River Relief

November 4, 2011

Big Muddy Clean Sweep

River Clean-up Towboat. photo by Alicia Pigg.

Sept. 10 to Oct. 29, 2011

Kansas City, Cooper's Landing, Jefferson City, Mokane, Hermann, New Haven, Washington, St. Charles, St. Louis

The Big Muddy Clean Sweep was a success! Thanks to everyone that made it happen, from our generous sponsors and partners to many volunteers to hardworking crew!

The Big Muddy Clean Sweep was the keystone event of our 10th year cleaning up the Missouri River. We chartered a barge to stop in communities along the river for clean-ups, river education and celebration!

Thank you to everyone who made it happen! 1473 volunteers removed over 60 tons of trash from the Missouri River this fall. Keep checking in on this page as we update with more results, photos and stories.

Click here for the Big Muddy Clean Sweep homepage. Check out our River Notes Blog and photos on Flickr or like Missouri River Relief's facebook page for the latest updates.

Here's an awesome video made by our deckhand Jodi Pfefferkorn about the Big Muddy Clean Sweep, with more great info below:

Our general schedule for the Clean Sweep is below. As we update results from each town, we'll link to them here.

River Cleanup barge sketch copyright 2011 by Alicia Pigg

Here's the schedule!

As we update results and more, find the links here.

Sept. 10 - Kansas City Clean-up

• 257 volunteers cleaned up land-based sites along the river, including cleaning up flood damage at several area river accesses. Click here for more details»

Sept. 17-25 - Cooper's Landing

• We kicked it off doing clean-ups during the EcoArtFest, then had a week of celebrations, clean-ups and river education. Here's a blog post about the week » 
• Photos - click each to see the set of photos from each of these events: EcoArtFest ♦ 10th Anniversary Party ♦ Douglass High School Clean-up ♦ Columbia Homeschoolers Cleanups ♦ Walmart Clean-up ♦ Sustain Mizzou Clean-up

Oct. 1 - Jefferson City Missouri River Clean-up

• 161 volunteers hit the river to start filling our trash barge with garbage pulled from the river. A crew of locals also worked at the Mokane ramp. Click here for results and links to more stuff»

Oct. 2 - Second Annual Race to the Dome

• Perfect weather, perfect river levels and a perfectly organized event by Patrick Lynn. Check out www.racetothedome.org for results and photos.

Oct. 4-9 - Octoberfest in Hermann!

• We started off with two days of educational events with Hermann & Owensville students, then a really great couple of days of clean-ups during Octoberfest.
• Click here for the blog» and click here for photos»

Oct. 15 - River Festival and Clean-up in Washington!

• It's pretty tough to beat this week. We had a great river education festival, a really cool fundraising party and a fantastic River Festival and Clean-up.
• Click here for the blog posts»  And check out the photos here»

Oct. 22 - St. Charles, MO

• A great week of clean-ups in the Little Hills of St. Charles. We started with a drizzly day with REI employees and capped it off with a big clean-up with locals and Boeing employees.
• Click here for the blog»  And check out photos here»

Oct. 29 - Confluence Clean-up, St. Louis, MO

• Our biggest event of the year! 302 volunteers removed 14 tons of trash from the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Plus, we had a series of great clean-ups, networking and education events with our local partners.
• Click here for the Confluence results page (with links to lots of other great stuff)

The final piece of trash loaded on the barge was the mile marker from rivermile 11. Photo by Steve Schnarr.

The barge was unloaded by Capt. Bryant Tubbs of Humboldt Boat Service. 60.8 total tons of trash from KC to St. Louis! photo by Steve Schnarr