bottoms River Access & Boat Dock, St. Joseph, MO - Rivermile 150
October 16, 2010
(for more info & links about this clean-up, click here)

• Total Volunteers: 278
• MRR Crew: 21
• Boats: 13 boats (3 Missouri River Relief, 5 Missouri Department of Conservation, 2 EPA, 3 local boaters)
• River miles: 12 rivermiles
• River Level: 14.7 feet (St. Joseph gage)
  
• Landfill Tons: 3 tons
  
• Scrap Metal: 1.3 tons
  
• Tires: 117 tires (2.1 tons)
• Total Tonnage: 6.4 tons
  

Trash Tally!
289 bags of trash
117 tires
Countless plastic bottles and little pieces of Styrofoam
1 large innertube
6 plastic milk crates
11 large chunks of Styrofoam
7 chunks of plastic
1 cooler
8 5-gallon plastic buckets
2 cans of paint
2 5-gallon metal buckets
2 55-gallon metal drums
4 55-gallon plastic barrels
1 control panel from a dredge
1 ringer washer
Complete game of washers
3 fire extingishers
1 message in a bottle
1 duck decoy
1 planter made from a tire
1 plastic leg from a doll
1 lawn troll
Small refrigerator
1 brand new pair of boots
1 pair of boots a little worse for the wear…
1 silk scarf
1 stained glass cube
1 framed dolphin print
1 hand saw
1 electric shaver
1 very large propane tank
1 small propane tank
1 helium tank
1 toaster
Several computers and computer parts
1 microwave
1 screen door frame
1 set of venetian blinds
1 queen-size box-spring mattress

11 chairs
1 semi-truck mudflap
1 large Tupperware container
1 small TV
1 big-screen TV
11-foot hydraulic coupling hose
1 car bumper
1 car seat bench
1 car seat
1 truck bed liner
1 hide-a-bed frame
1 railroad angle bar
1 CCA wood beam
1 push broom
1 piece of chainlink fence
5 bags of moldy clothing
1 toy playhouse
1 toy parking garage
1 desk and the entire contents of a person’s office, including file cabinet, electronic goods, computer manuals, briefcase, a Bible and much, much more dumped along the Riverfront trail and covered with a tarp
5 blankets

1 record
25 pieces of assorted scrap metal
1 green buoy
1 rebar grate
1 metal ironing board
1 metal grill
1 metal tray
1 very large big metal sign
1 computer monitor
1 garden hose
5 torn, moldy tarps, one with the remains of an unidentifiable animal
Parts of 5 tents
20 tent poles
1 foam cushion
1 rake
1 kitchen sink
1 pool lining
1 plastic wash sink

Back in ol' St. Joe

St. Joseph Missouri River Clean-up

French Bottom River Access and Boat Dock, St. Joseph, MO - Rivermile 150
October 16, 2010

text by Steve Schnarr, photos by John Wood, Hana Kellenberger, Vicki Richmond, Steve Schnarr, Alicia Pigg
(for more cool links and facts about this clean-up, click here)

I spent a lot of time in St. Joseph getting ready for this clean-up. It was originally scheduled for June 26, but St. Joe was experiencing its third highest flood since the dams were put in, and we had to postpone the event. With our busy summer and fall, October 16 turned out to be our free weekend.

So I got to return to St. Joe several times in the planning stages. When you postpone an event like this, you always kind of worry that the energy may fizzle out and you end up with a shadow of what could have been.

Luckily, in St. Joe, the opposite happened. More people got interested and the energy built. The line of folks at sign-up was impressive.

Many groups of scouts came to help, and it was like they were on a mission. Troop 45 turned the event into a campout on the river, setting up their headquarters in the woods behind the Remington Nature Center. Several local companies gathered together crews of employees to pitch in, including Missouri American Water and Boehringer-Ingelheim. Alpha Phi Omega chapters from 3 universities (including from Springfield!) showed up to help. Missouri Western State students from several clubs put it on their calendars.

River Rat on Duty
Our local “point of the spear” for getting the word out was Ken Reeder, a local river rat who’s made it his mission to reconnect St. Joseph to the river that created the city. Ken serves on the Missouri River Recovery Implementation Committee, a federally mandated group of stakeholders in the river that represent each state and tribe along the longest river in North America. He’s one of the few citizen members of the committee, traveling to meetings on his own dime and representing the interests of citizen recreation on the Lower Missouri River. Here's Ken in the yellow greeting returning clean-up volunteers.

Ken played a major role in acquiring funds for St. Joseph to install one of the few public boat docks on the Lower Big Muddy. He adopted this clean-up as his own, and even “adopted” the French Bottom Boat Ramp through the Missouri Stream Team “Adopt-an-access” program. He was invaluable in spreading the word about the event, and helping me meet the people I needed to make it happen smoothly.

Good Food is SOOOOO Important
One of the folks Ken introduced to me was Craig Traverse from Terrible’s St. Jo Frontier Casino. The casino is located right next the boat ramp. The restaurant has a great view of the river. Craig immediately offered to cater lunch. It’s been a while since we had lunch catered to a clean-up, but never with tables and chairs set up in a nice white-picket fenced yard next to the river with steamer trays full of a variety of lunch options. It was a great scene to see all the hard working volunteers eating good food together, wearing the variety of t-shirts we had available to give out.


Biologists Sampling River Trash
One of our biggest partners of the event was Missouri Dept. of Conservation. They brought 5 boats from two offices to haul volunteers, and helped spread the word in St. Joe and help me scout sites to tackle by land. A lot of these folks spend many days on the river, trying to gauge the health of the fish and wildlife that live in this massive, muddy ecosystem. The fact they are willing to hop on the river again, on their weekends, to help this effort makes us really proud.

On the right is MDC fisheries biologist Darby Niswonger introducing a new group of volunteers to the Missouri River.

Harold Kerns was the St. Joseph MDC fisheries supervisor when I first started working on this project and had been a huge help at our previous St. Joe event. He is also an area leader in the Boy Scouts, and really helped spread to word to troops what a valuable and fun experience this is for the boys. By the time the clean-up happened, though, he had retired and his local staff picked up the slack. Congrats on a great career, Harold, and may you have many more river days to enjoy!

Troop 45
The Boy Scout and Cub Scout troop that turned the weekend into a camp-out, Troop 45, decided to stick to land at the clean-up, and they scoured the part of Waterworks Rd. that skirts through Sun Bridge Conservation Area. They hopped in a couple of our vans driven by Racin’ Dave and John Brady and headed to this steep, narrow gravel road where folks have been dumping tires and trash for years.

Those scouts and their parents pulled 76 tires and a pickup truck and trailer full of junk out of that area. It was an astounding pile from some really hard working and fun volunteers. It was a pretty dangerous spot to be working, but everyone worked together and took their time and the work got done.

As a special treat, we all got to meet our Region 7 EPA Administrator Karl Brooks in the afternoon. He came out for the trash haul, to see all the work volunteers had done and help get it to shore. He immediately fit in - and saw the value of citizen cooperation in taking care of our environment. Here is helping unload a boat full of junk from the river:


French Bottoms Access, and the Remington Nature Center parking lot, was built on an old landfill and EPA Superfund site. There are several areas like this in different communities along the river. Where cities and companies once saw the river as a convenient dumping ground, communities are seeing these cleaned up dumpsites as opportunities to reconnect with the river.

Trash Contest
For some folks, the trash contest during lunch is the highlight. They’ve found these cool trash treasures on the river and it gives them a chance to show them off. The display of found goodies was awesome. A complete washers game set beat out a Spiderman fishing rod (still in the packaging) for “Best Darn Find of the Day.” Guess which of these won "Wierdest Trash"...

(it was the leg)

A Haven
After a day showing the river to hundreds of people, getting boats in and out of the water, hauling trash and rolling tires and barrels, putting pop-up tents up, then moving them, then taking them down, our volunteer River Relief crew is pretty exhausted. Having a really nice place to relax, crack open a cold barley-pop and eat a good meal around a campfire is key. Phil and Maryanne Weaver opened up their perfect riverside clubhouse up to us, and even let us dip into their firewood stash. Hy-Vee donated a supurb fresh catfish dinner and we traded stories over a campfire on a beautiful, clear night capped off with a moonlight boat ride around the bend. This is what keeps us coming back!

River Clean-up promo on Keep St. Joe Weird

Local St. Joe resident Cory Stephens, created this fun video to promote the St. Joseph Missouri River Cleanup on his website keepstjoeweird.com. The clean-up is scheduled for June 26 at the French Bottoms Boat Ramp. Sign-in is at 8:30 a.m. and the clean-up will roll from 9 - noon.

For more info. and to sign-up on online, go to www.riverrelief.org, or simply show up Saturday morning and sign-in at the registration table. We're excited to be returning to this historic river town and hope to see you there!

River Relief Promo by keep st joe weird from Cory Stephens on Vimeo.