1st month of AmeriCorps

Hello moriverlovin’ folks!

This is Julia from the Missouri Clean Water AmeriCorps Program, serving through the Missouri River Communities Network in Columbia, MO.

We are a nonprofit organization whose mission is to preserve and restore the historic, cultural, and natural resources of the Missouri River and its surrounding communities, and to encourage citizen participation in these endeavors.

The new AmeriCorps members recently got back from a week of training in the spider-filled Lake of the Ozarks State Park. Learning and growing.
After learning all about AmeriCorps and our supervising organization the MRCN, we made foshees, saw glow worms and then ate sand while camping on California Island. We had spent the evening with River Relief and had the tastiest food around while we were helping with their event on the island.

One of MRCN's current projects is promoting and installing Rain Gardens in residential and institutional land around Columbia. We have been making site visits to help people decide if their property is an appropriate place to put in a garden and how to best do that. We have also been doing lots of upkeep on previously installed gardens, removing invasive species, getting stuck in the mud, planting and laying down cardboard and mulch to keep the weeds away. Each work day we have had between 1-3 volunteers helping to maintain these public gardens. We appreciate all the extra hands, and are always looking for more!

Learn more about the benefits to our watershed and community on our website, www.moriver.org/
OR
Search for info from the Department of Natural Resources, where they are asking the city of Columbia to reduce rain water flow into the Hinkson Creek by 68%!
How can we do this?

LOTS OF RAIN GARDENS!

Kansas City River Clean-Up

Hello Stream-Lovers!

My name is Rebecca, and I am one of ten new and awesome Missouri Clean Stream AmeriCorps Members! Although the past three weeks have been full of fun, I have chosen just one excellent story to share with you.

On October 3^rd, I spent my 23^rd birthday attending my first ever river clean-up! Although I am currently stationed in Columbia, MO with the Missouri River Communities Network, I grew up in Kansas City and could not resist a trip home to practice everything that I had been learning with MRCN.

It was a chilly morning, and one of the first things I noticed was a neon orange beanie. One of the second things I noticed was that this beanie belonged to my high school Environmental Education teacher, Mike Pisani. Without the Environmental Education program at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School, I would not be where I am today, and I was excited to see that Pisani had brought some of his students out to help clean the river.

After a chilly boat ride to our site, we were let loose on the garbage that littered the river bank. Among our finds for the day: a refrigerator door, a perfectly usable soccer ball, a red cooler, a toy hammer, LOTS of styrofoam, LOTS of plastic bottles and a beautiful pink bra. In just over 2 hours, the 21 volunteers from Team Cougar had cleaned up our stretch, and we were ready to return to Kaw Point Park.

All told, nearly 400 volunteers came out to help with the clean-up! Thanks to all involved for making my 23^rd birthday a memorable one!

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

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

Rocheport Day of Caring

Students and parents planting trees and picking up trash along the River Walk Trail

Photo by Lea Langdon

It was one of those days when you weren't quite sure what the weather was going to be like when the event actually started. It looked like it was going to rain, but then again it is always possible that the rain would hold off until it was all over, and for the most part it did indeed hold off. On Saturday, April 18 we joined up with Maria Dorsey (an AmeriCorps-Vista), Friends of Rocheport, the French Club from West Junior High (here in Columbia), and Missouri River Relief to have a Day of Caring in Rocheport, MO.

With the help of about 60 students and parents, we planted 350+ trees along the Moniteau Creek, the River Walk, and in a couple of parks in town. On the clean up side of things, they had 73 volunteers and a total of about 5.7 tons of trash cleaned up, which includes an old rusted bed frame that I and couple of parents pulled out of the ground near where we were planting our trees... woohoo! You can read River Reliefs summary of the day at their Rocheport Results Page.

Look to see another post by me either later today or tomorrow (gotta get March up!)

March Madness

Well we kicked off March with our first big clean-up of the year, the Mari-Osa Dump Clean-up part 2! We have now been working on this massive eyesore of an ancient dumpsite on the beautiful Osage River for two year's in row, and the stories & photos from this adventure are just priceless! Check them out on Missouri River Relief's river notes blog: http://riverrelief.blogspot.com/search/label/Mari-Osa

There's even a fun video Jim Karpowicz made of the ingenious trash flume some of our crew members designed to shoot the mass of broken glass & tin cans down the hill in a quick & efficient manner. It's pretty funny, here's the link to the page from our website, scroll all the way to the bottom for the video: http://www.riverrelief.org/event/mari-osa-dump-part-2/ Lot's of fun event results posted there too!

It's been a busy Spring so far, and it doesn't look like we'll be giving our clean-up efforts a rest anytime soon. So stay tuned in for more fun stories & future event postings! www.riverrelief.org