Saturday April 26, 2014
Earth Day River Clean-up at the Confluence 2014
Columbia Bottom Conservation Area Boat Ramp
Earth Day weekend was the perfect time to hit the Confluence of our nation's two longest rivers: the Mississippi and Missouri, and clean-up all the junk that's floated in.
This year is the 250th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis - yet another reason to celebrate these two amazing rivers that are the reason St. Louis is where it is. 2014 also marks the 25th anniversary of Missouri Stream Teams!
On a gorgeous Saturday morning, 178 volunteers teamed up at the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area boat ramp to help clean-up 9 miles of the Missouri & Mississippi Rivers. Over 200 bags of trash were collected, along with tons of scrap metal, appliances, and other materials including a fiberglass boat from 1957!
A huge thanks to our agency partners who provided boats at the clean-up to help shuttle volunteers: we were joined by the Mo. Dept. of Conservation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in addition to our 4, plus a personal trash hauler that joined us from Hanson Professional Services.
Stream Teams, families and college students came out in full force, along with environmental clubs, scout troops, corporate teams, and more to clean up nearly 5 tons of trash. What an amazing group effort!
After bringing the volunteers back for lunch the River Relief crew worked on hauling back all of the trash. We enjoyed a fun trash contest, and some great tunes by Eddie Buchanan & Co.!
Check out the full trash tally and photo essay on our Rivernotes Blog. To see the mish mash of photos from the clean-up, be sure to check out our Flickr or Facebook pages.
It takes a real leap of faith to get down & dirty on the Mighty MO and we can't thank our St. Louis sponsors, partners and volunteers (listed on the right) enough for all of the support!
Thank You St. Louis!
Here's a partial list of what volunteers pulled out of the river:
201 bags of trash
30 tires
11 chunks o’ Styrofoam
4 coolers
11 5-gal. plastic buckets
1 20-gal. plastic tub
12 55-gal. plastic barrels
2 55-gal. metal drums
4 partial metal drums
1 water heater
1 propane tank
1 AC unit piece
1 600 lb Automotive Transformer
1 boxspring
1 - fiberglass Saber boat from 1957
2 barge lines
1 buoy
1 car seat cushion
4 gas tanks
1 yellow piggy bank
1 dead snake dead from plastic netting wrapped around it
1 dead gar
1 studded football massage ball
2 armless baby dolls
A full trash tally and results can be found on our Rivernotes blog!