The weather wasn't the greatest, but that didn't stop a really hardcore group of volunteers from showing up, waiting out the storm and working in the rain. This cleanup was part of the county-wide Mission: Clean Stream, one of the largest one-day clean-ups in the state organized by Greenway Network and a long list of partners. 78 volunteers joined to removed 5.1 tons of trash despite the inclement weather!
The last stop of our Big Muddy Clean Sweep was our biggest clean-up yet at the confluence of North America's two longest rivers: the Missouri & Mississippi. We have deep roots in the area, with many great partners helping get the word out. That makes for a super-effective cleanup. Over 300 volunteers removed an estimated 14 tons of trash from the Confluence.
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.
Due to flooding and high river levels this year, we based the Kansas City Missouri River Clean-up out of Berkley Park where 20-year clean-up veteran and Kansas City Coordinator, Vicki Richmond made arrangements for volunteer groups to disperse to 11 land-based sites up and down the river. 257 volunteers showed up on a gorgeous late summer morning, to pick up their pumpkin orange Clean Sweep t-shirts, and sign up for one of the many pre-scouted land-based sites.
The tri-state Siouxland area loves their river, and a group of local organizers has been working with us for to develop their own annual Missouri River clean-up event. This was our fourth consecutive year cleaning up in the Siouxland area. This year 97 volunteers joined us to clean up the river. On a four-mile stretch of river, they recovered 3.5 tons of trash!
After months of planning (followed by weeks of the high river unravelling our planning), the game was on. 94 volunteers showed up that day and removed an amazing 5.83 tons of junk from the riverbanks. We were helped by the US Army Corps of Engineers, Nebraska Game & Parks Commission and US Coast Guard who all brought boats to haul volunteers. In Omaha, we find that a lot of the trash we recover is from abandoned camps - many of which were destroyed during the 2010 flood event.
The Confluence Trash Bash has grown into one of the largest one-day cleanup events in the state. It's organized by the Confluence Partnership, the St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District and a long list of local partnering organizations.
It's been 4 years since we've worked the original Missouri State Capitol in the "Little Hills", and our Missouri River Clean-up in the St. Charles & Bridgeton area couldn't have been better! 268 hearty volunteers showed up bright & early as 11 boat crews prepared to ferry them to pre-determined sites.
For the third year in a row, we joined the "Sioux Crew" in Sioux City, IA to clean-up the first channelized stretch of the lower Missouri River. Summer had brought on the heat, and every night, a raging thunderstorm would pop up as we slept inside our little tents & cabins, there was strobe-like lightning, thunderous crashes, driving wind, and inches upon inches of rain! But that did not hinder this group's clean-up efforts! The weather proved to be cool & cloudy during the day, and we had a great time combing the banks for trash in this popular boating and fishing town. Despite a lack in volunteers showing up in great numbers on Saturday as we'd expected, the results nevertheless were impressive!
Missouri River Relief once again joined forces with our friends in the Missouri National Recreational River to clean-up the stretch of river below Gavin's Point Dam. The event was hosted by the National Park Service, the Izaak Walton League and the City of Yankton. It was the 7th annual clean-up on the MNRR. Since the beginning, hundreds of tons of junk, including dozens of car bodies, bags of fisherman's trash and the debris of decades of use and abuse have been removed forever. After a cold & windy night, 100 volunteers showed up on Saturday to collect over two and half tons of trash along roughly three miles of Missouri River shoreline!
