How did I get here?

Its hard to believe that it was a little over two years ago when I met Tiffany Frey. She was the AmeriCorps volunteer at the time. I had just finished the River Rescue float when Tiffany offered me a hot dog. I remember asking her, "Who are you and what do you do?". I was in such admiration for anyone who was responsible for an event which has such a big impact on the cleanliness of the James River. It was at that very point I realized it was time for a career change. I had been a massage therapist for eight years at that point and was contemplating attendance at Drury University.Tiffany invited me to attend a Stream Team Conference the next morning. My interest was peeked and the rest was history. I became a Stream Team volunteer, Master Naturalist and active participant at James River Basin Partnership and the Watershed Committee.

I am now the new AmeriCorps volunteer for James River Basin Partnership and will be graduating form Drury University with a BS in Biology. My responsibilities at JRBP mainly focus on Watershed Festivals for the basin's area 5th graders and environmental education for the community. I am extremely excited to have this opportunity to make a small contribution to the community I live in and the rivers I love. There is nothing better than a fall float down a river that I know I have actively participated in the protection of.

I dream of my future, when I will have a career in water quality and know that my work is meaningful. The work that is being implemented at JRBP has a ripple effect that will provide future generations with protected aquatic habitats and clean drinking water. I am so grateful to have this opportunity as an Americorps volunteer, it will forever set the course for my inspirations to unfold.

Family Volunteer Day with Trinity Presbyterian Church

I never would have believed it, but it is late November and there are STILL green leaves outside! Of course, 90% of these belong to the dreaded bush honeysuckle. Because this nonnative species has declared a full scale attack on Missouri woodlands, MRCN collaborated with Trinity Presbyterian Church and Boy Scout Troop 4 to celebrate Family Volunteer Day on November 21^st.

Nearly 30 scouts and parents showed up on Saturday morning to help the MRCN staff tackle the honeysuckle that has taken over the church grounds. Though we had some skeptics at the beginning, once we told the boys that there would be a competition for the biggest honeysuckle uprooted, there was honeysuckle flying out of the ground.

Throughout the morning the pile began to grow and grow, and by noon we had what could be considered a mountain in the state of Missouri. The winners of the “biggest honeysuckle” contest were awarded t-shirts, although the bragging rights seemed more important.

Members of Trinity Presbyterian now have a completely new view when they look out onto their forest plot. Of course, there are plenty of spots that we did not get to, but it seems that MRCN and Troop 4 will be ready for another round of removal in the spring!

I'm a newborn baby blogger!

WOW, it's all new to me! It has taken a little bit of time to get acclimated to this new professional life of mine. Before I became an Americorps volunteer, I was a full-time massage therapist and student at Drury. I have never collaborated with a group of people in an office setting with a common goal. In this case, I'm referring to my new responsibilities at James River Basin Partnership. I'm realizing how important this Americorps experience is for my future and the feature of the next great water protection agency I hope to work for.

Although I have been studying biology in school, I cant believe how little my prior knowledge in science is used at JRBP. This very valuable experience is teaching my how important financing, business and public relations skills are fundamental to achieving success in any water protection group! In the future I hope to help make big changes in the minds of individuals concerning how they view water. I would not be able to do this without the new professional experience at JRBP through AmeriCorps.

I currently am knee deep in the process of organizing for our future Watershed Festivals. The festivals while educate around 2,000 5th graders in the James River basin about how their actions effect the water around them. This is a huge event that involves 11 days of festivals and around 20 schools. Boy, I'm learning so much about putting on a program of this magnitude! I look forward to keeping you connected my progress!

P.S. I miss all of my new friends! And look so forward to our next "rain event"!

October

Hello again!
Happy Friday the 13th! October was a definitely a busy month. Aside from the show me service training in kansas city, I was preparing for the upcoming owls events. But I mostly focused on my water quality monitoring efforts. I have a blast working on wqm. My chemistry course focused on doing a lab in Hard Water monitoring (I was the only one to bring a sample from the creek) and aside from learning that Keifer Creek has hard water (which is not new news) I learned that it contains a high level of Barium in it. I am sure it is under the limits for drinking wataer for people. But how does this affect the life in the streams? Also, because I found the Barium (which is a white precipitate formed when the sample was mixed with NaCl in an aqueous solution), I learned that the cause of the scuds turning neon orange when dropped in alcohol could be from the barium. In a sense, they have phluorescenced like a marine fish would do in the ocean. I have formed a new experiment/research topic for school :)
My efforts with water quality monitoring continue, come january I hope to be a Level 2.
In october, on the 28th, i went to the Life in and along the streams at Powder Valley. Way cool! they hope to make it an annual event, so hopefully I can join them again next year. I continued my efforts at the Little Creek Watershed festival in North county.

septembers activites

hello all.
I apologize for the lateness of my blogs. But I would like to discuss my September activities.
September was a hectic month. Although I am a full time student, I managed to complete Americorps training and the Level 1 Water Quality Monitoring workshop in Springfield. I do not have pictures to go along with this mostly due to the lack of a usable camera.
I am the representative for the Open Space Council of the St. Louis Region and I have helped with projects such as the Operation Clean Stream in August, the Operation Wild Lands (an ongoing effort) and the Meramac River Expedition held in September, which sadly was cancelled this year.
The Open Space Council is a conservation non-for-profit group that channels advocacy and stewardship towards St. Louis' Green Spaces and Open Lands. We aquire and maintain land easements as well as sponsoring and supporting other local organizations. We work with Stream Team, East-West Gateway Council, MDC, DNR, and many others to support our open spaces and natural areas.

blog for Lance Mallette's October activities a little late

Hello All,

This month has been full of activities. We had work days in many Rain Gardens around town, at the Rock Bridge Elementary School, West Boulevard Elementary School, Bethel-Cosmos Park and the Bluffs Retirement Home. I really like the idea of using Rain Gardens as a part of outdoors classrooms, and the Bluffs Retirement Home is neat because the residents are getting to participate in picking out plants.
As well as getting the Rain Gardens ready for winter we built Rain Barrels for the first time. This was a good time and good practice. We have set a goal to sell 500 Rain Barrels. Yes, 500. We met with the Stormwater Educator for the City of Columbia, Mike Heimos, and discussed various strategies to encourage Rain Barrel purchase and use. Some of the ideas include: a possible utilities rebate for Rain Barrel purchase, advertising in the city newsletter and various utilities company's newsletters. We could call this the RAIN BARREL 500. Anyway.

So, the real thing I want to blog about. So, part of our grant to build Rain Gardens on public/institutional properties includes an educational sign explaining what a Rain Garden is all about. No, problem. I can build wooden signs. Julia, Rebecca and I set out to look at as many Rain Garden signs as we could find. Oh, man, we found some good ones, the frame made of steel and the sign itself somehow printed on a street sign type of aluminum, steel and aluminum, in other words a long lasting good looking sign. Alas, I cannot build steel signs. After getting quotes from some steel and sign companies I realized this was way over our budget. Also, due to the state of the economy, and probably partially due to my inexperience in asking for donations, I wasn't able to drum up donations for the signs. So, in my dispair, my roommate, LJ, who is taking a welding class through the Columbia Area Career Center suggested that I ask her welding instructor if he would be willing to have his class build the sign frames. I contacted the instructor and he said, "sure." So, I priced the steel and discovered that we can afford the steel and with the help of the Career Center, we just might get steel signs yet. So, today at 1:00 Julia and I will be meeting with the instructor to discuss this possiblity, cross your fingers.
Oh yeah, we are also getting ready for the Rain Barrel Art Reveiw. This year we decided to prime the barrels for the artist. At the Habitat for Humanity's second hand store we found some high quality paint/primer on the cheep. A former employer of mine, Wayne Guarilia (sp), owner of Oakstone Construction, offered the use of the spray room in his cabinet shop. We will be working on this next week.
Well, I am sure that I am forgetting many things, so, stay tuned for more blogs. Thanks everyone for your good vibes. Take Care.
Your Blogger,
Lance Mallette

Big Piney Watershed

This month has been one of a lot of planning. I am starting a lot of projects that will be carried out through the next few months/ my term and I’m happy to say they are going great so far. My main objective with this position is to help create a watershed committee for the Big Piney River. This river runs through three counties providing water for domestic use as well as recreation to the south central Ozarks. I’ve hosted two meetings so far with the help of MU Extension Facilitators to provide us with guidance and keep us on track. The meetings attendance included community leaders such as County Commissioners, health department, MDC, Forest Services and Soil and Water. They all brought their concerns and ideas which made for a great roundtable discussion and dialog. We are hoping to meet up again next month to discuss the future of the committee, grants we will try for, plans we hope to create and water quality issues we hope to attack. So far the main concerns for our area have been erosion, storm water drainage, old well plugging, and for Pulaski County which has major construction as an on going concern; planning and zoning. The other big project which I won’t go too much into is a collaboration between Texas County Soil and Water and Top of the Ozarks RC&D. It’s an art contest for 5th and 11th grade students in the county. The theme is “Quality Water Means Quality Life.” The deadline is not until February, and we are hoping to make presentations to the classrooms about water quality and what people do and practice and how it affects their daily life. That’s all for now, have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Hey everyone! I would’ve had this up earlier—but I left it on my home computer. So here it is, a little late in the day:

Last week, I visited Washington state for the “Water and Land Use in the Pacific Northwest: Integrating Communities and Watersheds” conference. I was very lucky that I got to go, and I learned a lot about what’s going on with water issues in another region of the country.

The first day of the conference was a field trip to sites in and around Portland related to water and land use (it was the coolest part of the conference, as far as I was concerned). Most of the attendees were more local, so I had a lot of opportunities to talk about how policies, practices, and awareness about water issues are far more advanced there than they are here.

We visited several places; I could expend far too much space and time describing all of the stops and the really cool things the people there are doing, but I’m going to confine myself to Turtle Place.

Turtle Place is an inventive synthesis of renovation to create a public space, environmentalism and art. Formerly a bus center, Turtle Place has gone from being a big ol’ impervious surface to a pretty, ecofriendly public space in the middle of a city.

A bright yellow mural on the building behind it declaring Turtle Place’s theme: “conserve, reuse, recycle.” And the designers really followed through:the lights are LED, slabs of the concrete have been dug up around the outsides of the plaza to create rain gardens, and some of these slabs reused as sculptures and benches. The runoff from parking lot next to the building behind the square also drains to a rain garden.

By far the most creative implementation of the theme is the fountain the middle of the plaza. The fountain serves as a rain garden for the run off from the roof of the building and reusing the run-off to run the fountain when it’s dry. It is made from recycled items you would normally find in a city, like a walk sign, fire hydrants, bike racks, bits of electric utilities, and the top of a streetlight.

The overarching idea I took away from the conference is that public awareness, education, and buy-in are crucial to increase efficiency and improve water quality. So that’s the plan here! Get out there and talk to people in St. Louis about stormwater issues, so rain gardens and barrels become familiar items, maybe even commonplace.

Hope everyone had a lovely October!

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