River Clean Up Effort
July 15th

   Approximately 60 miles of the Elk River is located in Clay County. An average team can cleanup 3 miles of river in a full day. This means that 200 man days are needed to cleanup the river one time. And, the river needs to be cleaned up every couple years. This portion of the Elk is a designated “Flat Water Trail” and includes the new Elk River Rail-Trail. Because of low population and little commercial development, these trails bring visitors in touch with a wide variety of nature’s creations. Geography, history, wildlife, vegetation, trees, wildflowers, streams, waterfalls, and so on provide a venue for learning and exploring. Our goal is to return the Elk River to its natural state; unblemished by trash and safe for water activities.

   As you probably know, we have had some heavy storms last week. This has left the Elk River very muddy which inhibits the volunteers to be able to spot foreign materials and trash in the river. However we did NOT cancel the cleanup event. A very few volunteers showed up but we left it up the them as to whether to cancel the event or proceed to Plan “B”. They unanimously chose to proceed. REAP personnel were also in attendance.

   Plan “B” was to go to an area on the river know to have an estimated 100 tires and considerable trash on the river bank. The water level on the river had only increase about 2 ½” so the bank area was safely above the water line. A sunken boat was retrieved and filled with tires and green REAP trash bags. See attached pictures. After a few hours of work in 99% humidity and temperatures in the mid 80s, the volunteers started showing signs of heat exhaustion so we terminated the effort.

    We are grateful for the effort by the volunteers and the offer by REAP to make this area their project. They plan to bring in mechanical equipment to dig out the tires and help restore the channel.

    We will have another cleanup event on Saturday, September 23^rd on the river. 

   We have a registration link where volunteers can register for the event. Registration is very important as we use it to select teams, get expected lunch count, and so on.
   See you Sept 23rd.  The link is: