Healthy Watershed Series wraps up with a rain garden workshop and kickoff of the Columbia/Boone County Rain Garden Program.

For the past six months Missouri River Communities Network has been conducting community workshops to promote awareness of our local watersheds and the problems they face. These workshops concluded with a rain garden workshop at Jefferson Farm and Gardens outside of Columbia. The workshop was a hands-on class for the community to help with the construction of a rain garden to help with the storm water runoff from the nearby parking lot. The event was also a media kickoff for the Columbia/Boone County Rain Garden Program.
Rain gardens capture rain water from roof tops, roadways and parking lots in a planted depression, allowing the water to be absorbed by native plants and flowers and slow down the storm water, instead of allowing the storm water to rush into local streams with sediment and other pollutants.
The Columbia/Boone County Rain Garden Program is sponsored by the Missouri River Communities Network through a small grant from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The program includes a public outreach element to educate citizens about the benefits of rain gardens, rain garden planning assistance and small financial grants to eligible homeowners to assist in the installation of ten demonstration rain gardens, rain garden workshops, and tours of existing rain gardens in Columbia and Boone County.

The hope of the program is that is will encourage the community to think about storm water management and their role in both the problems and the solutions.

FAMILY FISH DAY

On June 6, 2009, the Shepherd of the Hills Fish Hatchery , Branson, sponsored a Family Fish Day for local and visiting families. The weather was great and the fishing pond was well-stocked! Gopala Borchelt, project director for Table Rock Lake Water Quality, Inc., and I volunteered at the macroinvertebrate table. We had three trays of critters and a tub of crawdads. The critters had traveled from the James River around Galena.

We had lots of visitors. . .it was a treat to watch the kids pick up a rock from one the trays, turn it over, and see the critters wiggle! I had taken my collection of critters in vials-I had several examples that weren't in the trays. We made two streams using a blue, plastic table cloth and rocks with pictures of macroinvertebrates glued on them. One stream had critters that were sensitive to pollutants representing a healthy stream and the other stream had critters which were more tolerant of pollutants. A prize was offered for visitors who could (with the help of a chart) identify which stream was which.

The younger visitors to our station loved the crawdad tattoos provided by MO Stream Team. Overall, I found the older visitors were surprised that the health of a stream could be determined by what was living in the stream not some chemical test done on the water in lab. AND they could be the investigator! Yeah for our stream team volunteers!

AmeriCorps Co-op Project at Jolly Mill

For AmeriCorps Week, Bev teamed up with the Purdy Reading Tutors for a work day at Jolly Mill Park which is on Capps Creek between Granby and Monett. This is a private park which is open to the public. Volunteers who live in the subdivision by the park maintain and run it. This is a beautiful little park with a working mill (every third Saturday during the summer) that is on the national registry for historical places. The park is known for its fishing (Roaring River stocks the mill pond), its kid-friendly stream, and the gazebo which has been the site of many weddings. You can expect to see 400 people there on an average weekend, and up to 200 people for a Sunday morning baptism service.

(Did you notice the new orange 20th anniversary Stream Team shirts?)

Last year this whole park was flooded. It wouldn't have been so bad but a log jam upstream broke loose and a wall of mud and water and trees came tearing through. The mill itself had a foot of mud in the building. If it hadn't have been for AmeriCorps helping them out, they said the park STILL would not be open. This year was spent replacing lost trees, trimming, staking, and fertilizing.
The other projects were pulling the excess watercress out of the wading stream, planting flowers, weed-eating, and general clean-up. We couldn't have picked a better day- it was beautiful weather! And it was a great time working with another AmeriCorps group. As they would say, the Purdy Reading Tutors ROCK!

Rain Barrel Making in Rolla

Katrina Thomas and Pam Venable show drilling the intake area.

Photographed by Mark Premont.

We had a fairly busy month here in Columbia in May, the event that stuck out the most in my mind was a rain barrel workshop that we conducted in Rolla, MO. After about an hour and half trip, we arrived at our workshop location, the Marguerite Bray Conservation Area. This 132-acre conservation area is open only to those who have the proper hiking permit, but on that day we were free to roam around. After guessing all of the "Who Was Here" tracks that I could find and splashing in the beautiful unnamed creek (Katrina), we were finally met by some of the people in charge the workshop, Connie Schmiedeskamp who actually works at the Marguerite Bray Conservation Area and Susan Wrasmann, the organizer of the event.

Finally, after washing off a few barrels (they had been sitting in muddy field after all) we got started with Katrina speaking briefly about the AmeriCorps program in general, since it was AmeriCorps week. Then it was time to start the rain barrel making. After demonstrating how to make a rain barrel (drilling the holes for and installing the top piece, overflow, and faucet) we got the attendees started on making their own barrels. In the end, everyone had a great time and kept commenting on how nice it was to have an easy project to do. After all, making a rain barrel is a really easy thing to do. After that we packed up our drills and grabbed our half-sandwiches from Panera provided by Susan and headed back to Columbia.

Connie Schmiedeskamp, Matt Morgart, and Pat Perry drill for an overflow valve.

Photographed by Mark Premont

As some of you may know, there was a lady in attendance that was going to write up an article for a local newspaper about the event. She also made a couple of rain barrels herself. In any case, if you haven't read it, then check it out. Rain Barrel article. Until July!

Sometimes I miss the signs of a healthy forest for the invasive trees - or bushes, as the case may be. Working in St. Louis urban streams, it's easy to see nothing but bush honeysuckle, Euonymus (aka winter creeper) and other non-native species that are crowding out the natives. The dominance of these few species decreases biodiversity, eliminating habitat and food sources for some wildlife, and contributes to erosion, thanks to their shallow root systems. Today, walking through the underbrush at Watkins Creek, I came across not one but two trilliums in bloom. This might be the first time I've seen this plant in the wild. For me, that's what it's all about. I didn't have my camera with me; the sketch is courtesy of MDC.

Of course, you come across other forms of beauty when working with water. The second photo shows the artwork created by Ralph Rollins from the bounty of the Confluence Trash Bash on March 28.

A Morning on Swan Creek!

Mid May I asked Gopala, project director at Table Rock Lake Water Quality, Inc., if she would like to go find some critters with me. She suggested a creek close to her home, Swan Creek in Christian County. As you can see from the photo, she brought a friend with her - her son, Eli. What a delightful morning we had in the water! Nothing sweeter than being in the company of someone who enjoys the outdoors as you do. We found such a variety of critters, we declared Swan Creek to be healthy!

Earthday Ed Events
Prarie Fork Conservation Area
April 22, 2009

Well April was full of educational Earthday events. The one that really topped my list for the month however was an Ed Event at Prarie Fork Conservation Area near Williamsburg. The Natural Resources Conservation Service, Missouri Department of Conservation & University of Missouri (I'm guessing here) teamed up to organize around 650 4th-6th graders from area schools. Groups of 20 kids each went around to booths with educational/hands-on topics in Praries, Woodlands, Wetlands & Streams, to Soils. It was awesome!


The day started off when fellow Stream Team Assistants Pam, Katrina & I got an early start and headed to the nearby Whetstone Conservation Area to catch some live macro-invertebrates for our booth. It was a beautiful clear Spring morning, and I must say, the Whetstone C.A. was just amazing! There were Bluebells & Wild Sweet Williams blooming in all they're glory, Ferns, Wild Ginger, & huge swaths of Blood Root growing along a clear & cool babbling stream. I was in heaven.

We started doing the riffle dance in various locations along the stream trying to get the biggest diversity of critters possible. Katrina moved us to a larger section of the stream. Her mission was to find the biggest crawdads to put in the little kiddie pool we brought so that the kids could pick them up. We got tons of great bugs out of Whetstone including the biggest Cranefly Larvae I have ever had the pleasure of seeing (& touching). They are super squishy and I got a kick out of getting the students later that day to pick it up.

We rolled into Prarie Fork to set up amonst 20 or so other exhibitors, luckily I dropped Pam & Katrina off with all of the stuff for our display before I got River Relief's big ol' van stuck in the mud. I was way out in the middle of this field away from everyone where they told us to park, luckily a really nice guy from MDC came along and helped me out of my pickle. It took us about 20 minutes! But I made it back before the kids arrived and got to our booth.


Pam, Katrina, Lea & I ended up having to set up 3 different stations with the live macros because these were the biggest groups of kids (20 at a time) that I have ever had to deal with! The crawdad pool is always the most popular, and the kids just loved getting to play in water and with live critters in general. There were a few screamers, but mostly just inquisitive kids having fun. I think I just about had as much fun as those kids. What a great day!

A huge thanks goes out to the organizers. Having done big Ed Events with Missouri River Relief in the past, this is one of the best organized events I have ever been to. An even bigger thanks goes out to Pat Jones for donating her land as a conservation area so that people big & small can come out and learn about Praries, Wetlands, Lakes, Streams, Woodlands, Savannahs & Soils.

For more fun photos, check out our photo gallery.

Melanie Cheney
Americorps Stream Team Assistant
Missouri River Relief