Hartsburg Trash Tally!!!

Hartsburg Missouri River Clean-up

April 26, 2008
MDC Hartsburg Public River Access
photos by Dory Colbert & Lindsay Tempinson

Total Volunteers: 161
MRR Crew: 31
Boats: 11 [2 US Fish & Wildlife; 3 MO Dept. of Conservation; 4 MO River Relief; 2 Southern Boone County FD (safety)]
Rivermiles: 12 (155-167), plus 2 road miles
Scrap Tons: .77 tons
Landfill Tons: (still awaiting results...)
Tires: 78
River level: 18.7 feet (Boonville gage)
Names of River Teams: “The Mudpuppies, Hang Tite, FFF, Eagles, Mutts, the Sturgeons, Oh Shoot!, Wal-Mart River Rats, Redbudders, the Copperheads, the Nameless, the Morels, The Last One”

Trash Tally!!!
Note – because each bag of trash was sorted for recyclables at this clean-up, the list is much more detailed and interesting than many others! Still, this is by no means everything that came in...
197 Large Bags of Trash (at very least)
3 refrigerators
1 washing machine
1 hot water heater
1 message in a bottle (from May 2007, Boonville Bridge)
1 plastic bottle with $5 bill sealed inside
6 refrigerator doors
1 large propane tank
15 campstove propane tanks
4 gas tanks
1 car gas tank
2 boxsprings
11 large chunks of dock Styrofoam
7 coolers
6 five-gallon plastic buckets
3 large plastic planters
2 55-gallon metal drums
2 55-gallon plastic barrels
1 red Coast Guard buoy
1 pair of long johns
1 child’s car seat
2 Christmas light bulbs
Too many cans of Skoal to count
11 fishing bobbers
1 plastic green pepper
2 water bottles held together with shoestring
1 plastic boat propeller
3 tennis shoes
Too many prescription medicine bottles to count
1 plastic bowling pin
1 plastic bowling ball
11 baseballs/softballs (including one Atlanta Braves souvenir soft baseball)
8 basketballs
14 tennis balls
2 soccer balls
7 light bulbs
1 street hocky puck
5 footballs
5 golf balls (a ridiculous underestimate)
More than 16 random kid’s balls (including 1 Winnie-the-Pooh ball)
1 plastic dinosaur tail
1 Jar-Jar (Star Wars) frisbee
1 bike helmet
1 can Milwalkee’s Best Light (full)
1 can Busch Light (full)
1 ice cube tray
1 doll head
1 garbage can lid
1 safety helmet
1 wheelbarrel handle
1 booster seat
1 minnow trap
1 diaper
1 easter egg
1 Air Slice Frisbee
1 pink bike seat
1 plastic cheese slice
1 coozie cupholder
4 flip flop sandals
1 crate
1 oil filter
1 Northern Cheyenne Nation Boys & Girls Club water bottle
1 three-wheeler bike tire
1 cat litter box
1 fire extinguisher
1 stuffed dog
1 toy metal Jeep front
1 TV transistor
One set of New Testament audio cassettes
1 jar of electronic parts
3 Big Wheel trikes
1 toilet bowl float
1 tool case full of mud
1 orange plastic 1975 Ford Pinto
One foam letter “K” (note – on each mid-Missouri clean-up for the past three years we’ve been finding these foam alphabet letters, sometimes the letters themselves, sometimes the piece of foam they were punched out of….did somebody lose a daycare center upstream somewhere?)

Hartsburg photos & more...

Hartsburg Missouri River Clean-up

April 26, 2008
MDC Hartsburg Public River Access

Quote exchange of the day - Alia Koehn-Franz, age 10: “This was the best day of my life!”
Jeff Barrow: “What made it the best day of your life?”
Alia: “I got to go out on a boat in the river!”

These moments are what we’re after on these clean-ups. Just to get out on the big river can be a transformative experience for many people, especially children. After having driven over the Big Muddy on bridges, for many folks these clean-ups are their first time to actually get out on the river. After dodging driftwood in a big boat, climbing up muddy banks and picking up bags full of trash, getting splashed by a silver carp and possibly finding a morel mushroom in the process, they’ll never look at the river the same way again.

After filling bags of trash with plastic and glass bottles, perhaps finding a trash treasure along the way, they’ll never look at their waste stream in the same way either. And at the end of the day, we’ve cleaned up the river we love.


It’s our belief that real change happens when people get out in nature and do stuff. Act and work to make our rivers, which we demand so much from, a better place.

To check out another participant’s take on the event, check out the great blog by marathon racer Deanna Stoppler from Englewood, MO.

And here's some more great photos taken by our crew....

right: Chuelo Arias, an Americorps Stream Team Assistant from Missouri River Communities Network, gets ready to scour the woods for trash. Photo by Dory Colbert.

left: A volunteer wrestles a tire innertube from the mud.
Photo by Dory Colbert.

Melanie Cheney takes a break from ramp dispatch to net "floaters" from the high river.
photo by Lindsay Tempinson.

WalMart employees from the Conley Road store brought coolers full of ice, water and soda for lunch.
Here, Jeff Barrow is pushing them off as Tim Nigh takes them out for an after lunch trash get.
Photo by Melanie Cheney.

Here's how the whole trash sorting scene went. First, bags of unsorted trash are offloaded from boats into MDC Bobcat driver Charlie Nelson's bucket.

Charlie dumps all the bags at the sorting station. photo by Dory Colbert.

Crews dump out the contents of the bags on a big tarp and get to sorting. Dogs look on in bewilderment.
photo by Dory Colbert.

It's a crazy fast-paced scene, but recyclables are sorted out from everything else. The "Tally Ho", a rotating job, keeps track of interesting objects found amongst all the junk.
Photo by Dory Colbert.

Right: Jeanie Kuntz dumps a bucket of plastic bottles in the recycling bin donated by Civic Recycling. Plastic bottles are probably the most common trash found on the Missouri River, floating in from countless tributaries and storm drains. Both the plastic bin and the landfill dumpster were filled to overflowing by the end of the day.
Photo by Lindsay Tempinson.

All in all, it was a lot of hard work, a ton of fun, and a great day for families and for the river!
photo by Lindsay Tempinson.

Down on the River Road

Our Annual Old Plank/River Road Cleanup
March 30th, 2008
Columbia, MO
text & photos copyright Melanie Cheney

Forecast outlook, not so good. Increasing chance of rain, rain, & more rain. Spring had arrived with warm temps & threatening skies. Surprisingly, 32 people showed up to clean our river roads despite the gray, drizzly morning. Not surprisingly, the rain held off, the whole day & all was well!

Many old-school crew members showed up for our annual cleanup, including mama of 2, Robyn Ricks. With one strapped on her back, and another one in tow, we took to the roads, separating recyclables from trash. We put our flashing winkies on the vans, hit Old Plank Rd. & divided into groups, some working up, some down, others including myself distracted by trashy ditches off the main road, & going in the opposite direction all together.

I was afraid all of the trash I had seen weeks earlier on that road had all washed downstream already with the record amounts of rain we have had. Working alongside Jen, Chuelo & Dave Bandy, we slowly & meticulously went to work, as there was plenty for all of us to clean up.

I had to grab my camera out of the van at one point to document an outflow from a lagoon spilling into a ditch, full of nasty looking green algae, knowing full well it was going into one of the streams below, & soon to the Little Bonne Femme, then to our beloved Missouri River. Not long after that, I discovered a good amount of trash and sediment coming from a construction sight in the nearby subdivision, also flowing right into the ditch. I reported both to Department of Natural Resources in hopes they might look into it & do something about it. The highlight for me though, was finding a coconut carved out into a monkey’s head.

In just a few hours we had retrieved 65 bags of recyclables (mostly beer bottles & cans), 43 bags of trash, a rusty old swing-set in pieces, a broken mailbox, and 3 tires. By my calculations, this is approximately 1.06 tons of trash in a 2.5 mile stretch of road. And this is why we have a cleanup every year, because every year careless people still toss it out the window.

here's a picture of just part of our crew and a whole bunch of trash

It also appears to me that everywhere I look, especially after all of this rain, there is literally tons of trash all over the place. You may not notice it when the grass & weeds grow up, but it is there. This is a great time of year to organize a river, trail or road cleanup, and I hope others will get out there & do their part too. That reminds me, Clean-up Columbia day is next weekend, April 12th for those of you looking for the nearest cleanup in your neck of the woods.

As usual, feeling highly satisfied & worn out, we ended our successful event with a potluck on the bank of the river. It was cool & gray out, but we were dry, dirty, & happy. Several of us took our shoes off, walking around in the cold sand and warming our toes on the campfire, all the while, listening to our favorite local river rats serenade us on guitar & vocals. It is so nice when a community can all get together and accomplish something great, & celebrate, giving each other good company & joy as the river gods gently smile upon us.

Special thanks to Carl and Ann Orazio, their wonderful sons and friends for working their butts off and cleaning at the mouth of Little Bonne Femme (which they do almost every week). Thanks to Dyno, Karen & Ding-Dang Dearnley for hauling the recyclables to town. Thanks to Boone County Public Works for taking everything else as part of their Adopt-A-Road program. Thank you to all the good cooks for a great potluck and to Uncle Denny, Robyn Ricks, Dyno, Dave Dearnley and (especially) Naked Dave for playing wonderful tunes for us!!!!