October was busy but November will be even more so....

October was a busy month for me at Table Rock Lake Water Quality, Inc. I am finally getting used to all of the different “hats” I wear to help TRLWQ carry out their mission. Towards the beginning of October, TRLWQ published our quarterly newsletter. Please check out our website to catch up on all projects we are working on: www.trlwq.org. Due to lack of interest, I had difficulty arranging an activity for “Make A Difference Day”. However, I have been working on contacting local schools for educational presentations. I will be presenting a water quality presentation to a group of 8th graders at one of the local schools. I am very excited to expose these students to “Biomonitoring” and they will get a hands-on experience with identifying macroinvertebrates! I was also able to contact the Reeds Spring High School Stream Team and I will be aiding them in their data collection in a week. November is shaping up to be a more eventful month, so stay tuned to next month’s blog!

Summary of Make a Difference Day

On Saturday, October 24, 2009, Lance and Julia, AmeriCorps members, and Steve Johnson, director of MRCN, met at the Bluffs senior care facility to have a work day on their rain garden. We joined Laura Christianson, activities director at the Bluffs, and began talking about what we wanted to accomplish that day and what more there was to do in the future at the Bluffs Rain Garden. This rain garden is a unique project, as it is so large! The garden was dug by a front loader/bulldozer type of equipment, and runs the length of the building, about 100 feet by 10 feet wide. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to plant and cover this whole area in one day.
We focused our efforts on the back end of the garden, planting on a berm, which was holding back about 1000 gallons of rainwater from the previous days. The berm backs up to a creek and wooded area, so it was most important to get some native plants in there to start holding down the soil and preventing erosion into that creek. We gingerly moved around the edge of the pond, many times almost falling in, but that’s what makes it exciting! Three citizen volunteers joined Laura and the MRCN crew, and we made short work of planting sedges, flowers, a button bush and a tree.
After working for about 2 hours and getting our feet quite muddy, we had done all there was to do for the day. With some more planning, perhaps some more grading the swale for water flow, it will be time to add large rocks, seed and cover with mulch for the winter. What a great rain garden! When complete, it will prevent 1000s of gallons of rain water run off (and pollution carried in that run off) from entering the creek behind their building, and eventually the streams and rivers beyond.

The Great Bush Honeysuckle Roundup!!!

So, I am almost at completion of my first full month with The Confluence. And if I do say we have a ton of activities going on.

But the one I am most excited about is The GREAT BUSH HONEYSUCKLE ROUNDUP!!!! This will be taking place Saturday, November 14th from 9 am-1pm at the Riverfront Trail.

I have been working in conjunction with the Grace Hill Trail Rangers to get the event off the ground. I also worked with Grace Hill for Make a Difference Day where we finished up the harvesting of Switch Grass for the Season.

We will be expecting over 50 volunteers.

I have also called on the help of AmeriCorps St. Louis and their saw expertise and equipment to help us knock out a pretty big section of honeysuckle in a short amount of time.

For those who don't know we do have native Missouri vine honeysuckles, but there is invasive bush honeysuckles such as Morrow's and Amur which are shrubby natives of Asia. Here we have not natural controls so come April they grow fast, spread fast and over take our Native plants. They have to be controlled.

The longer you let them grow they harder it is to kill them. So, start KILLING today! You can find more information on the Missouri Department of Conservation Web Page.

October with LOWA

Caroline Toole, here, checking in with the MO Clean Water AmeriCorps Program. Make a Difference Day, Oct 24, 2009, found me on the Little Niangua, one of the rivers that flow into the Lake of the Ozarks. This is Stream Team 313 which I have had for almost 20 years. Lately I’ve been having a little trouble getting anyone to show up for my WQM’s (water quality monitoring events) and today was no exception. We’d had quite a lot of rain and the river was up (so much so that I couldn’t do the water discharge part or the critters part – the riffle was way too deep and fast moving). And, the morning was frosty and the river water was down right cold. But the day turned out beautiful as you can see in the pictures. On the left, it is still morning, and I am working with the turbidity tube and it’s cold enough to feel comfortable in many layers, ending with the AmeriCorps hoodie. On the right, I was out looking for critters in alternative habitats, and I’m down to my tshirt and waders in a 60 plus degrees (F) afternoon.
My watershed partner group is LOWA (Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance) at http://www.soslowa.org/ and we have been quite busy writing a watershed management plan. I can’t believe we are almost finished. Whew. What a monster of a task! However, October also brought Camden County’s first Household Hazardous Waste Reclamation Day on Oct. 10, 2009 at Camdenton High School’s parking lot. LOWA serviced over 250 cars representing many more than 324 households. All the extra services were donated so all the grant money could go to processing the waste. Habitat for Humanity was there sorting through the paint (you never saw so much paint!) for paint usable for their projects. The top picture below is the early morning hours of the HHW day; we are setting up our canopy. The fellow in the photo is my husband; he’s also a baby boomer and I can count him in the subpopulations AmeriCorps wants us to track.

The last photo is another of LOWA’s October events. AmerenUE and LOWA host 2 soil erosion workshops each year for area builders, landscapers, and other interested persons, agencies, and companies. This fall we were at the Visitor’s Center at Truman Dam in Warsaw, at the very northern edge of the Lake of the Ozarks. (Truman Lake empties into the Lake of the Ozarks) Here I am signing up participants. Another successful event.
November should find LOWA submitting their Watershed Management Plan and then charging full steam ahead into writing their 319 grant to fund the many projects whose central goal is to take care of the watershed of the Lake of the Ozarks so the waters of the lake will be healthy and vibrant for people to enjoy for many years to come.

And, once again, LOWA would like to extend a sincere thank you to Jim and Nancy Rogers of Realty Executive in Laurie, MO for the donation of an office where LOWA can work.

Rain Barrel Art Review

Hey there River Rats,
Check out this Call to Artists for our 2nd Annual Rain Barrel Art Review.

With a suggested theme of “Water Conservation”, please submit :

*a sketch of your design to scale for a 36”h x 73” around rain barrel

*your name, mailing address, email, telephone number

Deadline, Dec. 1st!

Artists will be notified of selection by Dec. 8th. Artists will be provided with a primed rain barrel and must use acrylic, non-oil based paints to complete their design. Artists must be able to pick up their rain barrel from MRCN office between Dec. 8th-15th, 2009. Artists must complete and return the rain barrel back to the MRCN office between February 1-5th, 2010. Missouri River Communities Network, 200 Old 63, suite 203, Columbia, MO 65201. All proceeds will benefit MRCN in it’s mission to improve Best Management Practices and awareness of storm water issues.

Call, write or email for more info!

Missouri River Communities Network

573-256-2602

booneraingardens@gmail.com

Sustainable Living Fair

This month the MRCN AmeriCorps crew has been hard at work with rain gardens, rain gardens and more rain gardens! Every now and then, however, we do like to take a break and get messy with something other than mud. On October 17^th, that something was paint! The Sustainable Living Fair was held at Columbia College from 10am-6pm, and MRCN was the designated provider of children’s activities.

We set up two fun (and secretly educational) activities at our outdoor booth. One- which actually attracted more adults than kids- is lovingly referred to as Macro Match. By overturning the rocks in our “streams,” kiddos can find “macros” and determine which stream is healthy and which stream is polluted. We didn’t have too much interest, mostly because of our second activity…

Kids and grown-ups alike could not resist helping us decorate our beautiful, demonstration rain barrel! We invited fair-goers to stick their hands in paint and place their handprint on our barrel. The end result was a colorful example of how individuals can personalize this great water-holding device.

As the weather gets chillier, we are starting to put away our fair and festival demonstrations for a winter break. But don’t be surprised if you see Macro Match and a colorful barrel when we start to festival hop again in the spring!

Wednesday 9:22 AM in the office.

Hello Missouri Clean Water Stream Team Blog! With the help of a friend you all will now be exposed to my writings. Thanks Rebecca.

Lets see. So much to cover and catch up on.

On the 8th and 9th I attended a conference in KC and was able to reconnect and get to know my Americorp group. Want to give a shout out to the Rain Barrel Blueman Group. I wonder if there is a video of our skit somewhere. It would be fun and embarrassing to view.

The hotel was nice, the meetings were educational, but the best part was reconnecting with all the wonderful, awesome, intelligent, creative, and fun individuals in our Americorp group.

Learning about the Americorp Alumni also gave me a good feeling that there are so many people who consider community activism essential to the health of our communities and, well heck, the health of our political system.

Today we might go plant grasses at Bethel Park but will the weather cause a delay?
Stay posted for more.