Cleanup group goes to the air to map Missouri River trash

blogmaster's note: For more info on this effort, click here: http://www.riverrelief.org/updates/entry/river-relief-conducts-aerial-trash-scout/. As we post photos and maps from the scout, you'll be able to access from that page. 

Originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on March 23, 2011
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by Mark Schlinkmann

To prepare for its 10th annual Missouri River cleanup later this year, an environmental group recently launched its first aerial mapping survey of most of the 380 miles of the river from Kansas City to St. Louis.

"We saw a lot of trash accumulation we were not able to see" in past surveys by boat, said Jeff Barrow, director of Columbia, Mo.-based Missouri River Relief. "The photos will give us a plan on how to approach it."

There weren't many surprises in the St. Louis area, he said. One exception was a heap of junk near Howell Island west of the Daniel Boone Bridge that carries Highway 40 between St. Louis and St. Charles counties. That area will be targeted during the cleanup.

The overhead views are of particular help in finding large accumulations of debris that wash into nearby woodlands during flooding and stay when the water recedes, he said. Much of that was found in low-population areas in western Missouri, such as near the mouth of the Grand River near Brunswick.

"There must have been 10 acres of driftwood and trash, including refrigerators and 55-gallon drums," said Barrow, who took part in the survey.

He said various riverside dump sites obscured by vegetation also were pinpointed, including one near New Haven in Franklin County.

The survey was conducted March 11-12 with GPS-synchronized cameras in a six-seat Cessna run by Colorado-based EcoFlight, which does aerial scouting for various environmental causes.

This year's cleanup campaign, called the Big Muddy Clean Sweep, has another twist.

For the first time, the organization has chartered a barge to cruise the length of the river and serve as the common receptacle for trash picked up in various drives along the way.

The trash will then be taken to a terminal for transfer to landfills or recycled. In the past, trash from each local drive was disposed of separately.

"This will be a lot more efficient," Barrow said.

He added that "it makes a powerful visual statement when people see that barge with a mountain of trash."

This year's effort begins Sept. 10 in Kansas City. Three of the stops and local cleanups will be in the St. Louis area — at Washington, Mo., Oct. 15, St. Charles on Oct. 22 and around the confluence with the Mississippi River on Oct. 29.

The confluence area also will be the subject of a trash collection campaign this Saturday overseen by another group, the Confluence Partnership, and involving Missouri River Relief and other organizations. That event is called the Confluence Trash Bash. For more information, go to confluencegreenway.org.