River Rescue to the RESCUE!

Wow you should have seen the trash from River Rescue this past June 12th! We had 200 people show up and my AmeriCorps co-members Julia and Lance worked their tales off! Seriously, we up at 6am and didn't hit the sheets until 11:30 that night. We cleaned the Finley River in Ozark MO and ended at the waste water treatment plant. There must have been around 75 tires picked up. That stretch of river has never been picked up before, it needed it! After the river clean-up we had our annual concert entitled Dam Jam. It was at the historic Ozark Mill. I wish I had more pics to share, but hear is a good one!

Honeysuckle Hack at the Fire Station

The River des Peres Watershed Coalition is in charge of two sites in the River des Peres Watershed. One site is located in Maplewood, Mo on Deer Creek a large tributary of the River des Peres and the other site is located on a natural stretch of the River des Peres in University City, Mo called Mona Terrace. Mona Terrace is a quarter mile stretch of the River des Peres situated on a bike route of Great Rivers Greenway, is becoming likely to considered a park by City of University City, being a green corridor just a block away from busy Olive Boulevard. Mona Terrace is surrounded by residential neighborhoods, an apartment complex, and just to the east of it is the University City Fire Station located at the intersection of North & South and Shaftesbury Road.
The fairly new fire station has an interesting place both spatially and historically. Spatially it is a better location (traffic wise) and more of a visible presence in the community and historically due to the fact that in front of the fire station is a marker showing the starting point of the 1904 World’s Fair marathon. Being just east of our Mona Terrace site, the RdP figured what’s a few more hundred feet of honeysuckle removal? The city beautification group U. City in Bloom, has planting sites throughout University City (located at schools, curbs, and road medians) and is working to get the City of University City recognized for community involvement through public gardening. U. City in Bloom has been maintaining the site of the marathon marker, but planting a beautiful variety of annual flowers. Unfortunately beyond the marker and flowers, was thick undergrowth of Japanese honeysuckle, invasive vines, and Eunonymus (Winter Creeper) (second picture in top row). The long-range plan is to beautify the entire grounds around the fire station. The RDP seeks to reconnect the community with the River des Peres as well as removing invasive plant species and beautifying the environment with Missouri native plants. So our two organizations shared a common goal of beautifying this riparian area at a worthwhile civic location. That was where the RDP was ready to come in and do work on removing as much of the invasive species as possible. On Sunday morning of June 13, 2010a group of 14 volunteers from U.City in Bloom and the River des Peres Watershed Coalition, armed with handsaws, loppers, shovels, and of course plenty of water delved into the “jungle” as we called it and for the next 3 and a half hours began hacking away at the mass amount of invasive species (We had a chainsaw, but it went out of commission soon after starting the project, but we made up for it with good old fashioned muscle and grit). Though I have spent countless hours removing honeysuckle and other invasives I am always surprised by how open the area looks when the plants are removed, especially how much the invasive species become a block to the river. I felt that we were successful in removing plenty of honeysuckle, and salvaging trees that were being slowly choked off by vines; Winter Creeper though we removed some, we still have a lot more work to do on that.
At the end of our work we had removed 14 cubic feet of honeysuckle, and many bundles of Winter Creeper; though we did a lot of hacking and cutting of plants, we enjoy planting them as well, and we had the chance put 12 trees and native shrubs in place of the invasive species that we removed (The picture in center-bottom row is a view towards the back of the historical marker sign- that was the area we cleared in addition to other side of the firehouse) . We did a heck of a job out there that Sunday morning, and the RdP and U.City in Bloom are already developing future plans to return to the site within the next month to remove more invasives. Being the River des Peres Watershed Coalition we are privileged to work with other community improvement groups in the St. Louis region, but it is great when we get the chance to work other groups in our very own community. Looking at the site in the present day, being the site of a fire station and a slightly channelized portion of the River des Peres, it’s hard to imagine the area once being the site of a marathon more than a century ago. But hopefully the effort made by members of the River des Peres Watershed Coalition and U.City in Bloom will make the area more accessible to the community and preserve a small piece of history. Finally, I would like to give a special thanks to all the people who dedicated their time and effort to help both the River des Peres Watershed Coalition and U.City in Bloom in beautifying the city of University City, Mo, these people are the absolute embodiment of the term community service, in volunteering their time and hard work.

Columbia Rain Garden Tour

Before it gets too far into June, I wanted to share with the world the success of MRCN's recent rain garden tour! It was held on Sunday, June 6, which (compared to the blistering heat mid-Missouri is currently suffering through) was an absolutely gorgeous day!

I had been incredibly anxious while planning this event, primarily because I had never planned a garden tour! However, this event was also the first of its kind for MRCN; while we have hosted rain garden tours in the past, the self-guided format I had opted to go with was new for us. My goal was to get more people involved and encourage them to mold the tour into something that best fit their needs and interests. I also really, really wanted to feature some of the great residential rain gardens that Columbians have created! While everyone has seen the gardens at Stephens Lake Park or Rock Bridge High School, not everyone has seen John Glenn's backyard!

By the way, John Glenn is not an astronaut. Just a super nice guy with a rain garden (which is pictured above).

6 homeowners volunteered to show their gardens for the tour. Most of them had worked with us on our grant project last year, so it was fun seeing how the gardens had changed! I was so excited to have so many homeowners featured, as I was hoping they would inspire other potential rain gardeners. In order to emphasize even more person-to-person rain garden interaction, we also selected 4 public sites that are really great and had volunteers sit at those to answer questions during the tour. The remaining 6 sites were unattended, but I talked to quite a few people who visited them anyway.

The number of visitors at each site varied, from a total of 2 to over 30! My favorite "success story" came from homeowner Nadia Navarrete-Tindall and her husband Randy. She not only labeled some of the 120 native plants that inhabit her yard (shown below), but she also printed out a spreadsheet with the scientific and common names of all of them! I guess the word got out, because she reported that she had a steady flow of visitors for the full 3 hours!

When I first took on the rain garden project, I wasn't very enthusiastic about it, but after the tour, I am bummed I don't get to help plan another!

Lessons I have learned

Hello all.
This month I learned a lesson in communication. MRCN has had a Healthy Watershed Series once a month for the last few months. I failed to contact the person I had set up to speak to remind him. This was unfortunate as MRCN looked bad and I felt horrible about not having a speaker. It was my fault and I hope that my mistakes will result in my better performance. On the positive side, we sold four 330 gallon rain totes to a school district in Kansas City. The person who picked them up was really excited and told me that the students would paint them before instillation. In marketing the first people to adopt a product or idea are called early adopters, or something like that. These early adopters pave the way for the rest of us to adopt the new product or idea. So, not to long ago very few people had cell phones for various reasons, many of them good. Yet, a few people adopted the new technology, influenced government and private business to support the continuation of and expansion of the technology. So, perhaps rain barrels are in the stage were only a few people, the early adopters, are aware but through them perhaps more people will adopt the rain barrel technology. take care everyone.

Lake Monitoring and the Two Dam Days Paddle Race

Greetings from the Lake of the Ozarks! Caroline Toole, here, working with LOWA (Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance) and AmeriCorps (MO Clean Water AmeriCorps Program, hosted by MO River Communities Network (MRCN)), in service to our community!
Well, I thought things might slow down a bit once we submitted the watershed management plan (which has been approved by EPA and MO DNR), but May turned out to be full of Clean Water events and activities!
Earth Day is Every Day! May found LOWA still active with lots of school children. A return trip to Climax Springs R-IV to visit the 3rd, 4th, and 6th grades for a more focused look at water quality measurements was almost rained out but we managed to set up our equipment at the ball field and bring creek water up from the Outdoor Classroom. Rain again altered plans at Mills Elementary with the School of the Osage 2nd grade (about 150 of them!). Rather than activities at their Outdoor Classroom, we played a watershed game up under a covered walkway – at least we could stay outside, sort of! Our watershed game from Project Wet was a big hit this year with students ranging from Kindergarten to 5th grade. This activity illustrates the benefits of a riparian buffer in reducing the amount of runoff reaching a body of water. Much fun was had by all!


This AmeriCorps member also trained to be a part of the E. coli Cove Study at the Lake of the Ozarks. This season sampling will occur at three locations around the Lake. One set of coves is from about mile marker 34 at the Hurricane Deck Bridge to about the 60 mile marker, in Camden County. Another location is the set of coves in Gravois arm. And the last location is a couple of coves near Bagnell Dam that have tested high several times over the course of this 5-year study. With the help of LOWA volunteers to collect the water samples, three times as many sites have been able to be sampled in this study which is in its 4th year. Here's a picture of those pesky waterfowl.
Lakes of Missouri Volunteer Program (LMVP) is also a part of this AmeriCorps member’s monitoring activities. This program has volunteers sampling lake waters all around the lake. I monitor at mile marker 51 on the Lake of the Ozarks, and my husband helps out by piloting the boat and recording data. Coffman Marina sponsors us by letting us use their boat ramp free of charge. We only have a little 12’ putt-putt boat so we go out towards late afternoon on a weekday to avoid the larger power boats. Sampling for LMVP entails a temperature reading, a Secchi disc reading, and the collection of a water sample. At home, we then take the water sample and filter it twice each for two measurements and prepare a water sample for storage. Then all samples and filters are stored in the freezer for later pick up. For an old science type like me, this is just way too much fun!

Another May activity for LOWA was to observe and video the preparation of a pervious concrete driveway at a Green Home being built near the Lake. Pervious concrete (one type of pervious pavement) is a green construction practice that helps to reduce runoff and increase the amount of infiltration from precipitation events.
But probably the most exciting May activity has been gearing up for LOWA’s Two Dam Days Paddle Race, taking place in late September. This will actually be two races in one as well as Clean Water Festivals and the promotion of Clean Water Activities at the Lake of the Ozarks. The Two Dam Days Paddle Race will be a marathon kayak and canoe race from Truman Dam in Warsaw (near the 92 mile marker) to Bagnell Dam in Lake Ozark (near the zero mile marker!). The marathon racers will begin Saturday morning at Drake Harbor and try to make it to Captain Ron’s at the 34 mile marker by dark (7 am to 7 pm); we don’t want racers out on the Lake after dark. Then the marathoners will continue Sunday morning and race from Captain Ron’s to Iguana Sports on the Bagnell Dam Strip at the end of the lake. The marathon race should be very exciting but Saturday will also find the Just For Fun recreational race that will leave Halfway Inn at the 48 mile marker and race to Captain Ron’s, about 14 miles. Oz Cycles and Kayaks is sponsoring prizes, etc for the Just For Fun Race and various other businesses will be sponsoring the divisions and categories of the marathon portion of the Two Dam Days Paddle Race. LOWA has planned this race for late September to avoid a lot of the large power boats on the Lake during the summer and to bring in some late season activity for the Lake area businesses.
June looks to be just about as busy as May. Talk to you all next month!

Septic Tank Educational Presenation

We helped host a public seminar about septic tanks at Fantastic Caverns this month. The event was open the public and we had a nice turnout for the event. Most folks were homeowners and were interested in hearing about how a septic tank works and how an advanced system could help them. We learned about soil types and how much soil is needed for a conventional septic system. Most homes in the Ozarks area do not have adequate soil types or quantity to have a conventional system. Advanced systems are the way to go if you have no soil or if you have a small area to work with. After the presentation, the participants got to go on a free tour of Fantastic Caverns.
As a new update, Table Rock Lake Water Quality has re-designed our website so check this out in your free time. http://www.trlwq.org/
I have also been busy re-designing the Missouri Smallflows website which is more user-friendly for our onsite wastewater professionals. I never thought I would learn web design. http://www.mosmallflows.org/

Recycle, Reduce, Re-use!

During AmeriCorps Week, I gave 3 presentations to the 6th grade classes in the Plato School District as well as to 181 4th and 5th graders at the Jack's Fork Watershed Education Day. It focused on the importance of recycling as well as how long it takes everyday household items to fully decompose into the Earth (if there is an actual time). I did lot's of research because let's face it, who better than to stump me on a random question than 9-11 year olds! We discussed the 3 R's- Reduce, Re-use and Recycle. Rather than just giving the kids facts and information, I asked them what they can do in their very own homes to help the planet. And I heard some really great ideas. For the Re-use discussion, I had items like a glass jar, an egg carton, old greeting card, and a paper towell roll in my bag. Basically I grabbed stuff that anyone could find in the average home and asked "Rather than throwing this away, what could you do with it?" These kids let me know! Everything from games, bug catchers, scrapbooking parts and a place to store trinkets were brought up!
At the end of the presentation, I had a matching game with items on one card, and rates of time on the others. They were to match each item with how long it took for it to decompose. And of course in the 6th grade classroom, it became a boys vs. girls grudge match. But everyone had a great time, and some of the kids wanted to start a recycling program as a class project!
Fun Facts-
We all know recycling cans can benefit your pockets as well as the earth, but did you ever think to recycle your Hershey Kiss wrappers? I knew it was aluminum foil, but it never crossed my mind to recycle those little buggers!

If you were to throw away a soda can, it would take 80-100 years to break down, but you can recylce a can indefinitely!

---- On a completely different note------
Don't forget the Big Piney River Clean-Up Saturday, July 17th. Boiling Springs Resort! Bring your canoes and be ready for fun!!! Registration begins at 8am.

Our Big Day!

On the evening of May 19th we celebrated the culmination of our Rivervision Leadership Project at the Missouri Botanical Garden!

We have had a great time with our participating 7th, 8th, 10th, and 11th grade students over the past 6 months! This was our chance to showcase the students' work and creativity in a public forum. We recognized our final project winners with prizes and screened a multi-media celebration of Rivervision participants, volunteers, educators, and site work over the past six months. The real focus of the evening, however, was a discussion panel comprised of local and regional environmental professionals (most of whom had been involoved with the program previously).

We were fortunate to have a terrific panel who, while not always agreeing with one another, covered a myriad of water quality and water use issues in a respectful, educational, and thought provoking way. Don Marsh, well known St. Louis radio personality, was our moderator for the evening. He asked the panel a series of questions to prompt discussion; some were his own, but most were from participating students.

All told, the evening brought together 145 participating students, their families, 16 volunteers, 6 panel members, and interested parties frome several civic, environmental, and governmental agencies in the St. Louis metro area.

Unfortunately, I am having difficulty getting Blogger to upload our high resolution images from the event. Instead I'll sign off with a shot of our 7th and 8th grade Rivervision students we took a few months ago...we had a ton of fun!

No Dumping, Drains to Stream!

On one of the few fair-weather days we had this May, I joined 6^th graders from Valley Park Middle School (VPMS) for their Fishpot Field Day. Organized by Darlene Haun and VPMS science teacher Ms. Leslie Venn, this water quality-centric field day grew out of Ms. Venn's class' involvement with Stream Teams; Stream Team #3271 at VPMS has adopted Fishpot Creek, and they've been learning about it throughout the year.

In January, and those of you that read these blogs closely may remember this post, several other AmeriCorps members and I helped Darlene test for chlorides along Fishpot. We then visited Ms. Venn’s classroom to show her students how road salt had found its way into the water, and to teach them a little about the negative consequences of increased chlorides on the stream.

The Fishpot Field Day took place at several sites along the stream. I was with the group furthest upstream at Mockingbird Park, located at the back of a subdivision. There were three volunteers at the site that helped to conduct several activities: Tom Ball took care of visual survey, chemistry and flowrate in Fishpot, John Ruprecht led the kids on a plant identification walk, and I was in charge of storm drain stenciling (which was the most fun, if you ask me!).

All of the kids got a chance to rotate through and do all three of the activities. With each group of kids, I first asked them to imagine what would happen to the rain if there had been nothing built. Most kids eventually got it right—that most of the water would soak into the ground, and some would evaporate, and a little goes into the stream. Then I asked them to take a look at the subdivision and tell me what would happen to the stormwater now that we’d built all these houses and roads and sidewalks. They put together that most of the water goes down the storm drain and straight to the stream, and that all the stuff that’s on roads goes into the stream with it.

Once the kids understood why dumping things down the storm drain is a bad idea, we then set off with our trusty cans of spray paint to stencil some storm drains. We broke into three smaller groups: two groups of two kids that stenciled storm drains, and one group of three that went door to door dropping off fliers that explained why we were stenciling the storm drains. We also kept track of the things we saw around the storm drains that would go into the stream the next time it rained: sticks, leaves, pine needles, rocks, and fertilizer from an immaculately groomed lawn. One storm drain was almost completely blocked from organic waste.

It was so great to see all the energy the kids had—one particularly enthusiastic kid ran to every house to drop off a flier. I hope that through the kids' efforts, people in the neighborhood will notice the fliers and stencils on the storm drains and not dump their dog poop or yard waste in storm drains. It's a small step in helping to protect Fishpot, but we sure had a lot of fun with it!

Katie's Post

Now more than ever people are realizing how their actions affect our environment. To anybody reading this, you are probably aware of the need for cleaner energy, cleaner air, cleaner water and more open space. But what people aren't aware of is how much their actions, no matter how small they seem, are influencing the lives of others. It is absolutely 100% pointless to pin the blame on someone else. This shows a lack of responsibility, laziness, removal from nature, and a cop-out of having to put forth more energy and effort to reach a higher goal.

It is absolutely the entire nation's responsibility to take care of and live in harmony with all other biotic and abiotic factors in our ecosystems. What we do here in Missouri affects not just Missouri but the Gulf of Mexico, and South America, the Pacific Ocean as well as the Atlantic Ocean.
My small efforts of showing people how to get it done, and not just preaching to them, has energized others to help out, to halt the invasive species, to REDUCE, REUSE, and then recycle, to keep their cigarette butts for the trash can. It is not the tobacco company's fault or the corrupt oil mongrel's fault. The fault is on any individual not willing to change. The change and positive outcome is on every single person in this nation.
You think you can't have a hydrogen vehicle. YOU'RE WRONG. You think you can't have your home run on solar panels. WRONG AGAIN. Convenience is in the eye of the beholder, and there won't be any more conveniences if we don't change our attitudes about what we need, use, and want.

Lake Awareness

It was a fabulous Memorial Day weekend and it seemed as though everyone had the same idea as myself: Go to the Lake of the Ozarks! However, it's amazing to visit such a site after having some of the new found knowledge I do now. Truly "good times" can bring on lake abuse.

So what is lake abuse? As I watched several of my friends work on jet skis with very novice expertise, I couldn't help but wonder how much oil and gas they managed to spill into the lake. Even though this was not their intention, it still qualifies as lake abuse. If you look around the lake you can see a lot of people doing the same. I have to wonder who actually has a good working pwc these days that is properly maintained. Not many.

At night I watched as someone shot nearly 100 bottle rockets into the lake while the neighbors across the way decided it would be hilarious to dump gas into the water and light it on fire. Again more lake abuse.

So what am I getting at? I guess I'm trying to say that even though I started out as a water conscientious person before, the AmeriCorps Clean Water Program has taken my awareness of clean water to the next level. I'm asking everyone else to do the same. Let's start thinking about what we're doing on the next level, even if it's just a one weekend trip where we come into contact with water or if we have lived there our whole lives. It's summer time and that's no excuse for us to start being water abusers.