River Kids Rock the River

by Melanie Cheney

Well it started with a phone call, the River Kids were doing a week long, river-focused day camp and would love to join up with Missouri River Relief again on the Big River.  We had taken them out last year on the Mississippi, locking through a dam for the first time and worked with them on several clean-ups in years past.  They are a pretty hard-core group of kids, traveling to islands on the mighty Mississippi by canoe with our brother, Big Muddy Mike of Big Muddy Adventures, and have been doing small clean-ups on big rivers for years now.

So if that weren't enough incentive to hit the road with our boats, the River Kids have decided to host their annual party & fundraiser at the City Museum this fall in honor of Missouri River Relief's 10th Anniversary!  So on up we went, to take the kids out on a river trip for their summer day camp.

We met the crew of 20 at the Columbia Bottoms boat ramp.  As is usually the case when we travel to the confluence, the weather was less than ideal.  Winds were blowing in gusts up to 30 miles an hour.  I tied my hat on my head & recommended they do the same.  Once we got out on the river, it didn't seem so bad, we motored up the wide Missouri, then floated back down towards the Confluence of the 2 biggest rivers on this continent, the Missouri & Mississippi.

On the even wider Mississippi, we floated past big islands, enjoying the up-close views of herons & egrets, and best of all, an active eagles nest, all the while, looking for somewhere to eat lunch.  With the rivers running high this Spring, now into the Summer, there wasn't exactly any sandbars to stop at.  So we simply ate lunch in the boats, which the kids didn't seem to mind at all.  They were pretty easy going, and knew a "Big Muddy Adventure" entailed rolling with what the river handed you.   

So on down we went, past the beautiful chain of rocks bridge to our destination, Mosenthein Island.  Here along one of the biggest islands around, there was suppose to be guaranteed at least one sandy spit we could stop at & let them out to play.  Well, there was a sandy spit, but it was about the size of a one-roomed shack.  We stopped anyway, & had a fabulous time letting loose on what we called "Gilligans Island".  There were perfectly round hatched out turtle eggs all over, water soaked sand which made for enticing "quick sand", along with a gigantic red buoy the kids had fun playing on.  We took this group photo from "Gilligans Island" with the St. Louis skyline in the background as the kids literally walked on water.

Ok, it was time to get to work.  Finding a dry place to get in on the island was next to impossible.  It was super muddy with all the high water, so we just got muddy.  There was trash all over the island, we only needed to cover about a 1/4 mile stretch before we had created a large pile of bags to be loaded onto the boats.  The timing was perfect, one hour later, we were headed back for the bus.  We let the kids out at North Riverfront park and formed a "daisy chain" to get the blue bags of trash to the nearest trash receptacle.  Then cleaned up around the highly popular fishing spot before saying our farewells.  The clouds finally cleared up & the wind calmed, what a beautiful day it had turned out!

We took our now empty boats back to the island, and loaded 22 tires the kids had piled up in past clean-ups with Big Muddy Mike before they floated away in what was sure to be more high water soon, & headed back to the Confluence.

It was our brand new plate boats first clean-up, and after asking the River Kids for ideas on names, we christened the boat in the Confluence, and dubbed it the "Robust Ana Deca"  or "RAD" after some great suggestions by the river kids crew.   It literally means "Robust Anniversary Decade".  I don't know if that's what we'll call her for sure, but it sure did  have a nice ring to it on her maiden voyage!

Many thanks to the New City School's River Kids, and their teacher Ben Griffiths for allowing us to be an integral part of such an outstanding crew of young people.

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 with the St. Lou Crew - Chapter 3

42nd Annual Operation Clean Stream on the Meramec River

Greentree Park, Kirkwood, MO, to George Winter Park, Fenton, MO
August 22, 2009

text by Steve Schnarr, photos by Rod Power and Melanie Cheney

For four years, Missouri River Relief has been sending a crew and a boat or two to help out at Operation Clean Stream on the Meremec River.

This event is the crown jewel of river clean-ups in the state. This is the 42nd year this has been happening, and the way it works is astounding. It covers at least 5 watersheds: the Meremec, the Big River, the Bourbouse, the Courteois and the Huzzah. Local organizations and stream teams organize the individual sites (there are over 10 sites!) and the Open Space Council provides the structure to tie it all together.

At most sites, there are crews working the rivers from land, picking up trash. And there are canoes that float the streams, hitting the banks as they go to fill their boats with scrap metal, tires and plastic. Locals bring jet boats and skiffs to haul the big stuff. Food crews serve breakfast and lunch, canoe outfitters donate their services, Stream Team t-shirts and bumper stickers are handed out to all.

In all, over 2,000 volunteers give up their morning and afternoon on the third Saturday in August every year to do this. In the history of the event, countless tons of garbage carelessly discarded along the river have been removed. Much of this was dumped by residents of riverside cabins and municipalities, or was deposited when those cabins were washed away by the many floods on the Meramec.

Accounts by old-timers say that the banks of the lower Meramec used to be one massive dump site. No more! You have to look hard to find the remnants of old dumps, and that’s what we did. We just wish we had a crane or cutting torches for some of the big cars embedded in the banks! Next time!

The Gaw Street Go-Getters from Rocheport showed up early to add to our Columbia Crew: John Brady and Rod Power. And Craig Holt, Danny Miller and Tom Ball from St. Louis rounded out the mix.

We had one boat go down from Valley Park to Greentree, working up and down filling with mostly scrap metal. The other went from Greentree to George Winter Park, that recreational lake filled with jet boats and jet skis. What a joy to see all the canoes filled with junk and happy smiling faces. We love this event and hope to always play our small role.

Special thanks to Ron Coleman and Amy Butz of Open Space Council for organizing our role.

And kudos to the Missouri American Water team for stepping up to organize the George Winter Park site.

Trash Splash!

Confluence Trash Bash
March 28, 2009
Columbia Bottom Conservation Area
Text by Steve Schnarr

note: see photos taken by MDC media specialist Dan Zarlenga hosted on our flickr photo site by clicking here.

This was the third year that the Confluence Partnership, together with Trailnet, has hosted a clean-up in the Confluence region. Previously, they had focused on the area around the Old Chain of Rocks bridge – a signature Trailnet project that links Illinois and Missouri with a bike and pedestrian bridge. We either brought one boat to help, or in the case of flooding last year, a trailer to haul trash on land.

This year, thanks to a growing list of partners including the St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District.(MSD), the clean-up expanded to include several watersheds throughout the north St. Louis region, including Maline Creek, Watkins Creek, Coldwater Creek and Des Peres Creek. MSD wanted to support an area-wide clean-up to meet their Phase 2 EPA requirements.

Soon, Marc Clemens of Trailnet organized an awesome list of partners to lead sites throughout the area. We beefed up our participation to two boats, and led a Missouri River clean-up out of Columbia Bottom Conservation Area. Andy Tappmeyer, a biologist with Columbia Bottom, brought his boat to help as well, and MDC’s Ron Cooper brought a Bobcat to the site. Not to mention, Mike Clark from Big Muddy Adventures brought out his massive "Clipper" canoe to take a group out to Duck Island on the Mississippi.

Unfortunately, the weather was not good. It was cold, it rained all morning. At times the wind whipped up whitecaps on the river. But the amazing thing was that all of the volunteers that signed up to go on the river showed up. Even more! Although organizers anticipated an amazing 500 volunteers, 330 showed up in the frigid rain. Amazing!

We put 42 people on the river, supplied with trash bag ponchos and little else. There was some serious shivering, but no one declined to go on the river. Even though we cut the river trip short a little, these people did some serious work. Most of our volunteers were from Washington University Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity… and their positive attitude and hard work were inspiring. We were also joined by a great group of Missouri American Water employees.

The weather made Steve Nagle comment, “I’m calling it the Trash Splash”.

We were also joined with a bunch of good friends from past clean-ups. They worked on cleaning up the “small” stuff from an old farm dump on the new Cora Island Unit of the Big Muddy National Fish & Wildlife Refuge, a piece acquired in part to a partnership between the Trust for Public Lands and the Confluence Partnership. Plus, they gathered dozens of bags of plastic from several drift piles deposited last year.

The final trash haul, after lunch, was brutal. We were extremely lucky to have a good crew of River Relief pros show up. Expert boat drivers were Melanie Cheney, Anthony Pettit, Jeff "Swims with Boots On" Barrow & me. Everyone took a turn getting blown away on the river and we made quick work of the trash haul. Other amazing crew members were: Joe, Allison & Hannah Kellenberger, Joe Engeln, Nick Recker.

We think we got about a ton of trash, including this stuff:
6 55-gallon metal drums
1 Coast Guard buoy
1 hot water heater
2 metal gas tanks
2 tractor tires
18 car & truck tires
51 large trash bags (OK, I admit it...it's a complete guess...)
assorted scrap metal
1 gallon of marine varnish

As soon as we could wrap it up and drop off our scrap metal and tractor tires, we booked it back to Columbia, hoping to avoid the predicted snow. Luckily, we were one of the only places in the state that didn’t get any. Everyone made it back safely and, as far as I know, no one got sick. The Trash Splash rocked!

We were sponsored by: Missouri American Water, Great Rivers Greenway District and St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District. Thank you!!!!

La Benite Trash Tally!

Missouri River Clean-up

La Benite Park, Sugar Creek, MO
October 4, 2008

photos by Melanie Cheney & Rod Power

Total Volunteers: 411
MRR Crew: 42
Boats: 19 (1 Big Muddy National Fish & Wildlife Refuge; 6 MO Dept. of Conservation; 4 MO River Relief, 1 Burns & McDonnell, 3 Rivermiles, 3 EPA, 1 Army Corps of Engineers)
River Miles: 12.5 (RM 345-357, + 1/2 mile at Alligator Cove)
River Level: 8.5 feet (Kansas City gage)
Landfill Tons: estimated 7.5
Scrap Metal Tons: 1.5 tons
Tires: 58 (estimated 0.9 tons)
Total Trash Tonnage: estimated 9.9 tons
Names of River Teams: Water Girls, Piling People, Civil Air Patrol, The Islanders, The Otters, The Winners, 3331, Shay 4 & 5, Mud Hens, Scavengers, Swamp Rats, Lipton Ramrod Tea Bags, The Fridge Brigade, Scallywags, The Beavers, The Couple, The Impacters, The Rockers, Quiet Ones, Trash Wrestlers, GCC, Team Trashy, Random 5, Rockhurst, City Cougars, UMKC
Other Groups: Cargill, UMKC, Scuola Vita Nuova, Sprint, UMKC, Rockhurst University, Coca-Cola Enterprises.

(partial list of trash collected. note - this stretch downstream of the Kansas City metropolitan area has some of the wildest diversity of trash to be found on the river. Check this out!!!)
351 Large Bags of Trash
39 Tires on Rim
19 Tires w/o Rim
2 Rims
9 Chunks of Styrofoam
8 Coolers
1 Cooler Lid
3 Chest Freezers
2 Refrigerators
1 Mini-Refrigerator filled with nasty fishing bait, duct taped closed (now we know why)
1 Freezer Door
1 Hot Water Heater
3 Propane Tanks
2 Freon Tanks w/ condenser coils
1 Agricultural Spray Tank
8 5-gallon Plastic Buckets
1 5-gallon Metal Bucket
2 13-gallon Trash Can
1 25-gallon Metal Drum
11 55-gallon Metal Barrels
7 55-gallon Plastic Barrels
1 55-gallon barrel lid
1 Construction Road Hazard Barrel
10 Unidentifiable Plastic Pieces
1 Barstool seat, no legs
1 Plastic Tub
3 Car Bumpers
1 Car Seat
2 Gas Tanks
1 8-ft piece of Steel
20 pieces of Scrap Metal
1 Barge Cable
1 piece of Rebar
1 6-ft plastic tubing
2 Coast Guard Navigation Buoys
1 Metal Box
1 Big Metal Fuel Tank
3 Duck Decoys
2 Large Tarps
1 Carpet Foam
1 Wooden Pallet
1 12-ft Ladder
1 Plywood Sheet
1 Antique Glass Clorox Bottle
1 3-ft Plastic Planter
1 5-ft Plastic Garden Edging
1 small Plastic Rhinoceros
1 child Car Seat
2 Milk Crates
1 4-ft wooden “Be Courteous” Sign
1 Anchor
1 16-ft fiberglass boat in pieces
2 Gail Brown State Representative Signs
1 Plastic Pallet
1 Top to Kid’s Sand Box
Footballs, Volleyballs, Basketballs, etc.
2 Toy cars
1 Floating Brazier from the Brush Creek WaterFire 2007 (travelled over 22 miles from Lake of the Enshriners!)
1 Boat Seat
1 Slide from plastic children’s playset
3 more children’s plastic playset pieces-unidentifiable
1 Traffic Cone
2 big PVC Pipes
2 Big Wheel Toys
1 4X6x8’ Treated Lumber
1 Teletubby
1 Inflatable Love Doll still in original box (found floating in the river tied up in a plastic bag)
1 piece of Mistletoe
1 Adam Sandler DVD-“Going Overboard”
Just a touch of the trash brought in by 411 volunteers at the October 4 Missouri River Clean-up.
photo by Melanie Cheney

How Do You Spell Relief?

Confluence Watershed Festival and River Clean-up

September 12-13

Columbia Bottom Conservation Area

text by Mike Clark, photos by Tom Ball & Ruthie Moccia

(blogmaster's note: Mike Clark is proprietor of Big Muddy Adventures, a canoe guide and outfitter that does educational paddling trips on the stretch of Missouri River between Hermann and the Confluence as well as the Mississippi. This piece was part of his River Dispatch series and is republished with permission. Find out more at www.2muddy.com)

The mantra is simple, Leave No Trace. And to that end, we pick up trash.... ours, yours and everyone’s we find, removing it from the drift piles, bottom lands, sand bars, all remnants of the rising and falling rivers, We do this on every trip, and annually, we make our connection with those who do it the best.

In September, we spent a weekend with the Missouri River Relief crew, at the annual Columbia Bottoms Cleanup.

It began Friday morning with a Festival of Learning, an event that Mark Twain would heartily approve of.... “Don’t let school get in the way of your education.”

We arrived to find rows of tents, displays and hands-on exhibits, each providing a unique link of learning about the river, all spread out on the parking lot of the Columbia Bottoms Boat Ramp, By 10 AM, the raw curiosity of hundreds of boys and girls was bubbling like the water at the wing dike. . The Missouri River Reliefers greeted students from Hazelwood School District. Using a well-designed workbook to help them make connections, the kids moved wide eyed and cheerful from station to station.
Mike Clark puts a group of Hazelwood School District students through the paces in his giant Clipper canoe. photo by Ruthie Moccia

For our part, BMA established a tight little canoe camp overlooking the Mighty Missouri and conducted a canoe workshop. Each group of students arrived with a multitude of questions. "Yo, Canoe man. What dat for?" "How you hold dat?" Then they climbed aboard the Clipper for dry land training. We practiced and practiced until their paddling technique was perfected, all in hopeful preparation for the day when they come along on a real BMA river adventure.

The Learning Festival day concluded with a Full Moon Float, six members of the Missouri River Relief crew gathering in the Clipper for a journey into the sublime. The midnight paddle and sand bar swim included an offering... a cell phone, forgotten in a pocket and submerged during a swan dive. A cell phone skipping contest was proposed but quickly shouted down, instead, a new version of the “message in a bottle.” and so it was planned... putting a cell phone in a bottle, with only enough battery for one call, and upon discovery somewhere near the Gulf, the instructions for a one time only speed dial, whereby the message that contains the answer to... “How do you spell relief?”

After a fun night of river rat camp, Saturday dawned with perfect river rat conditions for the Confluence Clean Up. Again, the River Relief Crew performed expertly, enlisting hundreds of folks to the cause. By late afternoon, two ginormous dumpsters were filled with the waste and want not of humanity. Thousands and thousands of plastic bottles. Literally, tons of tires, auto parts, appliances, gathered on the river by volunteers, then dumped on the ramp from the bowels of the River Relief plate boats, and finally hauled up to the dumpsters for future relocation, sadly, to a landfill. The enormity of the task is always overshadowed by the goodness of the people who come to help.

Our contribution that day was the “Cleanup by Canoe trip”. Six strangers, three strong women and three muddy men, found themselves paddling together into the Confluence, landing, walking the bank, filling bag after bag of shite, then piling it high above the gunnels, and finally, paddling to the Access. From strangers to friends, all within the span of three humble hours of service. All good. Check out www.riverrelief.org

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!)

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!

Learning down by the Riverside

Confluence Watershed Festival
September 12, 2008
Columbia Bottom Conservation Area

text by Steve Schnarr; photos by Jen Courtney & Melanie Cheney

The confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers is a special place. Two of the mightiest rivers in the country join together to become one flowing force moving down to the Gulf of Mexico.


If you zoom out from a map of the area, you can see just how much natural wealth is packed in that one region. Going upstream on the Mississippi, you head almost immediately to the west, wrapping St. Charles County in a massive, flowing moat. The Illinois River, whose wetlands were once the most productive ecosystem in the area, enters just upstream, flowing through a maze of islands. The Piasa Bluffs look southward across the whole area. Large public land tracts, managed by the Corps of Engineers, Illinois and Missouri Depts. Of Natural Resources, Big Muddy National Fish and Wildlife Refuge and Missouri Dept. of Conservation, are at work restoring habitat and providing access to nature lovers.

Driving a boat or, especially, paddling a canoe across the Confluence, you feel the swirling tug of two powerful rivers as they merge into one. On one side of the turbulent line they create is the muddier Missouri River. The other side of that line is clearer, with bubbles of muddy water popping up onto its surface. But from that point on downstream, folks are more likely to refer to the Mississippi River as the “Big Muddy”.

Our clean-ups and learning festivals at the Confluence are special events, with the growing numbers of Missouri River lovers coming together to work on its last few miles. This time, the weather constantly threatened to jump in, but it held off until Sunday morning. The huge pulse of water brought by Hurricane Ike running into a western cold front didn’t run down the river until after the event.
US Fish and Wildlife Service Biologists Chris McLeland and Andy Plauk show off a shovelnosed sturgeon. photo by Jen Courtney

We started the weekend with a Friday Confluence Water Festival at the boat ramp in Columbia Bottom Conservation Area. A few schools cancelled because of the threat of storms (which skirted just north of us) but still 206 fifth and sixth graders from the neighboring Hazelwood School District came down to the river to learn about their watershed, its wildlife, river skills and safety and water issues.

Mary Kay Church from Show-Me Missouri Backcountry Horsemen discusses the "Leave No Trace" philosophy, and shows off her incredibly well behaved horse. -photo by Jen Courtney

All senses were engaged. Students touched bighead carp, shovelnosed sturgeon, aquatic turtles and even a horse. They competed at “Big Muddy Jeopardy” overlooking the river. They found their school on a watershed map and saw where their stormwater flows. They gathered around beakers of muddy water, transforming them through chemistry and filtration into clean tap water. They hunted macro-invertebrates in artificial streams, giving each stream a water quality rating. They walked down the beautiful confluence trail, pausing in silence to write down the sounds they could hear. They put on lifejackets and learned the techniques of big river paddling.

A special treat was playing the H2Orchestra, a collection of instruments that use water to create different tones, sounds and notes. This amazing interactive exhibit was donated by the River Kids, a self-motivated group of river activists from New City School, who sadly couldn't make it because of scheduling conflicts.


The exhibitors were a mix of biologists, land managers, non-profit experts and engaged citizens. They were tasked with coming up with hands-on learning experiences, and the variety of experiences they shared with the kids was inspiring. No power-points and only the briefest lectures. Engage their bodies, minds and imaginations.

Jeff Barrow from Missouri River Relief discusses where trash on the Missouri River comes from. -photo by Melanie Cheney

Fifth and sixth graders are the perfect age for this kind of education. They can’t hide their excitement with new experiences. Yet they have enough experience under their belt that they can compare different things and come up with new conclusions.

As the last busses left, exhibitors chatted with themselves, sharing ideas and mixing their energies. Once again, the opportunity to teach children on the river’s edge brought about a confluence of active people working for the future of this region in their own ways.

Special thanks to Spanish Lake Fire Dept. for bringing their fire truck onsite before the festival to fill up the H2Orchestra. Thanks to Tom and the staff at Columbia Bottom Conservation Area for their hospitality as we took over their boat ramp parking lot for a weekend. Thanks to Missouri American Water for bringing water and cups and for sponsoring the event. Thanks to Open Space Council for loaning a couple pop-ups.

Extra special thanks to Susan Raney of Hazelwood School District for pulling in some wonderful teachers and students, and Karla Wilson of Ecoworks Unlimited for arranging the fantastic array of presenters.

Here's the list of amazing organizations represented:

Collinsville Area Rec. District
St. Louis Audubon Society
Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District
Missouri American Water
Show-Me Missouri Back Country Horsemen
US Fish and Wildlife Service (Columbia National Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office)
Wild Canid Survival and Research Center
Forrest Keeling Nursery
Litzsinger Road Ecology Center
Worldways Children's Museum - the H2Orchestra
Columbia Bottom Conservation Area
MO Dept. of Conservation
US Forest Service - Mark Twain National Forest
East West Gateway Council of Governments
Grace Hill Trail Rangers
REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.)
Washington University
Cooperative Weed Management Area
Big Muddy National Fish and Wildlife Refuge
Jones-Confluence Point State Park
U.S. Geological Survey
Missouri Stream Team/Missouri Coalition for the Environment
Big Muddy Adventures
Gateway Greening, Inc.
Soil & Water Conservation District of St. Louis County
Missouri Department of Conservation
Missouri River Relief
The Confluence Greenway
Riverworks Discovery

The H2Orchestra was a special treat for the Hazelwood students. - photo by Melanie Cheney

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

A Hot Day in the Old Town...Again

St. Charles Missouri River Clean-up

August 11, 2007

text by Steve Schnarr, photos by Dave Marner

The major thing on our minds as we got ready for our August 11 clean-up in St. Charles (our fifth in old San Carlos) was the heat. We made plans for extra water, extra pop-up tents, a couple on site cooling area and extra water… We decided to bring people off the river a half hour early and to keep the sites close to home base. And we made sure to have lots of extra water.

We weren’t the only ones with heat on our minds. Craig Holt, our oldest St. Louis-area regular, was already on site when we showed up in the morning with a cooling station set up at the base of the ramp and a couple jugs of iced water and Gatorade. Bob (didn’t catch his last name) from the local CERT team showed up with a mini-ambulance, a fan, a tent with a cot, and a bunch of cooled, wet towels.

We had 250 signups on our website for the day, but didn’t know how many folks would look at the forecast Friday night and still think it was a good idea to scramble around the banks of the Missouri River digging out trash. They started trickling in early. The Meremec Strike Team were there an hour early, ready with a bag of tools, extra water and a gas-powered chop saw.

Just as new boats were freed up, more volunteers arrived, and pretty soon we had 144 people working hard on the river. A lot of regulars showed up, along with Fox TV and KTVI. We took a bunch of new folks on the river, many for their first time, and tackled some wicked spots.

The Meremec folks went at a 61 Impala half buried in the bank, with another crew tackling an old dumpsite near the Blanchette Bridge where we had worked every year we had been in the area. Folks scoured the Frontier Park riverfront.



A spot that had been our major dumpsite last year, absorbing over 50 volunteers and yielding more than 100 tires, was almost clean. A cooperative effort between the City of Bridgeton and Great Rivers Greenway had turned the area into a beautiful park with a riverside trail and bridge. Access to the dumpsite had been blocked off and a major blight on the riverfront was eliminated.

Crews headed five miles upstream to a massive drift rack chock full of plastic, glass and a few appliances.

Meanwhile, another reclamation activity was going on simultaneously. The vehicle of a woman who had been missing for several weeks was found Friday by search crews dragging the bottom of the river. It had drifted several hundred feet downstream from the ramp she drove into the river at, where we were launching boatloads of volunteers.

A boom crane was brought to shore, and the truck was lifted in one piece from the bottom of the river. By the time lunch was served they whole operation was being packed up and the vehicle hauled away to be searched.

At this clean-up, we made a special effort to recruit other Missouri Stream Team members, and it really paid off. At least 16 teams were represented, including ourselves (#1875).



Thanks to our hardcore volunteers Ruthie Moccia and Dareth Goettemoeller, we showed off our newly stenciled crop of lifejackets. They had painstakingly stipple painted all the new jackets, and scraped and touched up a slew of the old ones. They looked fantastic in the St. Charles Journal article by Steve Pokin, which you really should check out by the way. He did an excellent job of describing the experience of being abandoned on the riverside with one job in mind: cleaning up the riverbank.

That evening, we retired to our hotel (courtesy of St. Charles Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and Quality Inn) for our usual St. Charles urban clean-up experience. Instead of eating gathered around a campfire, we hunkered down in the “Lewis and Clark” meeting room with plates full of food Jeanie Kuntz had prepared at home, hauled to St. Charles and heated up in crock pots.

Our photographer for the day, Dave “the River Slave” Marner took us out to see some of his buddies play blues in the 120+ year-old Corner Bar, featuring the most amazing harp player I’d ever seen in such tight quarters. We even got to play the old three-pin bowling game downstairs (manned by a swift high schooler rolling balls back and setting up pins) before being kicked out by the group who had rented out the space (oops!). I have to mention that I got three strikes in a row…

The event and organization is supported by Pat Jones, the St. Louis/Jefferson Solid Waste Management District, Great Rivers Greenway, City of St. Charles, St. Charles Convention and Visitors Bureau, US Army Corps of Engineers, Missouri Department of Conservation, US Fish & Wildlife Service, AEP River Operations, Bass Pro Shops, Boeing Employees Community Fund, Missouri American Water, Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation, Ameren UE, Quality Inn, Anheuser-Busch and Waterways Council, Inc.

Here's the results from the day!

Total Volunteers: 146
Missouri River Relief Core Crew: 18
River Miles: 10 miles (RM 24-34, both banks)
Tons of Landfill Trash: 2.21 tons
Tons of Scrap Metal: .84 tons
Tires: 81
Number of Boats: 10 boats (3 MDC, 2 USFWS, 1 USACE, 4 MRR); plus 1 safety boat from St. Charles City Fire Dept.

Names of Volunteer Teams: The Wild Cats, Trailer Trash, Team River Trash, The Super 8, Ram Rod, Arnold, White Trash, Swamp Turkeys, River Rats, Joe’s 2nd, Pink Elephants, Down&Dirty, River Warriors, Beepers, Extreme Nature Nuts, Major Appliances

Stream Teams: 2950, 462, 346, 2499, 1857, 288, "Mighty 211", 1008, 1875, 1711, 347, 2300, 1439, 3164, 2788, 3427


Partial trash tally:
81 tires
107 large trash bags of landfill trash
5 Styrofoam chunks
3 plastic coolers
1 metal cooler
1 double sink (lemon yellow)
5 plastic buckets
1 washer
1 washer motor
1 drier
3 refrigerators
2 chest freezers
1 water heater
1 car rim
1 shovel
5 metal culverts
1 metal flashing
23 railroad spikes
1 trash can lid
1 plastic patio endtable
1961 Impala (1 door, 1 wheel assembly, 1 steering column, 1 rear axle assembly with tire attached, 1 hood, 1 bumper, 1 fender, 1 left-front suspension unit)
1 car-door window pane
1 large spring
1 highway sign with broken blinking light
1 section of a front-end loader
1 pink floral comforter
1 moving-van quilt
3 meat cleavers
1 hunting arrow
1 Ken doll head
1 cell phone
1 fishing rod
2 metal 55-gallon drums
2 blue plastic barrels
3 bicycles
1 large green (ugly) stuffed tiger
1 couch
1 bundle of shingles
1 2 foot piece of heavy duty spring
1 piece of a front-end loader bucket
1 piece of a plow
1 4-ft piece of barge rope
1 orange construction barrel
1 truck spring
Countless scraps of rusty metal and pipe

The Boatman's Lament

by John Brady

Inspired by the story of a difficult day in the life of our beloved Jeff Barrow. Brady claims every bit is true while Barrow denies everything.

I am a boatman through and through
Though that is not my trade
I spend my time at many things
At how my living’s made

But only on the water
Is where my spirit soars
For life, to me, is not complete
Except behind the oars

I came to motor powered boats
When I was fully grown
For motor craft I had no use
I paddled on my own

Still, time and life soon took its due
And so I came to see
That cruising on a powered craft
Was now the life for me

I studied it with all my skill
Each tiller arm and knot
At drift and draft and piloting
A novice I was not

In boating lore and boatmanship
I felt I held my own
And took the helm with jaunty air,
With styling all my own

T’was with greatest confidence
I headed out that day
Full laden down with teachers
On an education day

A sturdy craft with power plus
A captain sure and wise
We made our way up through the drift
Then came the first surprise

An underwater object, where others had found none
Ensnared the new propeller blades and took them one by one
My formerly courageous craft was left a helpless raft
As I became then quite unsure of how to guide the craft



O The seas ran dark and newly dire
As we drifted helplessly
Raw shame became my Albatross
As others rescued me

I swallowed pride and reaching deep into my sailor’s skill
Replaced the prop and launched anew to get my second thrill
With sober resolution, I shifted to reverse
The motor roared, no power poured
I came to know the worst

We drifted out upon the waves as I shifted to and fro
No matter how I flogged the thing, It simply would not go
I cursed and railed and prayed to gods, Yet nothing would avail
My passengers grew fearful, as down the stream we sailed

Stay Calm, I wisely told them
For I’m your Captain true
And sure as I’m your Guiding Light
No harm shall come to you

My words were scarcely uttered
And the crew to lose their frowns
When suddenly a woman screamed
“My God, We’re going down!”

Oh how I hate to tell it, the seas were pouring in
The plug that serves to keep them out was Out instead of In
The panic rose then with the flood, the passengers a mob
I feared a deadly mutiny as I fumbled for the cob

The sobbing wet humanity
Grew sober as we sailed
The plug installed, we drifted on
As several of us bailed

The crisis done, I mustered strength
And calmed the savage beast
As once again, my comrades came
And pushed us to the beach

A saying old as sailors holds that great waves come in threes
It’s true that boatmen curry luck and often bend their knees
That after all the practicing and studying is done
It takes a bit of fortune, if nothing’s to spoil the fun

Let this, then, be a lesson for boatmen great and small
That pride of craft and confidence do oft precede a fall
That even if you’re careful and do the best you can
The River gods will play their tricks and the s**t will hit the fan