Big Muddy Clean Sweep Sponsors & Partners

THANK YOU!!!!

From donating water for the crew to pushing barges upstream, from $20,000 donations to a pot of chili - the Big Muddy Clean Sweep was made possible by many large and small donations. Here's a list of our sponsors & partners:

Golden Mile Sponsors

donating 10,000 or more to the Big Muddy Clean Sweep
Boeing
St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste Management District
Pat Jones
Missouri American Water
Mo. Dept. of Conservation
Mo. Dept. of Natural Resources
3M (Columbia Plant)

Barge Services Sponsors

Hermann Sand & Gravel
Humboldt Boat Service
Jefferson City River Terminal
Living Lands & Waters
Gateway Dredging
US. Army Corps of Engineers

$5,000 to 9,999

Burns & McDonnell
Cargill (Kansas City Plant)
Great Rivers Greenway District
Kansas City Water Services
Mid-Missouri Solid Waste Management District
Rivermiles
US Fish & Wildlife Service (Ecological Services)

$2,000 to 4,999

Boone Electric Community Trust
Bryan Johnson
City of St. Charles
Jackson County, MO
Josh & Sarah Pennington (Team MoDak)
Patrick and Becky Lynn

$500 to 1,999

Advantage Metal Recycling
AEP River Operations
Ameristar Casino
Bank of Washington
Bass Pro Shops
Bernie Arnold (Stream Team #211)
Big Muddy Adventures
Briarcliffe Development
Columbia Fish & Wildlife Conservation Office (USFWS)
Conservation Federation of Missouri
Dave & Fran Stous
David & Teresa Lackey
David Galat
Debruce Foundation
Faultless Starch - Bon Ami
Flaming Fiddle Productions
Gloria & Michael Attoun-Bauermeister

Jack Holzer
Jan Weaver
Joe Engeln
Joey Los
John Brady
Kansas City Power & Light
Kohl's - Washington, MO
Robb Jacobson 

Washington Boat Club

Washington Rotary Club

Water refill!

These two organizations brought water trucks and crews to top off our water tanks:
Jefferson City Fire Department
Washington Fire Department

Disposal

• Allied Waste of St. Louis waived several fees and lowered their cost for the very expensive task of disposing of 5 dumpsters worth of garbage, as well as delivered our tires to Tire Shredder's Unlimited.
• Missouri Stream Team Watershed Coalition took care of our tire disposal costs, utilizing a Stream Team revolving fund to cover the $2,300 cost until reimbursement. 

Food Donations

Click here to see our blog post on our wonderful Food Angels!

Food Angels and tasty donations

Here at River Relief, we know that the key to happy, healthy volunteers is good food. At most of our cleanups we designate a "Food Angel" to make sure there are good, fresh-cooked meals for our crew volunteers.

On the Big Muddy Clean Sweep, Tim Nigh is our head Food Angel, shopping, planning meals and cooking 'em up for us. There's nothing like coming back from a trash wrangle at 6 p.m. and knowing you're about to eat great food. Thank you so much Tim!! Liz Doubet was our Co-Food Angel for many events, adding her touch of love to our meals - and the best carrot-orange-ginger birthday cake ever!

But, along with donations from a bunch of businesses and organizations as well as food gifted by friends, we have a lot of Food Angels to thank. Here's a running list (we'll update as we get a chance)

Food Vendor Donations

Clovers Natural Foods
Patchwork Family Farms - we've been eating the best ham and bacon in the state! Thanks guys!
Schnucks

Kansas City

Michael Richmond - one of our longtime food angels.
North Central Neighbors - cooked lunch for our volunteers!

Cooper's Landing

Dee Kinnard - really helped out with our Banquet - Thanks Dee!
Jay Winkler (the Smokin' Hermit) - smoked our Banquet hog and donated a bunch of really great homemade BBQ sauce
Jack's Gourmet - yummies for our banquet
Broadway Brewery - a full keg of their tasty microbrew - it was Summer Ale and was fantastic!
Melanie Cheney, Liz Doubet, Gale Lauber Johnson, Racin' Dave and the rest of our great Banquet committee - thanks ladies (and dude)!

Jefferson City 

Soda Popp - fried up some of his tasty fresh catfish and potatoes.
Wears Creek "Creek Squad" - they took care of our great volunteer lunches.

Hermann

Theresa Black and Debbie Bruno from Hermann Catering - she and her crew donated a complete dinner for the barge crew after the cleanup. So sweet!

Washington

Alan Rost - Catfisherman came to the barge with his frier and a bunch of fresh fish. Great way to start off our stay in lovely Washington! He also left us with a huge bag of great sausages we are still eating.
Cody, the Labadie Chef - she's catering our Fundraiser Barge Dinner. What a creative and skillful event planner!
MannWell's Coffee Alley - Cheryl and the crew hosted our Welcome Party, and she even baked a pan of blackberry cobbler for us to take to the barge.
Augusta Brewing Company and John G's Bier Deck - Donated beer to our Fundraising Barge Dinner and brought a beer booth to the River Festival.
Blumenhof Winery - donated wine for our Fundraising Dinner.

St. Charles

Jen Branstedder - A River Cleanup barge veteran, she graced us for several days with gourmet Mac & Cheeze and lasagna.

Confluence

Case Baum - tasty baked treats
Andy Bugh - came on board for a week during his paddle from Montana to the Gulf and served as co-food angel! Thanks Andy!
Alicia Pigg - ask for her recipe of chocolate pudding cakey tastiness.
Missouri American Water - brought a great lunch to the barge and invited mayors and water leaders from the metro area.
Big Muddy Adventures - Mike Clark and Betsy Tribble whipped up a cajun pasta delight
The River Gods - gave us a loose jug line with two blue cats on it. Tim Nigh cooked them up for breakfast!

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!

Troy Gordon Memorial Project

May 23^rd, 2009

Arrow Rock, MO

A little over a year ago, we lost a great friend & partner, Troy Gordon. As many of his friends & family came together to share a story, a hug or a laugh, we collected almost $2,000 to fund a memorial project to honor this special fallen hero. After all, it was not Troy’s spirit to stand around & contemplate, but to act! And we did just that on a beautiful Saturday morning in the little historic town of Arrow Rock on Memorial Day weekend.

Troy passionately worked on behalf of many organizations. Among them, the Big Muddy National Fish & Wildlife Refuge, Missouri Master Naturalist, Missouri River Relief, Missouri Stream Team, and he founded & worked with Friends of Big Muddy just to name a few. He focused much of that work in the bottomlands of the Missouri River in addition to his educational efforts, introducing kids and adults to the birds, snakes, turtles and other wildlife that live in Missouri.

To honor Troy’s life work, we chose a trail that he had worked so hard to help implement with Fish & Wildlife partner, Tim Haller at the Jameson Island Unit of the Big Muddy Fish & Wildlife Refuge in Arrow Rock. In addition to Jameson Island, there are currently 7 other units of protected river habitat in the Big Muddy Refuge. Comprised of 11,000 acres strung up and down the lower Missouri River, this important resource continues to grow and evolve as the Fish & Wildlife Service acquire more of the Big Muddy’s floodplain from willing sellers, restoring and preserving parts of this once wild ecosystem. For more info. on the Big Muddy refuge, visit their website.

On a warm & steamy May morning, Friends of Big Muddy came together once again for a work project on the refuge, like so many that Troy had organized in the past. With project funds donated in his name, we built a platform to place a memorial plaque & bench along the Arrow Rock Landing trail to the river, and replaced many of the invasive & nuisance plant species taking over the bottoms with over a hundred native wildflower’s & shrubs! So instead of Garlic Mustard, Multi-flora Rose & Winter Creeper, there are now Wild Sweet Williams, Celandine Poppy’s, Spiderwort’s, Golden Ragwort’s, Wild Ginger, Silky Dogwood’s, Paw-Paw’s, False Indigo’s & Buttonbush’s. It was a beautiful sight.

We followed our workday with a gourmet BBQ lunch, good company, and a quiet feeling of triumph as Friends of Big Muddy was resurrected after more than a year. Mostly, I feel thankful for all of the organizations & people that Troy has brought together. He certainly left a lasting legacy, and some pretty big foot steps to fill, but I feel confident that in due time we will close the huge gap that he left, with each new step.

Special thanks goes out to Tim Haller, Randy & Tom Bell of the Big Muddy Fish & Wildlife Refuge for all of their hard work & coordination in making this event go off without a hitch, Troy’s widow Janine, for being such a trooper and continuing to help us fill his footsteps, Tim Nigh & Dinise Mustain for preparing our gourmet lunch, the local farmer’s for providing us their with quality, feel-good-food, Missouri River Relief’s new hard-core crew members for volunteering for the work day even though they didn’t know Troy, and the many friends, partners, & family that donated either their time, support or money to help create such a nice tribute & memorial to Troy.

Thank you.

Confluence Thank Yous

Confluence Watershed Festival & River Clean-up
September 12-13, 2008
Columbia Bottom Conservation Area
photos by Melanie Cheney & Scot Heidbrink

Our wonderful weekend at the Confluence would not have been possible without the generosity and hard work of these sponsors and partners. A Big Muddy Thanks to all of you!

Major Sponsors
Missouri Department of Natural Resources
Missouri American Water (an indispensible help at the Watershed Festival too!)
Great Rivers Greenway District (and donated reusable water bottles for the cleanup!)

Sponsors
Ameren UE
Americorps
Anheuser-Busch
Bass Pro Shop
EarthShare of Missouri
Fred Weber, Inc.
Rick Holton
Missouri Department of Conservation
National Park Service
Pat Jones
River Kids (donated the H2Orchestra for the Festival!)
Rivermiles LLC
St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District (and donated two dumpsters!)
St. Louis/Jefferson Solid Waste Mgmt. Dist.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
Waterways Council

Partners

Big Muddy Adventures (free canoe rides and canoe clean-up!)
Columbia Bottom Conservation Area (the hosts with the most!)
Confluence Greenway - Trailnet
Dominos Pizza - Blackjack
EcoWorks Unlimited (Karla Wilson!!!)
Hazelwood School District
Mighty #211 Stream Team
Missouri Stream Team
Missouri River Communities Network
Spanish Lake Fire Dept.
Tri-Rinse, Inc. (took our tires for free!)