Saturday, October 1, 2011
Jefferson City Missouri River Clean-up 2011
Carl R. Noren Access, North Jefferson City, MO
Week two of the Big Muddy Clean Sweep began with river trips with long time partners and sponsors Missouri Department of Conservation Stream Team staff and Missouri Department of Natural Resource employees to provide a unique place for discussion on the future of resource conservation while experiencing a pretty amazing natural resource in itself. What better place to meet than on the Big Muddy which flows directly beneath the state capital and many of their offices?
Meanwhile, the Big Muddy Clean Swee barge crew continued to make arrangements for the "River Clean-up" barge to move upriver. Finally, after a number of mishaps and missed opportunities, Herman Sand & Gravel gave our barge a lift up to Hermann and then to Jeff City with help from the guys at Capital Sand Co. & the Jeff City River Terminal. The barge had finally arrived!
Saturday morning over 140 volunteers gathered to clean up the Missouri River in Jefferson City and christen our new trash barge with its first load of river trash on its 170 mile journey. We had an amazing turnout. 13 boats from the River Relief, U.S. Fish & Wilflife Service and MO Department of Conservation were sent out to cover 11 miles of river, including a site at Mokane, MO, organized by Mark Van Patten of Missouri Stream Team and worked with Mokane residents, Friends of Big Muddy and Tim Haller of Big Muddy National Fish & Wildlife Refuge. Check out all of our cool photos from the clean-up on our Flickr page! or read more stories about the Clean Sweep on our River Notes Blog!
A Big Muddy Thanks to Eldon Highschool teacher Jen Wellman for bringing a bus load of courteous high school students in the middle of home-coming weekend. They were great kids and awesome workers! One of the girls ended up finding the "Best Darned Find of the Day" for the Trash Contest, a plastic toy "Swamp Thing"!
Mokane & Wears Creek Cleanups
Our friends at Missouri Stream Team and Mokane put on their first Missouri River Clean-up. An additional 25 volunteers worked a satellite site from the Mokane Access with Stream Team partner Mark VanPatten and Big Muddy Refuge partner Tim Haller. All of the trash they gathered was picked up by the barge as it passed through on Monday!
Many thanks to the Wears Creek Clean-up folks for providing a wonderful lunch for our simultaneous clean-up. Patchwork Family Farms, Clovers Natural Foods & Hyvee for providing inkind food donations for the barge team! And to our long time partner & sponsor, Missouri American Water for bringing us drinking water and water bottles, providing educational talks on how we get our drinking water from the river and filter it, and of course for supporting the clean-up! And to the entire list of Golden Mile Sponsors, who stepped up to the plate to support the Big Muddy Clean Sweep. We couldn't have done this without you guys!
It was an amazing week, and we have many Big Muddy thanks & praises to everyone who pitched in to help make it happen. From the bottom of our Big Muddy hearts, thank you and we'll see you on the river as we continue to roll downstream on this awesome Clean Sweep adventure
Trash Tally!
68 Blue Stream Team (ST) bags of Trash25 Tires (one ginormous tractor tire on the rim)
5 Chunks of Styrofoam
1 Refrigerator
2 Coolers
9 5-gallon Plastic Buckets
2 55-gallon Plastic Barrels
2 Propane Tanks
1 Boxspring
8 Chairs
1 Wicker Table
1 Bean Bag
1 BBQ Grill
30 ft of Metal Cable
Scrap Metal
1 boat-load of wet, nasty carpet (30 pieces)
1 big plastic Culvert (8ft long)
4 Tarps
1 Pet Carrier
1 Large Buoy
2 Toys
Trash Contest Finds!
1 Mylar Balloon
1 Hockey Puck
1 Nerf Laser Tag Vest
1 Plastic Egg
1 Foam Fortune Cookie
1 McDonald Ball Pit Ball
1 Playdo Hair Thing
1 Metal Chair
1 Rusty Spray Can
2 Old Glass Jugs
1 Toilet Tank Bulb
1 Fuzzy Toilet Seat
1 Bottle of Personal Lubricant
1 Dog Skull w/ Collar
1 Plastic Dog
Handful of Turkey Feathers
A String of Christmas Lights
A Flower growing out of a piece of Styrofoam
1 Naturally Feminine Powder Spray
1 plastic Hair Curler
1 Avon Crème Lotion
4 Light Bulbs
1 Pacifier
1 Eldon Mustangs Water Bottle
1 Machete Blade
1 Kids Chair
1 Milk Crate
1 Metal Grill
1 Hammer
1 Headlight
1 Seat Cushion
1 Can of Sudden Tan
1 full Can of Milwaukee’s Best
1 plastic Horse with the legs chewed off