A Soggy Saturday in St. Charles

 Mission: Clean Stream - Missouri River Clean-up Site

Bishop's Landing at the Lewis & Clark Boathouse

April 14-16, 2012

text by Steve Schnarr, photos by Brian Waldrop & Steve Schnarr

For our full results page with lots of links and info, go to: 

http://www.riverrelief.org/event/mission-clean-stream-st-charles-missouri-river/

Check out our photos on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8478409@N03/sets/72157629623442164/with/7160639804/ 

 

Mission: Clean Stream is one of the biggest single-day stream clean-ups in the state. Which is saying a lot considering there are over 4,000 Stream Teams in the state. The clean-up is hosted by the Greenway Network and organized by over 20 different municipalities, stream teams and other groups.


For the first time, we turned our St. Charles clean-up into one of the sites at Mission: Clean Stream. So we decided to set up camp at the Lewis and Clark Boathouse and make a long clean-up weekend out of it. In addition to the Saturday Clean Stream clean-up, we decided to make another run on Sunday, then work with a group of REI employees on Monday afternoon.


This time we were lucky – we had the pros volunteering for us the whole weekend. Daniel and Jodi, part of our crew last fall, were both free for the whole shebang. We wouldn’t have Melanie on board, so that was a huge help. So we decided to head up Thursday evening, strike a quick camp and get ready for set up on Friday morning.

Friday morning we began to set up our kitchen, the Flying Nun tent. The wind was picking up and a quick glance at the radar revealed we only had a few minutes before the storm was going to arrive. Just as we were ready to string up the ropes and could use another hand, Jeff Barrow arrived from a meeting. We tightened it all up, then the pouring rain began. It continued through lunch and just began to slacken as we started the scout. But unfortunately it didn’t stop. That evening was the first in a string of soggy nights.

We were able to get a lot of morning chores done in between windows of rain, but pretty soon the rain set in, just as the first cleanup volunteers began to arrive.

Now River Relief has a “rain or shine” policy in general. Of course, if there’s lightning, then everything has to come to a stop. But if we cancelled a clean-up every time someone said it might rain, or because it was raining, we’d never get as much done. The volunteers who show up in the rain are always the most amazing people and just want to get out there and do it. We stress that everyone takes their time. Slippery boats and banks are real, but we can do this safely if we’re steady and smart.


As the morning progressed, all of our partner boat drivers had to cancel. Which was the smart thing to do. We had less volunteers than we anticipated and to haul a boat through a storm to just wait and see what happened wasn’t a smart use of their time. But we were there already.

So we hunkered down for a bit then came up with a plan. The radar showed this wave of storms was passing through. As soon as the lightning had quit for a safe amount of time, volunteers broke into groups and scoured the forest and stream next to the parking lot. As soon as we could safely move our boats into position, everyone could filter down the ramp and hop aboard to hit a river site.

It turned out we had around half of the volunteers we’d anticipated. Every other Mission: Clean Stream site cancelled. But as soon as the lightning passed, the rain let up and a lot of hard clean-up work got done. Not that it completely stopped raining. But by then we could hardly notice or care.


Greg Poleski from Greenway Network took his car to several nearby accesses and filled it to the brim with junk. After guiding a group of volunteers on the river, Bernie and Brian filled Bernie’s truck bed with junk recovered from the woods adjacent the Ameristar Casino. A bunch of Ameristar employees cleaned up all of the woods and sandbars between the I-70 bridge and the casino.


Lindbergh high school students cleaned up some nasty dumps under the 370 bridge. Jeanie Kuntz cleaned every tiny scrap of plastic from the beach at clean-up headquarters. We even got the militant paddler Big Muddy Mike Clark to get out in a motor boat and haul trash! (just kidding…not his first time) Jodi and Allison began recycling all the trash as it came in. They were joined by Geoff Janovsky, the recycling coordinator at Webster U.


We ended up trailering the boats full of trash and dragging them from Blanchette Landing to our clean-up headquarters where everything got sorted for recyclables. Allied Waste donated the dumpsters, one for scrap metal, one for trash and one for recyclables. Each year they add more to their list of what they recycle, and this time it was a good percentage of stuff.

It was a tough, soggy day, but everyone worked with smiles and pride. We smoothed out the speed bumps and made an impressive haul for a group of 70 volunteers.

Our crew retired to camp after packing up what we could. Trailhead Brewery donated a complete dinner to us, with pulled pork, chicken, chili and great sides. The rain stopped and we got a fire going.

All of sudden it was a beautiful, pleasant and warm afternoon. I guess some of us felt like we deserved it!

On Sunday, a crew of folks, including the Arnold Stream Team 211 boys, stuck around for another trash haul. We’d heard there were a few tires to get under the railroad bridge. Well sure enough, as soon as we got under there, Bernie discovered a whole dump with 33 tires. And some shingles, carpet, a bathtub and other junk. We made a riverside stash of junk and swung the boat around to pick it up. Found another bathtub stuck in the riverbank and Bernie and Jeff wriggled it out.


Bernie graciously offered to take the tires and add them to the 211’s stash (they collect enough tires to fill a tractor trailer then recycle them all at once).

That evening, the storms returned. We still had a strong, but small crew left, and we headed to old St. Charles for a hot dinner. It was an exhausting weekend, and the next day we’d be tearing it down.

The Flying Nun came down in the morning, and it turned into a gorgeous day. A bunch of REI employees, most of which had done clean-ups with us last fall during the Big Muddy Clean Sweep, came out for the afternoon and we were able to hit a couple of sites we missed both last year and during the Mission: Clean Stream. These folks already knew what to do, and they fanned out into the woods, consolidating all the trash they found and teaming up to haul it to shore. We completely filled one boat in just about an hour and a half.

As soon as we unloaded the last bag of garbage out of the boat into the dumpster, we were ready to head home. We have a reputation for bringing rain when we come to the St. Louis/ St. Charles area and this was no exception.

On the River with Douglass High School

 photos and text by Steve Schnarr
click here to check out photos from past Douglass river trips. 

John Reid at the Manitou Bluffs

We’ve been taking Missouri River trips with John Reid’s students for four years. Mr. Reid, as his students of course call him, is not your average teacher. And the kids that come along with him on these river adventures are not your average student.
John works at Douglass High School in Columbia.

He started a “Service Club” at Douglass, where he creates opportunities for his students to work with local nonprofits, and to generally get out in the community and make it better through creek clean-ups, community gardening and ecosystem restoration projects. Four years ago, it was the Service Club that hopped on our boats after class for a quick river tour.

Among other subjects, John teaches Environmental Science. So a couple of years ago we started taking some of his Environmental Science students out on the river in the morning, and the Service Club in the afternoon, during school hours.

We get to work with the students that want to come, and put forth the extra effort to make the trip. John makes it easy for them, and everyone gets a pair of mud boots so they have no excuse not to get out of the boat and check things out.

The Morning Crew - Environmental Science Class

The first group of students that walked down the boat ramp were from the Environmental Science class. None of these kids had been with us on a river trip, and only one of them had been on the Missouri River before. As they walked down the ramp, they made comments like “We’re not getting in that boat” “I’m not going out on that river” “What if we fall in” and “I’ll just wait here on shore”.

After they got their safety talk (interspersed with comments like “What! I’m not going to be in a boat with no fish that big jumping in!”), though, they all eagerly hopped on the boat. It was obvious that, even with all the bluster, they completely trusted Mr. Reid. Half were lobbying for us to go fast with the other half shaking their heads.

The second group, from the Service Club, were a more adventurous lot from the start, used to Mr. Reid taking them outside of their comfort zones.

The Douglass High School Service Club cleans up the river. photo by Steve Schnarr

We show them the recreated Tadpole Island, where the Army Corps of Engineers dug a new chute across the river from Huntsdale. Before the river was channelized there was an island there called Tadpole Island, and now it exists again, ringed with sandbars.

A bit further upstream is an eagle nest. In May, when our spring trip usually happens, the babies are beginning to stand up in the nest and test their wings. One of the parents sits in a tree nearby watching.

On our first trip this year, none of the kids aboard had seen a bald eagle before. They loved it and couldn’t believe the size of the nest. “Who made that nest for them?” “How did they make a nest so big?”.

We discuss the near collapse and latest success of the bald eagle. About how DDT nearly wiped them out, just because it made their eggs too fragile. And now you can find a bald eagle nest about every 10 or 15 miles on the Missouri River.

If we have time, we motor on upstream past the Manitou Bluffs to I-70. Most of the kids had been on this bridge on their way to Kansas City. They mention how the river seems so much closer from the bridge. We feel tiny in our boat motoring past bridge piers swirling in the current.

We shut off the motor and drift under the massive trusses, checking out the cliff swallow nests tucked underneath, little clay jugs stacked up like apartments. Tucked into the bluff just next to the bridge is a cave mouth swarming with swallows. It’s easy to talk about how those bluffs were where the swallows naturally would build their nests, but the bridges work fine too.

Drifting back downstream, we come to Lewis and Clark Cave. Previously called Torbett Spring, this cave is now tucked behind the Katy Trail, with its spring waterfall emerging from a railroad culvert dated 1904 and tumbling down rip rap into the river. Meriwether Lewis noted the cave in his journal, with little drawings to depict the Native American petroglyphs painted on the bluff above the cave. 

We show the kids the remnants of the paintings that are left. “A “Nike Swoosh” with a dot above it,” is how Mr. Reid describes it, and the kids see it right away.

Daniel drags a tire from the rack pile.

If we have time, we explore the mouth of the cave (the interior of the cave is closed to the public to protect Indiana bat nurseries), but today we are running out of time. We need to move onto the clean-up.

Morning and afternoon groups each get a different beach. This year, after last year’s high water, we clean up areas where driftwood has collected on the high banks. Balls, tires, plastic bottles, toys…all the usual suspects are there. The kids fill bags quickly, and help each other carry them across the wood piles. At first they’re bummed that they get some mud on their pants, but that disappears immediately.

They’re amazed at the trash they find out there.

Service Club scours the driftwood for trash.

We saw a turtle laying eggs in the sand. A group of deer getting a drink by the water. We stomped in quicksand. Buzzards flew overhead in a cyclone.

Just another day on the river.

One group got two and a half hours…the other only two.

Mr. Reid and his fridge.

We see a refrigerator floating next to the bank. With just a few minutes left in the trip, we decide to see if we can get it in the boat. One student, Daniel, and I got in the bow of the boat, with John Reid trying to push the fridge from shore. It seemed impossibly heavy, but with Daniel using a shovel to pry underneath and me lifting a corner of the fridge, we got one edge up on the bow. Then it became much easier and we shifted the fridge into the boat. Everyone on board was proud.

And by the time we got back to shore, they were old river pros. “We saw eagles, Mr. Reid.” One student laughs at the mud on his friends shoes. “What are you gonna tell people about all that mud on you?” “I’ll tell ‘em I’ve been hanging on the Missouri River YO!”

This past winter we came up with a new award to give. To the teacher that really stepped up and helped us get kids on the river for a real experience. We decided to call it the “Floating Classroom Award” and we gave it to John Reid. In fact we were able to give it to him at our screening of the Wild & Scenic Film Festival in the Blue Note in Columbia.

With the support of his school’s administration, John makes amazing efforts to get these kids out of the classroom and into the natural world and their community. Teachers like this are absolutely priceless.

Who will get the “Floating Classroom” this year?

Lucky (and unlucky) sturgeon

 text by Steve Schnarr and Danny Brown - photos by Danny Brown, Steve Schnarr & Colby Wrasse

When we do a clean-up in the Washington, MO, to St. Louis region of the river, Mo. Dept. of Conservation fisheries biologist Danny Brown usually shows up with his work boat to help haul volunteers. Danny’s a real pro. He knows how to inspire kids, take the opportunity to explain the river as he knows it and make it all look easy.

Danny’s also a world-class wildlife photographer, and you can see and purchase some of his images at www.dannybrownphotography.com. This week he sent us a photo of a shovelnose sturgeon they caught this week while sampling for pallid sturgeon broodstock. Every biologist studying sturgeon and every commercial fisherman I’ve talked to has seen sturgeon caught in rubber bands. As Danny explains below, it’s often a fatal struggle for the fish. Here’s his take on the photo:
 __________

Lucky Sturgeon
by Danny Brown, MDC

Here’s an image of a shovelnose sturgeon that my crew recently captured on the Missouri River. Sturgeon and other fish of our large rivers have endured many threats over the years, including habitat loss, pollution, and overfishing, but another challenge they face is litter. If you've never been on the Missouri River you would be amazed at the plethora of items including abandoned boats, washing machines, 55-gallon drums, tires, bottles, cans, and other stuff. 

A group of dedicated river rats, called "Missouri River Relief," has tirelessly worked to not only clean up the Missouri River but to instill a sense of ownership in volunteers, especially kids, who turn out to help with the clean-up events. Unfortunately, they can only do so much. For more info, go to: www.riverrelief.org .

Almost every year, as I collect sturgeon from the Missouri River as part of our monitoring efforts, I discover an individual like the one in the attached image. While feeding along the bottom this sturgeon inadvertently swam into a particularly ornery type of refuse -- a rubber band. Once a sturgeon swims into a rubber band, it wears it for life and as the fish grows, the constriction digs into its flesh, not unlike a piece of barbed wire around a tree. By the time we catch the fish, it is often grotesquely deformed near the constriction and in poor condition. 

photo by Copyright by Danny Brown

But instead of sharing a photo of such an unfortunate fish, I'm sharing an image of a healthy fish that was lucky enough to turn up in our gear before its rubber necklace began to tighten. I hope you enjoy the image of this ancient species and you will be happy to know that it was released back to the river, free from the girdling confines of this unwelcome accessory. Thanks to Josh Ward for serving as the hand model for this image.”
 _____________

At our clean-up events, we are always proud of the massive trash eyesores we remove from the river. But it’s often the little stuff that proves the most insidious when released into the river environment. Six pack rings that slowly strangle turtles, birds with stomachs stuffed with plastic, or in the case of this little blue catfish, a plastic cave that turns into a death trap (unless you’re lucky enough to then be caught by a helpful biologist).

USFWS biologists came across this poor blue catfish stuck in a bottle in one of their nets. They cut the bottle and let the little fish back into the river. photo by Colby Wrasse of the US Fish & Wildlife Service

Here’s a few more pictures we’ve taken and that have been submitted by biologists that show sturgeon trapped by rubber bands. They’re not pleasant, but what is more disturbing is that this is not an uncommon sight.

This is an endangered pallid sturgeon caught with a jar lid seal. Like the one above, this one is lucky. It was caught before the seal had a chance to cut into the fish, as you will see happens below. photo submitted by US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Missouri Master Naturalist Mark Chambers shows a shovelnose sturgeon with a nearly amputated fin due to a rubber band constriction. photo by Steve Schnarr.

This is another shovelnose deeply impacted by a rubber band. This photo was submitted by Colby Wrasse, US Fish & Wildlife Service.