Stories from Mari-Osa

Mari-Osa Dump Clean-up (Take Three)

Mari-Osa Public Access on the Osage River
March 6th & 7th, 2010
text by Steve Schnarr, photos by Alicia Pigg & Melanie Cheney

Every clean-up event is made of a variety of people and stories, each reflecting a different important part of the effort. Here’s a few stories to give you an idea of all the aspects of pulling this off (the true definition of behind the scenes is no one was there to take your picture...sorry for the lack of photos with these good stories...)–

Racin’ Dave and the River Relief Diagnostic Team
Friday morning, we arrived at the Karp Yard – the place we store our equipment and boats. Gear was loaded, boats hooked up, then we realized – our box truck was not starting. Racin’ Dave immediately hopped under the hood with his test light, checking wires and relay switches. He pretty quickly realized that the fuel pump relay was out. He found an extra wire, pulled the plug, and spliced the wire into the mount for the switch. He headed to O-Reilly’s to purchase a new switch while we all hit the road toward the Mari-Osa. “Just don’t turn the truck off until we get this new switch in there – you’ll be fine.”

On Saturday morning, the 160 (our most troublesome boat) shot craps, so a diagnostic team (Scot Heidbrink, Racin’ Dave, John Brady, others) gathered around the motor and went to work. Several problems were revealed and eventually they got the boat on the water. It never worked quite right, but it was proven once again how this clean-up machine can come to a screeching halt if it weren’t for this group of folks keeping things running.

MRCN Americorps and the Clean-up Set-UP Team
Upon arriving at the MariOsa on Friday, we ate lunch and then got to the tasks at hand. Bob Woodward from the Osage Campground dropped off his awesome trailer to serve as clean-up headquarters. Gear was unloaded into it, then we splashed a couple boats to scout the river and set up the dumpsite.

Three Americorps members from Missouri River Communities Network (Julia Karll, Rebecca Spicer and Lance Mallette) were on hand to help with the set-up, along with Sarah and Josh Pennington, Liz and Gabe Doubet, Capt. John Breyfogle, Rod Power, Anthony Pettit, John Brady, Jeff Barrow, Ruthie Moccia, Melanie Cheney and Racin’ Dave.

We shipped the flume across the river and unloaded it. Josh brought some orange hazard fencing and t-posts - Rod and Brey brought their power tools. As Brey fine-tuned the flume, adding a second level to get higher up on the hill, a group of us headed to the top of the dump with various implements of destruction.

The goal was removing big stuff stuck up at the top, kicking trash down, and knocking as much of this plume of broken glass, metal and plastic downhill as possible – closer to the trash flume. We created several trash avalanches, and the dump suffered a massive slump downslope. At one point, I surfed a trash wave, dragging bedsprings and coils of metal cable behind me. My mud boots held up nicely…

It became clear that the dump was increasingly unstable, and that falling rocks and trash were going to be an issue the next day. We decided to post one dump-master to oversee the whole thing, with bosses manning each flume to keep the system safe.

“Osage Bob” and the Campground
If your name is John or Dave or Bob or Joe, and you become part of the River Relief crew, chances are you’ll get a nickname to distinguish you from the others. We just started calling the owner of the Osage Campground, Bob Woodward, “Osage Bob” .

As in – “I’ll see if Osage Bob has a charger for this battery” or “I picked up some ice from Osage Bob’s for lunch” or “maybe Osage Bob’s got one..”

Bob’s campground also serves as a dune buggy/Volkswagon shop and yard, boat repair service, convenience store, water source, cultural headquarters and all around problem-solving headquarters. His pavilion (with overhead lights, electric and water) became camp headquarters. Our tents and vehicles filled up his campground. It was beautiful!

We can’t thank Bob enough for being such a wonderful host for us all weekend, answering our questions, fixing our problems -- always being helpful.

The Hardest-Working Group of Volunteers in Mid-Missouri
As I said before, the only announcement we did of this clean-up were folks that helped last year. So this year’s crew (134 volunteers at least!) was the toughest of the tough. We had three crews from area Wal-Marts – always a tough bunch that can turn their volunteer donation into cash for the clean-up through the Volunteerism Always Pays program at Wal-Mart. They also brought drinks, coolers and gift cards to help pay for lunch.

Lincoln University, once again, came out in force. One of our most dedicated partners is MANRRS (Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources & Related Sciences). They come to all of our Jeff. City area clean-ups – and know how to get it done. Not to mention Prof. Adrian Andrei, who has been coming to clean-ups with his daughter for several years. That dynamic duo did both shifts this time. Plus, many of his students came – and one found an old Studebaker hubcap – valued by one appraiser at the site at 250 bucks. Plus, a bunch of members of Lincoln Track and Field came out.

Repeats
Once you spend a Saturday working on that hill, you want to see it disappear. Most people that worked on the Mari-Osa this year had been there before, and they just stepped right in and got to work. A bunch of them worked both shifts. John and Walt Birmingham brought another Birmingham, brother Jesse. The Hearne twins, Leslie and Sarah, were superstars once again. That's them in the picture on the right.

John Van Eschen who lives on the bluff downstream of the dump, met us the day before as we were scouting. He was billy-goating up and down the steep slope, bagging up trash and bringing it down to shore where we could get it the next day. He said all he needed was one other person to climb up and help him the next day, and he could get this massive piece of farm equipment off the hill. The next morning, as John arrived at the clean-up, our clutch performer Nick Recker showed up. They both hopped on the next boat and got that thing down. Nobody knew what it was - someone offered that it could have been a grinder from a mill.

Boat Drivers
We really didn’t recruit boat drivers for this clean-up…until the last minute.
We’ve been working with Andy Neidert on his Race To The Dome canoe race and mentioned that it was starting to look like we’d need another boat for the MariOsa…
He was immediately on it! Andy and Leisha showed up ready to roll, splashed their boat and looked for direction. Finding none, they proceeded to fill the boat with trash. Over and over again….

The same thing happened to Josh Lallaman. Last year, in Jefferson City, he brought a University of Missouri boat to help at our clean-up at Noren Access – and stayed until the last load came in (he got the next-to-last load). So the week before MariOsa I called him and begged for his help. Not only did he come out to help, he hit the river two hours early to sample for paddlefish (there weren’t any yet, water temps still too cold). After lunch, he trailered his boat and went to Osage City for the Great Tire Wrangle.

The Great Osage City Tire Wrangle
We got a call from Cole County Health Dept. Enforcement Agent Mike Sapp in December. He was trying to help a local woman get rid of the tires that had been dumped on her property. Both Missouri Stream Team and Department of Natural Resources employees told him we were doing a clean-up in the area in March, so he called us up to see if we could help. Because we are a non-profit registered with the state to collect discarded tires, we are able to collect the tires, pay a local tire hauler to remove them, then get reimbursed from the Dept. of Natural Resources for a portion of the amount.

We were happy to help.

While we were at it, River Relief volunteers gathered other dumped tires in the area on Saturday morning. Our friend Soda Popp pointed out some areas where the river had brought in piles of tires.

In the afternoon, another tough bunch of volunteers met our loyal mid-Missouri tire hauler, Jim Salmons, back down in Osage City. They loaded all 240 tires that had been collected into his massive trailer. Jim came down to MariOsa the next day to get the remaining 60 tires.
John Brady was the leader of the tire get. From scouting the site, to leading the crews, to rolling tires to helping, eventually, dig the mud out of one gargantuan grader tire – he got it done.

Planting the hillside -
On Sunday morning following the clean-up, a crew of River Relief volunteers stuck around to plant native trees and grass seed on the dumpsite. Although we'll probably return again to work this area, we wanted something in place to hold the soil and reduce site erosion into the Osage River. Missouri Stream Team donated some flowering dogwood, rough-leaved dogwood, false indigo and nine-bark. Nadia Navarette, a native plant researcher at Lincoln University, donated manna grass, canadian wild rye and river oats seed.

It was tough planting the seedlings in the rocky, scrap-metal filled hillside, but we got it done! We are looking forward to checking on the progress of the seed.

Good Eats –
So much work goes into the food at a River Relief event. Jeanie Kuntz cooked up a massive batch of spaghetti sauce on Thursday for the Friday feast. Then, Friday afternoon, she made up the Three Sisters Soup for Saturday’s lunch. Thursday night, Melanie, Canaan and I made up a batch of chicken chili for Saturday. The hardcore breakfast crew put it together early, before everyone else woke up. Wal-Mart donated the sub sandwiches. We purchased the veggie subs from SubWay.

Jim Cooper, the Osage Navy smoker extraordinaire, stoked the hickory fires at 3:30 on Saturday morning to get ready for Saturday night’s feast. Even though I’ve sampled Jim’s fare several times, this was the best BBQ I’ve ever had….hands down.

Each one of these people poured love into this rolling feast. That love is a major part of what sustains these clean-ups. Thank you food angels!

Our Mari-Osa Story (so far)

Mari-Osa Dump, June 2007, before we started - photo by Racin' Dave

Mari-Osa Dump Clean-up (Take Three)
Mari-Osa Public Access on the Osage River
March 6th & 7th, 2010

This has been our third year returning to the Mari-Osa Delta for a river clean-up. What spawned this tradition was a phone call from our friend Jeff Finley of the US Fish & Wildlife Service back in 2007. We were doing a clean-up further down the Osage River and he mentioned that we should go upstream and check out a legendary dumpsite near the MariOsa ramp. After we wrapped up the clean-up, Racin’ Dave and Anthony headed up to scout the dump. We’d never seen anything like it.

For a hundred years, people had been dumping their garbage off the top of a beautiful bluff overlooking the Osage. The refuse had spilled all the way to the river. On the right are a couple pictures Racin’ took that day. The dump was just upstream and across the river from the MariOsa Boat Ramp, so logistically it seemed like an ideal location to take on a massive dump like this.


2008

The first year, 2008, we worked for a day and a half on the site. As soon as volunteers arrived at the site, boats began filling with huge appliances and car parts. We filled four scrap metal rolloffs that day and one landfill rolloff. Almost 19 tons of garbage!
Click here for more details of the first Mari-Osa event...
http://www.riverrelief.org/event/mari-osa-dump-08/

2009
The big stuff was mostly gone, so we needed a new strategy to get stuff safely down the hill. Our Captain John Breyfogle reclaimed a 4’x20’ plastic culvert that washed up on his Missouri River beach, cut it into pieces, then reassembled it at the dump to serve as a “trash flume”. The toughest bunch of volunteers I’ve ever seen worked on the hill, and six other dump sites in the area. Over 13.1 tons of junk were removed that day.
http://www.riverrelief.org/event/mari-osa-dump-part-2/

and you really need to see the Trash Flume video...
http://www.youtube.com/user/rivertrash1875#p/a/u/0/2fzwTeAijPQ

2010
Because most of the auxiliary dumps were taken care of in 2009, we decided to focus more exclusively on the dump. The only advertisement we did was contacting folks that worked on the site last year. Still, over 130 volunteers worked on this clean-up – AWESOME! Over 12 tons of junk removed from the riverside in one day!

River Relief partners with Wal-Mart

by Melanie Cheney

As one of the organizers for our annual Missouri River clean-up here in Mid-Missouri, it was part of my job to do as much outreach as possible in the community. That meant reaching out to area business’ for support either by financial means, in-kind donations, or volunteer recruitment. I am always surprised when folks get excited and energized about a clean-up in their area, enthusiastically lending their support by any means necessary. Wal-Mart did just that and more!

I started making phone calls to ask Wal-Mart about their community support programs, though it took several times, I finally got the right person on the phone. One of the managers had gotten my message, checked out our website, and had all hands on deck, though he was obviously a very busy guy. Shane Jordan immediately offered to help River Relief apply for a $1,000 grant and was rounding up volunteers from all of the Columbia stores, including Sam’s Club to participate in this year’s cleanup. He was down right excited about coming down to the river with his co-workers. In addition, the week before the clean-up he asked all of his soda vendors for donations of beverages to bring to the clean-up for lunch, and he did just that.

On a beautiful spring day in Hartsburg, a small handful of Wal-Mart volunteers made their way down to the Missouri River, got out on our boats, and cleaned up the banks of the river. They stayed for lunch, and then went out again, even though most of the volunteers generally go home after lunch. After a hard day’s work, Americorps Stream Team Assistant Chuelo Arias, Missouri River Relief Program Manager Steve Schnarr, and myself (also a Stream Team Assistant) all individually encouraged the Wal-Mart Green Team to start a Stream Team of their own. When I called Shane back a few weeks later, he had done just that! They were starting a stream team to clean the Hinkson Creek which flows directly behind their store, and has been on Missouri’s impaired water ways list for sometime. I couldn’t have been happier. As if that weren’t enough, he told me they were waiting on the $1,000 giant sized check to arrive to present to us at a special reception at Wal-Mart. Wow!

Thanks to all the enthusiastic volunteers & coordinators like Shane Jordan & the Wal-Mart Green Team, I think Missouri River Relief and the Stream Team Program have made a partner for life!



The Hartsburg clean-up was possible because of the additional financial support of Missouri Dept. of Natural Resources and Mid-Missouri Solid Waste Management District, both long-time supporters. A big thanks to our other local sponsors, Lakota Coffee who donated fresh coffee grounds & supplies to our crew, Panera Bread Company who kept us fed with bagels and cream cheese, Veolia Environmental Service who supplied the roll-off containers for landfill trash, and Civic Recycling who are also a life long partner is taking our muddy recyclables for free. There are many many more sponsors who support River Relief’s mission to introduce good stewards to our beloved Big Muddy, for more information, please visit our website at www.riverrelief.org and check out our other blog’s too!