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!
Flooding in June postponed the first scheduled date of this clean-up, but we chose a great day for the reschedule. Over 275 volunteers filled two huge roll off dumpsters and removed 117 tires from the river environment.
Our Siouxland cleanups are a special point of pride with Missouri River Relief. 182 volunteers collected 3.4 tons of trash!
Over 130 volunteers worked on both sides of the Missouri River on Rocheport Bend, cleaning up trash, planting trees and removing invasive garlic mustard. Our river clean-up volunteers removed over 5 tons of trash from the floodplain and along the Katy Trail!
162 really hardcore volunteers showed up to continue working on the massive Mari-Osa dumpsite, as well as five other smaller dumps and tire piles. We removed 13.1 tons of junk from this beautiful stretch of the Osage River, including 212 tires!
The Missouri River Watershed Festival is a 2 state, 7 county, metro KC regional event, featuring over 30 exhibitors conducting hands-on, interactive activities for area 5th graders with a focus on river stewardship and education. The festival is held in conjunction with a Missouri River Clean-up, giving an opportunity to follow up education with stewardship and an on-the-river experience. 351 bags of trash and tons of other debris (an estimated 10 tons!) were removed efficiently in one day from the banks of the Big Muddy.
This was Missouri River Relief’s third clean-up at the Confluence, and once again it was a great success. 168 volunteers ignored a stormy weather forecast and hit the river in force.
With no space left to stage a public clean-up and essentially no banks to drop volunteers off on to clean-up, we made a decision. We cancelled the public volunteer clean-up event but vowed to put our trained crew out on the river to pick up what floating trash we could from our boats. Because the River Festival was located on higher ground, it could go on as planned.
This was our first clean-up in the Siouxland area. This tri-state region encompasses the communities of Sioux City, Ia, South Sioux City, NE, and North Sioux City, SD. Thanks to a massive coalition of local partners and sponsors, it was a fantastic event. We were welcomed whole heartedly by the locals in all communities.
This was our second year to come help at the Yankton Missouri River Cleanup. Saturday was the big Yankton Clean-up, and our crews focused on the leftover debris from a car dump that was removed several years before.
