EnviroScaping with SCOSAG

On June 29th, I had the chance to do an EnviroScape presentation for the South City Open Studio and Art Gallery (SCOSAG) summer camp. The EnviroScape Model is a small representation of a watershed; the River des Peres Watershed Coalition received ours from St. Louis’ Metropolitan Sewer District. It comes with cars, buildings (residential, industrial, and agricultural), bridges, trees, felt to represent grass and vegetation (and creatively a green roof system), and liquids and Kool-Aid packets that represents pollution. I have come to enjoy EnviroScape presentations because it is a great interactive way of spreading water awareness to children, and to really gauge their knowledge on water and environmental issues. I start off with introduction, then prompting questions such as: Why is water important? What is the water cycle and how water is interconnected? What is a watershed? Do you live near a creek or river? How long is the River des Peres? What are macro invertebrates? What creatures have you seen near your local water source? I asked about trash and pollution and other things that can negatively affect water quality and even the strangest thing that they have seen in a local waterway.
After my talk with the kids then the fun happens and things can get a little messy with the EnviroScape model. I have different ingredients to simulate various types of pollution. Red, Yellow, and Green packets of Kool-Aid represented pesticides, fertilizers, and metal pollution. The soy sauce represented Motor Oil, and table salt represented well you guess it… road salt. Like pollution in our everyday world, our simulated pollution had a powerful smell, though rather better than the River des Peres after a heavy rain; this really provided both a visual and olfactory aid for the kids in showing the effects of pollution on water.
We cleaned up our messy polluted environment, and I asked what ways could improve and reduce the effects of pollution; because I’m not all about doom and gloom, and focusing on the negatives. So I asked what practices can we all do to reduce the use of fertilizers and pesticides. They made suggestions such composting, proper yard/other waste disposal, and even green roofs. I chimed in with rain gardens and barrels, and the reduction of water use during heavy storms so as not to strain the Combined Sewer system and explained to kids how heavy storms, and storm water runoff can overflow into the River des Peres and other streams, which can negatively affect water quality and aquatic habitat. At the end of my presentation on water quality and protecting our local watershed, I asked the campers and counselors to sign and a keep their very own rain barrel. Because I can teach about water protection but making the means for them to do so easier can go a long way towards being a constant reminder. With their building being in Tower Grove Park a beautiful public park located in South Saint Louis, at a great location, maybe the barrel can be used as both an artistic conversation piece and generate more interest in rain barrels. While I can only post pictures to our blog without the children’s faces feel free to check out SCOSAG blog for more pictures http://scosagcamp.blogspot.com/.

James River Rescue and Dam Jam

What a great weekend out by and on the river! On June 11, 1 2 and 13^th, Lance and I visited our friendly AmeriCorps Kellie down in Springfield to help James River Basin Partnership with their annual River Rescue.

Lance and I arrive on Friday night to load up Kellie’s vehicle and prepare everything for the long day ahead of us. We started Saturday morning by setting up Ozark Mill to be ready for the many people who were coming out to clean up the river. After directing all the cars very skillfully, Lance and I were able to put our canoe in the water and start the clean-up. Once on the water we were acting as sweep, staying at the back to make sure no one was left behind. After a while, we were relieved of our sweep position and told we had actually only traveled 1/5^th of the route. So we tried to make up time and paddled pretty quickly to catch up with the rest of the paddlers. After an hour or so of bustin’ booty, we came upon a tight spot in the river and were asked to help the other staff direct the boats through this tight squeeze. So we lost all of our headway, but felt pretty good that no one’s canoe flipped!

After the float we had about an hour off to keep cool in a nearby pool before starting our next shift as parking attendants and cleaning up after the concert. Even more people showed up for this great concert than for the clean-up. Honky Suckle, Uncle Fudd and HonkyTonk Renovators rocked!

Overall, this was a great experience to see up close how much work goes into an all day event, and was definitely giving us ideas for MRCN’s big event, Canoe for Clean Water. MRCN spent months organizing this float and festival, only to have the mighty MO flood us out a few days before the event was scheduled. But don’t worry, it’s only postponed! Keep the Canoe for Clean Water on your calendar, just move it to Saturday, October 9^th, 2010!

Thanks to my gracious host Kellie and James River Basin Partnership for a great event!

Missouri NEMO

So this past month, I stumbled across the National NEMO Network.

As I’m sure many of you are confused by the name, I’d like to clarify this organization has very little to do with animated clown fish or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and a lot to do with clean water! “NEMO” stands for “nonpoint education for municipal officials,” which translates to stormwater education for local decision-makers.

The National NEMO Network was created in 1991 at the University of Connecticut. Over the past nearly 20 years, the NEMO Network has expanded to include 32 members in 31 states. Each state’s program is tailored to that state, with the goal of teaching local land use decision makers about the impact of land use on water quality.

As those of you that are St. Louisans know, this region has a lot of rivers and streams and experiences a lot of rain, and consequentially, also has a number of stormwater issues. Many of the streams in the area suffer from what’s known as “urban stream syndrome,” which is largely a product of urban sprawl. One of the projects I’ve been working on this year is stormwater education and awareness, teaching community groups about sustainable stormwater management—also known as green infrastructure.

In short, my happenstance discovery of the NEMO Network, as well as that Missouri’s program is still being developed, in combination with MCE looking to do more outreach to and education of local land use decision makers, and the fortuitous fact that the Missouri NEMO program is housed in the Department of Conservation in St. Louis by someone I’ve met on several occasions—all this has amounted to the birth of NEMO.

NEMO, a play on "Missouri NEMO," is a budding partnership between the MCE, Department of Conservation, East-West Gateway Council of Governments, and the St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District. The next MCE Clean Water AmeriCorps volunteer will have a vital role in the partnership, educating with community groups (who support local land use decision makers) on stormwater issues and green infrastructure—particularly rain gardens.

With any luck, through the efforts NEMO’s partners, the St. Louis metropolitan region will learn how to make natural resource-based land use decisions that make stormwater management greener and more sustainable… all in the name of cleaner water in Missouri!

Stay cool, and I’ll see you in August!

Campers Tackle Invasive Species

June was a terrific month, but even more so with the helping hands of the Bernard Harris Summer Camp. The camp consists of a select group of students who excel in the sciences as well as have a passion for serving the community. On June 23rd, these students joined the Confluence Partnership to help pull invasive species and plant native ones in their place. All of this work was completed at the North Riverfront Park-- therefore not only helping create a better filtration system for the river with native plants, but restoring the beauty of the park in hopes to draw more people to the water.

Students walked away with a better understanding of habitat restoration, invasive species, storm water connections, and muddy hands. Although it was a hot one, fun was had by all!

New Informational Website now available

I would like to introduce the new Branson Area Lakes Report website. TRLWQ has taken on the task of designing an informational website regarding area lakes. At the current moment, Table Rock Lake and Lake Taneycomo are included in this project. The purpose of this website is to provide accurate and un-biased information regarding the area lakes. Currently, visitors can look up recreational information, read about water quality, and also see news updates from around the lake. There is also information about E. coli and where the testing sites are around Table Rock Lake. I will be updating this website weekly with news updates and sending out news updates via email for those people who select to signup. If you are interested check out the website, www.bransonarealakesreport.com, an signup for email updates too! Happy 4th of July everyone!

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.