Cleaning up the river in old Glasgow!

Glasgow Missouri River Clean-up

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Stump Island Park, Glasgow, MO - Rivermile 226

text by Steve Schnarr, photos by Doug Elley, Kimberlie McClain, Melanie Cheney & Laurie Ferretti

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An Old River Town

Glasgow is one of the finest river towns the Missouri has to offer. It’s perched on a bluff overlooking one of the sharpest bends on the river. It marks the spot where the Big Muddy funnels from a wide, meandering valley into a narrower gorge lined with Mississippi limestone bluffs, the very edge of the Ozark uplift.

Because it was built so smartly to begin with, it has a long history despite the ravages of the river below. The library in town, a beautiful old building with wooden and glass cases of old books in its well kept second story, claims to be the oldest continuously operating library west of the Mississippi.

Glasgow is on a crossroads between Marshall and Fayette, and the cross street is the river. More than anyplace I’ve been in the state of Missouri, Glasgow uses the river as a part of life. The boat traffic in the morning is fishing boats and boats checking their trotlines. The boat ramp parking lot…not a small area…is full. In the afternoon people tug kids on innertubes up and down the river, and other put in canoes or take them out.

photo by Doug Elley

Up the hill are several fantastic restaurants, a winery and the classic Fish Beak saloon where you might catch live music, a table shuffleboard game or a dollar beer. And the town is crawling with really nice people.

In the evening, the boat ramp parking lot is still full. It’s the last weekend of summer before school, and there’s also a river clean-up going on.

Getting to Town

We arrived on Thursday afternoon. Soda Popp claimed the camp with his RV. A few lucky souls came up in a van and box truck dragging a few boats. We were blessed with a Brownsville, Texas-style taco feast courtesy of Soda and his one-burner cast iron pan set up. Mark and Twila Chambers set up their RV up the hill.

Setting up Camp

On Friday morning, the crew began trickling in. As so many friends arrived, our “Flying Nun” kitchen tent got set up and the box truck spilled its contents into our clean-up camp. By lunchtime we were almost ready to hit the river and scout our trash sites…except we several of us needed to check our emails and put out a few fires before the weekend hit.

Four of us hopped in a van and headed up to the winery (honestly, not very far away). Bushwhacker Bend Winery is on First St. The back of the building opens up onto a deck that overlooks the river. They let us get some internet there (and sample some of their Norton Reserve). Overlooking the stretch of river we are spending our weekend on, we quickly caught up with loose ends back home.

For me, Glasgow is a cell phone black hole. I’ve got AT&T. I might get your text tomorrow. But not your phone call and I can’t listen to your voice mail. Chasing signal up the hill never worked... It seems that Verizon and Sprint work there, as well as some affiliated companies. Except for Glasgow, I’ve never had to coordinate a clean-up with no cell reception. And only in Glasgow, where everything you need is right there, could it work so effortlessly.

Scouting the River

Our scout did not reveal much trash. We generally limit ourselves to spots where volunteers can safely access the banks. Our dispatches, who will be handing out maps to boat drivers the next day, check out each spot along the river to take its “trash pulse”. We spend an afternoon wandering through the riverside forest looking for accumulations of floodborne trash, with our pilots hopping into and away from the banks, finding places deep enough for our boats to get to shore.

We mark locations of dumps and party spots,  note what tools we’ll need,  how many people each site will need and mark it on maps. And cross our fingers. The goal is that there is enough work there for volunteers to keep engaged for at least an hour and a half. And if not, that there is a way to move them somewhere else where they can get at it.

This clean-up we noticed small patches of trash located in many spots, but very few places where volunteers could spend two hours bringing junk to shore. So the strategy changes. It’s bumping people to a variety of sites as the river allows.

As our last scout crew approached the Glasgow bridges, we saw a massive combine tractor tire floating in the river still on the rim. We tied off to it and dragged it to the ramp, where we pulled it up to the top of the ramp with a chain. There was a lot of discussion of how many 100’s of dollars we could get if we sold it, but decided to leave it at the head of the ramp to haul away on Sunday when we left. Unfortunately, it walked off on it’s own. Someone helped themselves to the tire and it was gone by Saturday evening. Oh well, at least we didn’t have to deal with it again…

Look what our scout crew found floating in the river!
photo by Melanie Cheney

Local river lover Tom Bentley, who lives just up the hill from Stump Island, allowed us to raid his firewood stash, so we got a big pile ready for a weekend of campfires.

As the sun set, more friends arrived. The clean-up Crew was taking shape. From across the state people came to Stump Island to set up tents, grab dinner and find out what they would be doing the next day.

We call it the “pow-wow”, but it’s not a real Pow-Wow. We gather around the fire and discuss the unique aspects of this clean-up and figure out where everyone fits in. Those that don’t get assigned a task have the important task of helping other boatloads of volunteers accomplish their work most efficiently.

Before Sunrise

Our breakfast chefs hit it early. The first thing is to get the coffee going. Luckily this time we can hook into an electrical cord at Soda Popp’s RV site. Eggs, veggies, bacon, sausage. Salsa, tortillas and salad greens. Everyone rolls up their breakfast in a tortilla and tackles their job.

Registration is set up under the nice picnic pavilion at Stump Island Park. Stream Team t-shirts, gloves, water, life jackets, tools, trash bags, banners, signs, pop-up tents, boats, radios…everything is put where it will be needed. And then more people come to help…

Getting on the River

Together with our partners at the Mo. Dept. of Conservation (Biologists and Agents).  a boat brought by a local 4-H family (the Prentzlers) and our own four working boats (one has a terminally ill motor), we were able to get almost everyone on the river  without making our boats come back and get more. This means the boats can shuttle volunteers to more than one spot, giving everyone a more effective experience. This is the efficiency that can make a clean-up with 100 people gather as much trash as a clean-up with 200. And it worked.

One of the crews hauled by MDC's huge fish sampling boats.
Photo by Doug Elley.

 

The Clean-up

photo by Steve Schnarr

We had one group (they called themselves the Bad-A** Boys, although they were not all boys…) attack the bank directly across the river from the ramp. I’ve heard that this was an old barge repair port, and the banks were littered with massive chunks of steel, cable, litter and tires. Oh, and three abandoned barges silted into the bank that we didn’t touch. The gas-powered chop saw ran in bursts all morning, liberating old cable from the riprap. And piles of trash bags gathered along the bank.

Jen Sieradski's crew digs out a barrel.
photo by Laurie Ferretti.

Some of these guys were the founders of Log Boat Brewery, a craft brewery slated to open this fall in Columbia. We love the name...it's inspired by the original meaning of "Missouri" which translates to "River of Big Canoes". Check out their website, which tracks their progress building their business through a virtual map of the Missouri River. 

A couple of other boats had trash nets, and they floated through rafts of debris collecting bags full of crazy detritus from all communities upstream. And lots of balls. The Prentzler family took their boat to the Glasgow riverfront, where they filled their boat several times with old, abandoned junk. This was our first time cleaning in Glasgow with lower water levels, and it was great to get that stuff off the banks.

Very cool trash find...photo by Diane Oerly

There were 30 volunteers from the Steinmetz 4-H Club - families who know about cleaning up other people's trash. They have adopted a stretch of highway 5 near Glasgow. What a bunch of great people! 

Several spots were apparently the level of high water during recent flooding. In the middle of a clean forest of cottonwoods would be a lower depression full of plastic, a tire, and some large chunks of Styrofoam. It was all bagged and removed.

Most groups finished before their shuttle boat came to get them. Then they were stuck on the banks of the longest river in North America, forced to stare at this amazing flow of water rolling by and all the birds and wildlife that gather at its shores. Bummer.

Lunch

The kind folks at the Farmer’s Pick Buffett at Boonville’s Isle of Capri Casino put together a huge lunch of sandwiches and fixins for us. All we had to do was pick it up. It was a treat to see all the blue Missouri Stream Team shirts lined up along the bank watching the river go by as folks ate lunch. We had a great trash contest, then hit the river again to bring all that stuff to the ramp.

Lunch was provided by Isle of Capri Casino. Beautiful view supplied by the Missouri River. photo by Kimberlie McClain

With all of our local friends, we got it done in short order. Our two small boats took groups of kids on the river for a boat ride, and we filled our hauling trailer and a boat full of scrap metal to be recycled on Monday.

Loading 1.75 tons of scrap metal.

An evening by the river

photo by Doug Elley

Stump Island Park has a bunch of big, beautiful cottonwoods and sycamore, and our camp was laid out below them. Tim Nigh and Liz Doubet led a cook crew that fed a huge group of people a fantastic dinner of grilled veggies and pork loins. As the sun set, we passed the feather and shared our stories of a great day cleaning up the river.

This cleanup was an opportunity for a lot of our local friends from the region to come for the weekend, set up camp and make this clean-up run smoothly. We had some friends that we hadn't seen in years and other newer members of the tribe. It all culminated with dinner around the campfire. We had over 40 people join us!

Our deepest appreciation goes to all the people of Glasgow. They love their river and it shows. It’s one of the cleanest stretches we’ve seen and it was a delight to spend the weekend there.

After clean-up relaxation. photo by Doug Elley.

2013 Washington River Festival & Clean-up Results

Washington River Festival & Clean-up 2013

James W. Rennick Riverfront Park, Washington MO

April 20th, 2013

• Festival Attendees: an estimated 1,000 festival attendees
• Trash-to-Art Auction: raised $1,000 on the spot!
• Total Clean-up Volunteers:  72
• MRR Crew:  16
• “Day on the River” Students & Teachers:  200 (4th, 5th, & 6th grade students from St. Francis Borgia, Washington West Elementary School, Labadie Elementary and Our Lady of Lourdes)
•  “What the River Means to Me” Entries:  266 poems, artwork and essays
• Boats: 0 – Due to river levels, we had to switch to a land-based clean-up
• Land Sites: 5  (Riverfront Park, Riverfront Park Trail, Lions Lake/Tieman Dr., Dundee Road & River Access, Augusta Bottoms Rd. scour holes)Miles Cleaned:  an estimated 5 miles
• River Level: 21.5 feet (flood stage) 
• Tires: 24 (an estimated .42 tons)
• Landfill Tonnage:  an estimated 2.2 tons
• Scrap Metal:  an estimated .09 tons

Total Tonnage:  an estimated 2.7 tons!

Groups & Agencies Involved:  Missouri River Relief crew, Missouri River Festival committee, City of Washington Parks and Rec Department, Kohl’s Cares, Clean Stream Crusaders, The Mighty Stream Team 211, Wading 4 Mayflies, St. Peters UCC, Ross Braun Stream Team 4746, Fish, Washington Environmental Club, Mizzou Water & Environment Technologists (WET)

Event Sponsors:  Kohl’s, Gloria Attoun and Michael Bauermeister, Mike and Maria Smith, Franz Mayer, Gary & Sandy Lucy, Bank of Washington, Washington Boat Club, City of Washington Parks and Rec Department, MO Dept. of Conservation, MO Dept. of Natural Resources, Missouri Stream Team, Walmart, Washington Rotary Club, Washington Optimist Club, Office Max, Wells Fargo Investment

Educational Booths & Activities: “What the River Means to Me” River Education school project, World Bird Sanctuary, Trash to Art, Wyman Center, Washington Historical Society, Greenway Network, Washington Public Library, Hillermann’s Nursery & Florist, Earth’s Classroom, Missouri River Relief, The Open Space Council, Missouri Stream Team, Missouri Master Naturalists, Labadie Environmental Organization, Washington Urban Forestry Council, Washington Community Garden, Washington Healing Arts Center, Present Moment Yoga & Mindful Movement, Perennial, Silver Seed Farms, Environmental Energy Consultants, Native American Tipi, Four Rivers Roots & Shoots, Botanical Walk with Bill Davit, Yoga on the lawn, “Rambling River Quilt”, Food Booths:  Bob and Pat’s BBQ, Joe’s Deli, Augusta Brewery  Music:  Babaloo, Augusta Bottoms Consort, Terry Corcoran, The Texas Giants

Trash Tally!!!

103 Bags of Trash (4 packed full of glass bottles/broken glass)
24 Tires
1 Screwdriver
1 – 55 gal. plastic Trash Can
1 – 5 gal. plastic Buckets
1 – 5 gal. Water Cooler
1 – 5 gal. Metal Gas Can
1 Refrigerator
1 bag of Scrap Metal
2 - 30 gallon Plastic Tubs – (1 yellow, 1 green)
1 Plastic Crate
3 License Plates
1 Car Bumper
1 Honda Side Mirror
1 Hubcap – Desoto
1 Carburetor
4 TV’s
2 - 10’ pieces of Rebar
2 - 20’ corrugated Plastic Pipe
3 unopened bottles Bacardi Raz
1 Downspout Guttering
1 iron Fence Post
1 wooden Fence Post
1 metal Sheeting
1 clay Drain Pipe
1 Refrigerator Coil
1 “No Trespassing” Sign
1 Highway Directional Sign
1 large piece of Carpet
1 Swimming Pool liner (folded over and over into the mud)
1 turquoise Oven Door – Hotpoint
1 Key to a Four Wheeler
1 pair of Long Underwear
1 Computer Mother Board
1 plastic Office Chair Mat
1 Toilet Pieces
1 Cabinet
1 Door
1 Baby Doll Arm
1 Shaving Crème – travel size
1 iron Commemorative Plaque – “Matt Ferguson, 1894 to 1969”
1 bag of Sudafed wrappers
1 pile of Roof Shingles

Mission: A Clean Missouri River in St. Charles

Mission: Clean Stream Missouri River Clean-up

St. Charles, MO - Bishop's Landing at the Lewis and Clark BoatHouse and Nature Center.

April 6, 2013

text by Steve Schnarr, photos by Patty Farrar, Francis Baum and Melanie Cheney

 Arriving in town

When we drove into St. Charles on Thursday to get ready for Saturday’s cleanup our first stop was the Lewis and Clark BoatHouse and Nature Center, perched above the river at the mouth of Blanchette Creek. We dropped off boats and split up. Jeff Barrow headed to Columbia Bottom Conservation Area to pick up a boat and trailer we had stashed there and Melanie Cheney and I headed straight to University City to a gallery talk at the Regional Art Commission space on Delmar.

It had been a tough day already – getting everything ready to hit the road in the morning, dealing with a broke down truck, shifting plans around, getting on the road then hitting I-70 coming into rush hour. But when we walked to the front door of the gallery, there were two massive wooden wall panels done by our friend Michael Bauermeister (whose studio we’d be camping at for a week just a couple weeks later), relief carvings in basswood of a forest scene. We’d been asking for a good omen and we got one. 

Michele Ryker-Owens had invited us to be part of a panel discussion about the intersection of art and social activism. We denied being social activists but were honored and excited to be part of the discussion. The group was a class of Wash U. art students and a diverse bunch of locals interested in the art and conversation.  The setting was a group of chairs in the middle of the exhibit put together by Michele and Ron Fondaw. The exhibit was called “Shifting Ground”. There was a collection of vintage globes slightly misaligned with plumb bobs dangling from above, a pool swirling with driftwood, a moss mosaic of the Mississippi watershed and a collection of sculptures you had to walk across a bed of broken ceramics and peer through a distorted window to view. 

But mostly fantastic conversation inspired by art and action. An awesome beginning to a weekend of work on the Missouri. 

Taking over the BoatHouse Beach

The Flying Nun kitchen tent. photo by Patty Farrar

We woke up to fresh coffee and jazz radio on the beach. Our friend Craig had moved in overnight and started a fire. Other friends showed up and soon the Flying Nun kitchen tent was up on the beach between the Lewis and Clark BoatHouse and the river. We call it the front yard. They call it the back yard. After lunch we were ready to scout the river. 

As always, we found some great sites for volunteers to clean up. Every year some sites get further from the river as the deep trash gets cleaned up, but others always need some work.

We had two friends join us that were about to leave on big journeys. Some bigger than others. Janet Moreland was about to head up to Montana to seek out the source of the Missouri River and follow it to its confluence with the Mississippi. She is going to ski, then bike, then paddle from Brower’s Spring to the Confluence. Her expedition is called Love Your Big Muddy, and you can follow it on her website or, with more frequent updates, on Facebook.

Jeanie Kuntz is going to be part of Janet’s ground crew, along with Janet’s daughter Haley, for the first section by land. But such a gift for the start of Janet’s journey. 

Janet Moreland is on an expedition to be the first solo female paddler to travel the Missouri River source from its source to the Confluence with the Mississippi River. photo by Norman Miller.

Just a few days before they were leaving, both of them came to the St. Charles clean-up. And Jeanie came with food, a plan, and knowledge of how to whip that River Relief kitchen into shape.

We feasted and figured out our plan for the morning around a campfire by the river. 

Tartan Fest and the Missouri River Clean-up

With coffee and hot breakfast over a sunrise campfire, the River Relief crew geared itself up and then set up the event before 8:30. Debris and rocks around the ramp were cleared off, tools set out, banners strung, lifejackets at the ready, trash bags ganged up in bags of a dozen, pop-up tents popped and maps hung. It was all done to a bagpipe soundtrack delivered by and incredible bagpipe band that was part of the Tartan Festival going on next door.

Our clean-up on the Missouri River was one site of many across St. Charles County in an event called "Mission: Clean Stream" hosted by the Greenway Network. The Greenway Network is a volunteer stream advocacy and restoration organization that is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year!

Registration was a dual system. At the front of the line our volunteers would choose “1 if by Land” or “2 if by sea”. 1’s to the left, 2’s to the right. St. Charles Public Works dispatched the land crews. We stuck the “by sea” crews in lifejackets then boats and put them on the river. 

The system went flawlessly, and 150 volunteers hit the river. Some were cleaning up places that had been cleaned for many years but kept accumulating trash. Especially by parking lots, roads, trails and under bridges. A few of those folks almost seemed disappointed they didn’t find more trash. I have the same problem. It’s a sickness. But it’s also success. 

Some other crews tackled sites that obviously hadn’t been cleaned up before. More difficult to get to places along the river where flood debris had accumulated or dumps that had not yet been cleared out. Nate and Janene, a couple co-workers at the Biomerieux labs nearby, led a big clean-up site that still has more work to do. A bunch of folks that have come to many of these Missouri River clean-ups came to help out and we had a lot of new people. Whole families with three kids and one mom who just felt like this was the best thing she could do with her day. 

Army Corps Riverlands Crew. photo by Patty Farrar

We had a great crew of boat drivers. Danny Brown, a fisheries biologist for the Mo. Dept. of Conservation as well as a world-class wildlife photographer (browse and shop his website here), is a cleanup pro. He knows how to use this opportunity to teach the volunteers about this river and his work on it. And he efficiently got three groups of volunteers out on the river and back again. He was joined with Danny Patterson, an employee at Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, on his first river cleanup trip with us. And we also had the pleasure of tapping into Ben Greeling and Chris Garcia of the US Army Corps of Engineers Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary who have been a national model of public engagement for the Corps. And our River Relief pros, Racin' Dave Stevens, John Brady, Indi Frank and Anthony Pettit rounded out the fleet.

Shane Jordan is a veteran river cleaner and a great liaison between us and local Walmart stores that provide funding and help organize volunteers. He came after the boats had gone out. Rather than wait for the next boat, he just grabbed a few trash bags and scoured the banks headed upstream. One of the treasures he found was not easy to get back. A massive scale model of the Ameristar Casino was found not far downstream of the casino. There’s really only a few ways it could’ve got there. I would imagine some kind of ceremony at the opening of the casino where the model was tossed from the side of the building. Or someone was cleaning up inside and figured…what the heck am I gonna do with this?

Shane Jordan shows off his "Best Darned Find of the Day". photo by Francis Baum.

Yet somewhere else on the river that day, a group of Ameristar employees were cleaning up the river they work next to everyday (in fact they were the last group of volunteers to get back from the river).

After a chilly and blustery morning, the winds really picked up during lunch, but we still had a great trash contest before hauling all the junk back in the afternoon. 

Patty Farrar shows off some of the treasures in the "Git That Garbage" Trash Contest. photo by Dave Ellsbury.

 We had some great new folks hop on for the trash haul allowing us to have three boats out there picking up trash. Carl and Chris from St. Charles Public Works were a team working the back hoe all afternoon on the ramp, hauling all the trash up the ramp to the dumpsters that had been donated by Republic Services. We quickly filled our hauling trailer with tires, and we hauled that first load to the Wentzville GM plant where all the tires from Mission: Clean Stream were being staged. Bridgestone/Firestone would be disposing of all of them. The River Relief crew was so efficient we wrapped everything up by 3:30. Amazing!

Unloading trash in a sandstorm. photo by Melanie Cheney

Trailhead Brewery put together a fantastic donated dinner for our crew. As the wind finally started calming down, we relaxed around a fire overlooking the Missouri River on the beautiful boathouse beach.