Hartsburg Cleanup 2008

Saturday, April 26, 2008
Hartsburg Public Access

Morels, music and mud! What a perfect combination down on the river.

On April 26, 161 volunteers shrugged off the high water and hit the Big Muddy for our second ever Hartsburg clean-up. With the river cresting on Saturday just below flood stage, the clean-up was mainly focused on areas above the banks, in the forest and drift piles flanking the river.

Most of the trash was probably washed in during 2007’s spring flood event, but folks found deposits from earlier floods as well. And, interspersed with all the tires and plastic bottles were morels. Bunches of them! Many volunteers found their first ever, and left behind a good sized bag for the River Relief crew to fry up that night.

Individuals from as far away as St. Louis, Joplin, Kansas City and even Reno, Nevada, came out to help. Girl Scouts and 4-H from Ashland, Wal-Mart employees from Columbia and several large families joined the fun. A group of University of Missouri students who had been studying nearby Hart Creek Conservation Area came to clean up along the bottoms they’d been studying.

Because of a special relationship we have with Civic Recycling, this was one of the events where we were able to sort trash to recycle plastic and aluminum in addition to scrap metal and tires.

The trash sorting scene is a wild one, with volunteers dumping bags of trash, going through each item one by one and recycling what we can. One volunteer grabs pen and paper. As sorting continues, folks shout out interesting items they find and it gets tallied up. “Another camping propane tank! A purple giraffe head! Does anybody know what the heck this is?” This time, local musician “Naked Dave” Bandy and friends serenaded the trash sorters, keeping things lively and fun. (Check out the trash tally on the other side!)

With the high water, there was some drift in the river, but our fleet of professional MDC and USFWS captains and volunteer Missouri River Relief pilots kept volunteers on the river and safe. MDC skid-steer driver Charlie Nelson kept trash flowing up the ramp with ease and even hopped on a borrowed six-string to jam along with the other musicians. 

While most folks cleaned up out on the river, several groups and families cleaned up by land, scouring the area surrounding the public boat ramp, and cleaning up 2 miles of the river road.

As the day wound down, the remaining crew retired to the Katy Trailside park managed by Robert and Maggie Riesenmey of RiverView Traders in Wilton. Music, morels, fried spoonbill and a toasty campfire kept the good feelings alive after a hard day of work on the river.

Trash Tally

Note – because each bag of trash was sorted for recyclables at this clean-up, the list is much more detailed and interesting than many others!

• 197 Large Bags of Trash
• 3 refrigerators
• 1 washing machine
• 1 hot water heater
• 1 message in a bottle (from May 2007, Boonville Bridge)
• 1 plastic bottle with $5 bill sealed inside
• 6 refrigerator doors
• 1 large propane tank
• 15 camp stove propane tanks
• 4 gas tanks
• 1 car gas tank
• 2 box springs
• 11 large chunks of dock Styrofoam
• 7 coolers
• 6 five-gallon plastic buckets
• 3 large plastic planters
• 2 55-gallon metal drums
• 2 55-gallon plastic barrels
• 1 red Coast Guard buoy
• 1 pair of long johns
• 1 child’s car seat
• 2 Christmas light bulbs
• Too many cans of Skoal to count
• 11 fishing bobbers
• 1 plastic green pepper
• 2 water bottles held together with shoestring
• 1 plastic boat propeller
• 3 tennis shoes
• Too many prescription medicine bottles to count
• 1 plastic bowling pin
• 1 plastic bowling ball
• 11 baseballs/softballs (including one Atlanta Braves souvenir soft baseball)
• 8 basketballs
• 14 tennis balls
• 2 soccer balls
• 7 light bulbs
• 1 street hocky puck
• 5 footballs
• 5 golf balls (a sheer underestimate)
• More than 16 random kid’s balls (including 1 Winnie-the-Pooh ball)
• 1 plastic dinosaur tail
• 1 Jar-Jar (Star Wars) frisbee
• 1 bike helmet
• 1 can Milwaukee's Best Light (full)
• 1 can Busch Light (full)
• 1 ice cube tray
• 1 doll head
• 1 garbage can lid
• 1 safety helmet
• 1 wheel barrel handle
• 1 booster seat
• 1 minnow trap
• 1 diaper
• 1 easter egg
• 1 Air Slice Frisbee
• 1 pink bike seat
• 1 plastic cheese slice
• 1 koozie cupholder
• 4 flip flop sandals
• 1 crate
• 1 oil filter
• 1 Northern Cheyenne Nation Boys & Girls Club water bottle
• 1 three-wheeler bike tire
• 1 cat litter box
• 1 fire extinguisher
• 1 stuffed dog
• 1 toy metal Jeep front
• 1 TV transistor
• One set of New Testament audio cassettes
• 1 jar of electronic parts
• 3 Big Wheel trikes
• 1 toilet bowl float
• 1 tool case full of mud
• 1 orange plastic 1975 Ford Pinto
• One foam letter “K” (note – on each mid-Missouri clean-up for the past three years we’ve been finding these foam alphabet letters, sometimes the letters themselves, sometimes the piece of foam they were punched out of….did somebody lose a daycare center upstream somewhere?)