Camp Rainbow

Shown above is the hoola-hoop macro display at Camp Rainbow.

At Camp Rainbow, the live macro display really caught a lot of eyes! The kids loved it and the counselors too! There were lots of scuds, caddisflies in their cases, sowbugs, a crane fly, a salamander, & more. To top it off, after the kids were done viewing the macro display, they played macro match to determine the water quality in three sections of Camp Rainbow Creek.

In a thank you letter I received, one of the staff wrote, "Thank you so much for coming out to camp this summer. The nature activities were so great! The kids learned a lot and had so much fun with you. You put a lot of smiles on a lot of kids faces!"

For those of you who may not know, Camp Rainbow is not just your "normal" everyday camp! It is a camp for seriously ill children with cancer & other life-threatening blood disorders. It is a place where these kids can go and feel like just a kid again. It truly is a wonderful place. I was so happy to be a part of it! I had a great time working with the kids. They really were a terrific group!

Back to Basics

The McDonald County Back to Basics group was formed last November with its mission to support and elevate the quality of community life through collaborative efforts meeting the basic needs of the McDonald County residents. I have been a member of this group since it started and it's been wonderful meeting people in the county that I would not have met otherwise, and learning different things from them such as new ways to garden and how to preserve or make homemade products.

At our June meeting I was able to teach our members about our water. I told them I didn't wear a lot of hats, but I did wear a lot of shirts. I started off telling them about the AmeriCorps program, and how, through the Missouri River Communities Network, we were able to become Stream Team assistants.

Then I spoke about the watershed and the Elk River Watershed Improvement Association. I used the groundwater flow model for demonstrating how the groundwater flows and where most of us in our area get our drinking water. This brought up pollution and how easily our wells could be contaminated with our karst topography.

Next, I told about the educational presentations that ERWIA puts on for the area 5th graders, with the watershed festival in the fall and then the follow-up classroom presentations in the spring. This led into the Stream Team presentation that I had done for the classroom visits.
Most everyone had heard of the Stream Team program but most had never been involved. There was a concensus that because water is such a basic and important part of everyday life that there should be more interaction between the B2B group and ERWIA with a possibility of helping with a Stream Team project.

'WATER WIZARDS'

Monday mornings, the month of June, found me at the Boys and Girls Club of the Ozarks, Branson Unit, conducting water education classes. Finally, I was able to see the fruition of my efforts over the last ten months! The information I shared with the kids flowed with little need to look at my notes. Yeah! maybe I'm NOT clueless! The first Monday, we learned about "Who needs it (water)?" Did you know it takes 700 gallons of water to produce a cheese burger w/tomato and lettuce? The second Monday, we focused on the water cycle. The younger kids used their hands and feet to produce a thunder storm. Point and non-point pollution was the course of study on the third Monday. Missouri Stream Team was center stage the fourth Monday. We made a stream and identified the critters we found under the rocks. The last Monday the class met, we chatted about everything we had learned the previous four weeks. Eighty kids (grade levels K-6) were exposed to water quality. One of my favorite questions to ask children after a class is "What can you do to keep water clean?" A few kids have ideas, but most do not. I love telling them they have the power of knowledge and they can share their knowledge about clean water with the grown-ups they know!

Water Wizards exploring the stream for macroinvertebrates!

Rain Garden Workdays

Capen Park Rain Garden (left half)

On every Wednesday through out the month of June we held a rain garden workday. These workdays, held at local rain garden sites in Columbia, consisted of us and the volunteers weeding, planting, and mulching. Here is a little bit more about what we did in detail:

Capen Park
The work done here was weeding, planting, and cardboard mulching (which is laying down cardboard covering it up with mulch). This rain garden was completed on June 24, 2009.

Bethel Park
Bethel Park is still a work in progress due to it having a bad erosion problem that has slowed us down, so technically it is only half done. On our workday we had the volunteers do some weeding and planting, then a crew from JobPoint joined us and removed almost all of the cattails that were in the pond... in about an hour and half!!! Katrina, Lea, and I had tried removing some cattails last fall from this same pond, but were not as succesful.

Rock Bridge High School
This is an existing rain garden that was put in several years ago. We have been working with Glenn Picket to combat the clover and other weeds, as well as add some new plants and mulch. KOMU actually came out and did a little news spot on us while we were out there that day. Although that workday didn't last long, as it was about 95 degrees and humid that day.

You can check out the video or read the article, by clicking the appropriate link:
Video
Article

Summer Fun!

Well June was packed full with fun summertime events. The weather was fine & the highlights are many. My favorite ed event was with hundred's of cub scouts at our local city park, Stephens Lake. Groups of 20 would come through our booth every hour on the hour, for 8 hours! It was such a pleasure to work and play with these kids, they were so intelligent & well behaved! Ann Koenig (Forrester for MDC) plays the Macro-Mayem game with the scouts

Many of them were definitely "gifted" and sometimes my lecture on water quality and Stream Teams would get turned around into Q & A's, ranging from scientists studying parasitic twins to why old people shrink, after that last one, I quickly saw that we were getting way off track & returned to our discussion on macro-invertebrates! The next day, Steve & I were off to celebrate Stream Team's 20th anniversary down in Waynesville! We participated in a float on the Big Piney, mingled with fellow stream teamers, listened to old time bluegrass, ate BBQ & together shared our fondest memories during a heartwarming documentary on the program and it's success'. Here's a link to watch the 20th anniversary documentary: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=02D5F418F1519949 Steve & I on our float (top)

A beautiful mayfly I rescued out of the water and set to dry on my paddle (bottom)

On Sunday, I attended some really great workshops on terrestrial insects and fly fishing. It was a blast!

Lastly, Missouri River Relief ended June with a big splash in Sioux City, IA. For the second year in a row, we helped local Siouxlanders clean-up their stretch of river. There wasn't all that much trash to be had, but the experience of working with the "Sioux Crew" was priceless. We even got to take a tour of a wastewater treatment plant! Check out over a hundred photos we are posting of this event on our Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/8478409@N03/. What a great month it has been, Missouri's streams & rivers have once again left me full, yet ready for more.

Melanie Cheney
Americorps Stream Team Assistant
Missouri River Relief

Lisa Jackson in Kansas City

            In last minute fashion the Blue River Watershed Association put together press conference. The second week of June we received a phone call. It was from the federal office of the Environmental Protection Agency. A press conference had been called off in St. Louis to take place in Kansas City and the contact people were not responding. So once water quality in Kansas City was Googled BRWA was the first to pop up.

            On that initial call an idea was pitch that the press conference would take place at a local creek or stream where students were testing the water quality. After the idea was taken to the White House, we were notified to set it up.

            June 22 came and the event was set up at Kaw Point. There were students doing chemical monitoring and students identifying macroinvertebrates. Once Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator, arrived the festivities began. She first surveyed the activities taking place. Then gave a short press conference. After that she took a kit with a small group of students and headed for the water. The students taught Lisa how to run the test. Once she finished there she moved on down to look at some little critters. And she ended the day by unloading litter off of boats from the Kansas River. This was an amazing event to be part of. Everyone involved had a great experience. 

Perspectives on Stream Life

As Stream Team assistants, we learn and promote the message that sediment, from excess erosion, is the most prevalent pollutant in Missouri streams. Therefore it came as a surprise to hear a National Park Service ecologist in Utah, where I was helping with a desert field ecology course (on my own time), lecture on the devastation caused by damming the Green River. According to the ecologist, the Flaming Gorge Dam has decimated what was once one of the most diverse mayfly, stonefly and caddisfly communities in the world by *reducing* sediment flows and *decreasing* summer water temperatures. Of course, later in the course we saw examples of livestock-caused erosion that was stifling a desert creek. I found these perspectives interesting and helpful in putting the stream health message in context - human-induced changes have completely altered the erosion picture in Missouri and elsewhere, but I'll be more careful not to over-simplify and paint erosion as all bad.

Earlier in June, about 60 kids from Windsor Elementary had a grand time exploring Rock Creek at Mastodon State Park, a beautiful, clear stream where they caught crawdads, turned over rocks to hunt for mayflies and generally explored stream life. That event kicked off 4 days of educational activities coordinated by Stacy Arnold and Darlene Haun, including introducing Cub Scouts - and their parents - to life in a 200 m spring-fed urban creek in Webster Groves (photo by Stacy Arnold) and bringing caddisflies, sculpins, planarians, scuds and other critters to Camp Rainbow, where children battling serious illness get to relax, enjoy and explore.