February has been a good month. I was able to go visit my 97 year old Grandfather Mallette in Texas this month. It turns out that community service runs in the family. At the senior center there is a framed certificate from the AARP commending Ross Mallette for his years of community service. It is true that grandpa is poor in physical wealth, yet he has had and continues to have a full rewarding life helping people as he is able. One key to a rewarding life might just be helping others.

Now on to report some exciting news, you might have heard that the painted barrels for the Rain Barrel Art Review and Auction have been scattered around various businesses downtown. Check out Julia Karll’s blog for the inside scoop. You also might have heard about the Canoe for Clean Water with MRCN. Check out Rebecca’s blog and the MRCN website (for more information about stuff we do). www.moriver.org. This website is great. Rebecca has done very well learning how to make it work.

This month marked the beginning of my volunteering with TreeKeepers in Columbia, MO. It started with a brief series of classes, followed by a graduation of sorts.

Lance Graduates from TreeKeepers Lance throws a stick

Fortunately tree identification is not a part of the test. One of the best pieces of advice that I was able to grasp was the concept that sometimes the kindest cut is the one to cut the tree down. If the tree could be diseased, damaged or is just in the wrong spot, sometimes it is best to start over with a smarter plan. Invasive plants are those that are really, really in the wrong spot, or continent. They outcompete the native plants and generally take over fields, forests, parks and neighborhoods. TreeKeepers to the rescue! As it is still a little before planting we focused the last two events on invasive species removal. February 13, we met at the Forum Nature Area and rid the marshy fields of the bad invasive pear tree. February 27 we met at Cosmo Park and cleaned the parking lot area around Dexheimer Shelter of the invasive bush honeysuckle. The honeysuckle was very thick and we dramatically changed the way the forest undergrowth now looks around the shelter.

Honeysuckle is one of the first to green out in the spring and one of the last to lose its leaves. So, when driving around late fall when most trees have lost their leaves, look out into the woods and a lot of what you see is invasive honeysuckle. This early leafing out and holding on to leaves in the fall gives the honeysuckle a longer growing season than Missouri native plants. The birds love to eat their seeds, thus spreading them and the roots can send up new shoots when not pulled out completely or chemically treated. If not addressed, frequently by somewhat violent means, the honeysuckle may take over an area. One fear is that when the current bigger, older trees start to die, the only viable replacement will be the vile honeysuckle. As the honeysuckle takes over the forest undergrowth it is often the only thing growing beneath larger trees, thus the only thing to replace them when they die.

Good luck to everyone. Take care. Until Next Month.

Lance cuts honeysuckle

Parking lot full of honeysuckle

sorry folks I cannot figure out how to get pictures on this silly blog.

Lance Mallette

Canoe for Clean Water!

The last month of winter was rough on the MRCN crew here in Columbia! Our plans for water quality monitoring fell through so we had to find ways to keep busy inside. We held meeting after meeting, and I personally spent many hours in front of the computer learning the ins and outs of web design. But, we are now proud to finally announce what we have been working so hard on...

On Saturday, June 19, MRCN will be holding the first ever CANOE FOR CLEAN WATER! This is a three-in-one event for anyone who loves our mighty Missouri River. The day will begin bright and early with the Clean Water 50, a 50-mile canoe and kayak race for anyone looking for a real challenge! If you do love paddling but are looking for something a bit less intense, the Clean Water 15 may be what you are looking for. While still a timed race, it only runs 15 miles so you could just as easily take your time and enjoy the beautiful scenery that the river has to offer.

But in my opinion, here's the best part: both races end at Katfish Katy's in Huntsdale, MO where MRCN will be holding River Fest! We will have great local bands, delicious local cuisine and even some great local beverages. All sorts of different environmental organizations will have educational booths and activities, and we are even hoping to have a silent auction! So if paddling isn't your thing, you can sleep in and join us at River Fest!

Just thinking about this day makes me super giddy, but I know there is still a lot to do before then. If you would like to learn more about our race, check out the website: http://www.moriver.org/race/race.html. Or, go to our home page and click on our "river rat" as he canoes across the page. No seriously...he canoes across the page. It took me forever to get that to work right.

So pull out your calendar right now, and mark June 19. We hope to see you in a boat, enjoying the festival or even working as one of our volunteers! Please and thank you!

River Kids Go Above and Beyond

On February 20th, the St. Louis River Kids of New City School hosted their 2nd Annual Polar Bear Pickup at North Riverfront Park. The River Kids, who range from 4th grade-10th grade, aim to help clean, protect, and preserve water sources in St. Louis.

Their Mission:

1. To learn about rivers and associated issues
2. Teach others about these issues and propose solutions
3. Take action on issues and clean the rivers

At the Polar Bear Pickup, the River Kids collected trash on both sides of the river, even canoeing across to access the opposite bank. Their efforts not only helped restore the beauty to the park, but also helped a community of beavers living on the other bank. I was happy to be part of such a great event and to see such interest from kids.

As a reminder, there are many other litter pickup events coming up if you would like to do your part! The 2010 Confluence Trash Bash will be held on March 27th from 9:00-12:00. Please register online here. Let's think like the River Kids and go above and beyond!

Upcoming Litter Pick-up Event

I know what you're thinking... How can I get outside, fight the cold, and pick up some trash!? Well this Saturday, February 20th, the St. Louis River Kids are hosting their Annual Polar Bear Pick-up at North Riverfront Park (1/4 mile south of I-270 on Riverview Blvd) from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM. It's not t00 late to get involved! Register by email at riverkids@newcityschool.org. This is one of several upcoming clean-ups in the area so if you can't make this one, stay tuned for more info.

Fight the cold! Come on be bold! It's for the environment I'm told!

King River

Note: this post is going to be a little… atypical. I’m blogging about this event because I feel so strongly about these issues; I personally think the subject matter is a “great story,” if not in the traditional sense of this blog.

A couple of weeks ago, the Coalition sponsored a showing of the documentary King Corn, and its companion, Big River, at the Tivoli Theater in St. Louis. I, along with two volunteers (one of whom is an AmeriCorps alumna who did stormwater education in Maine), manned the booth in the entry way and answered questions before and after the film from the nearly 100 attendees.

If you haven’t seen King Corn, I highly recommend it. I first saw this documentary as an undergraduate in an Environmental Sociology course, and it completely revolutionized the way I see the food system in the United States.

King Corn is the story of two friends, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, from Boston who travel to a small town in Iowa to grow an acre of corn. These recent graduates find out what it’s like to be a modern farmer as they follow the process of growing corn from planting to the various uses for this ubiquitous kernel.

What they found was that farming is heavily dependent not only on chemicals and machines, but on government subsidies—it would be impossible for smaller farmers, in particular, to turn a profit without aid from the Fed.

And yet, every year, literal mountains of corn are grown. After the Earl Butz changed the policy of the Federal government to start paying farmers to grow more corn in the 1970s, we had so much corn that we had to start finding more uses for it.

As it turns out, the vast majority of the corn grown in Iowa can’t be eaten; in fact, Ian and Curt discover that the corn they grow tastes oddly similar to sawdust. Most of the corn grown in Iowa becomes feed for confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Thus, when we eat most beef, pork, or poultry, we’re really eating corn.

Another significant portion of the corn grown around the country is intensely chemical process to extract sugar to make (not surprisingly) high fructose corn syrup. Found in everything from soda to candy bars, high fructose corn syrup is a less expensive—and less healthy—alternative to sugar. Lay a graph of the exponential increase of the production of high fructose corn syrup next the increase in obesity and diabetes, and things start to make a little more sense.

So how does this all relate to water, you ask? Excellent question. Here’s how:

When it rains, all of the pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer not taken up by plants are washed into streams and rivers. Agriculture, as many of you in other parts of the state are aware, is a major source of pollution in our waterways—as well as a significant contributor to the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the subject of the follow up to King Corn—Big River—filmed by the same two friends during the floods in Iowa just a few years ago. They follow the stream that drained their acre all the way to the Mississippi, then paid a visit to the shrimp fishermen of New Orleans, whose industry has all but collapsed due to the irresponsible behavior of cities and farms upstream. Since no aquatic organisms can survive in the dead zone, many people can no longer make a living.

(Side note: Big River only begins to tell the polluted runoff story, and leaves out almost completely anything about problems stemming from urban areas. So if you’re looking to show people something that talks about stormwater issues as a whole, this is a good place to start—but not finish.)

What’s the point? Well, the point is that it’s all tied together—what we choose eat, how we choose to grow it, what happens to our health, and what happens to the environment. Because we grow so much corn, our food is cheaper, but we also pay a much bigger price in the degradation of our health and environment. King Corn, and now Big River, drove that home for me. Everyone who attended, my fellow volunteers included, felt a strong sense of urgency and desire to change the system after viewing these films. I highly recommend them both to anyone who eats food or drinks water in this country.

What's with that E. coli at the Lake of the Ozarks?

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!

LOWA has been putting the finishing touches on the watershed management plan (WMP) for the Lake of the Ozarks (LOZ) and this month I’d like to discuss some of the strategies outlined in the WMP for maintaining and improving the water quality and health of LOZ. When we mention the Lake of the Ozarks these days, the general public often thinks of E. coli, even before they think of Party Cove! Such is the power of the media. The Lake of the Ozarks does not have an E. coli problem yet. Like any other lake, when hard rains come down, material gets washed into the water body from the watershed and last spring, the LOZ Cove testing program sampled according to their testing schedule which, unfortunately, was right after a heavy rain. Lots of E. coli was found through out the sites being tested and then, a few days later, most of that E. coli was gone. This golden opportunity to educate the public about how lakes work was lost as the results, for whatever reason, were withheld. The rest of the testing season showed almost no E. coli at all. All this being said, E. coli is still an issue at the Lake; and, people still want to know what is in the cove waters where they swim and recreate. Sometimes the Cove testing program does find isolated hotspots of E. coli, and then MDNR steps in to trace the bacteria and find the source of that hotspot. One of the “Strategies” (big ideas to tackle the specific issues of sediment, bacteria, and nutrient loading at LOZ) proposed by LOWA in the WMP is to establish more testing at the Lake. Presently, isolated studies are performed by graduate students from time to time, but the 5-year Cove testing program for E. coli being conducted by MDNR (LOWA volunteers collect the water samples for MDNR so that more coves can be tested each season) only samples a small section of LOZ each season and the 5-years is approaching its fourth season. More testing will not, in and of itself, reduce any of the loads to the Lake, but citizens want to know about all of their coves, not just a select few each year.

Several Strategies are proposed by LOWA in the WMP to reduce the amount of bacteria currently entering the Lake and to address the issue of future population growth along the shorelines of LOZ. One set of Strategies specifically targets the wastewater issue at LOZ both from the short-term and the long-term. In the short term, the WMP proposes to establish two programs. One, a Pump-Out Program, has already been tried by LOWA at LOZ on a small scale using a couple of small grants from MDNR. In this program, residents with septic tanks are educated about proper maintenance of their septic tanks and why proper maintenance is so important to the health of the watershed and the Lake. Then those residents who attend the workshop can apply for a discounted pump-out with a local reputable pump-out company. The second program is called Pump Don’t Dump and is targeted at recreational boaters, educating them about why they should take the extra time and expense to properly dispose of the wastewater from their boat’s holding tank instead of just releasing the waste into the lake. This program also picks up from an earlier effort by LOWA which resulted in a brochure of many of the pumping stations at marinas and RV parks around the Lake. That brochure needs to be updated and expanded.

In the long-term, the wastewater issue at LOZ is being addressed by LOWA in terms of proposing the establishment of a Lake-wide sewer district to coordinate the efforts of communities and municipalities, help find funding for their efforts, and to begin the long process of getting rid of the many on-site traditional septic systems around the shoreline that are trying to function in areas simply not suited to that mode of wastewater treatment. This is a huge, highly charged issue that LOWA is tackling. Over 30 years of studies have all said the same thing. To avert a future problem, the septic tanks in areas ill-suited to septic tanks around the Lake’s shores need to be eliminated. LOWA realizes that several types of wastewater treatment will need to be utilized and many sources of funding will need to be found. However, as all of the stakeholders for the Lake of the Ozarks rally to work together, LOWA is confident that the Lake of the Ozarks will remain the vibrant, healthy jewel we all know and love. By working together, we can ensure that the Lake of the Ozarks will continue to be one of the Midwest’s premiere vacation spots and a wonderful place to live, work, and retire.

Attending MNRC

I felt like I had died and gone to heaven when I attended the Missouri Natural Resource Conference last week. Being involved in Americorps allows me to take part in events that I normally would have not been involved in! The opportunity to network with organizations who protect the environment was priceless. A lot of the professionals I met were people I had been communicating with via e-mail for upcoming JRBP (James River Basin Partnership) programs. This conference was paramount to developing relationships with individuals who work regularly with the partnership.

My AmeriCorps group also united for our quarterly meeting. I learned even more about the activities the other members are hard at work on! I am starting to notice a trend in having canoe races as a possible community outreach and fundraising event. This is so exciting! One thing I love about our meetings together is sharing new fundraising ideas for our water protection groups!