On Aug. 5, Webster County Conservation hosted its annual Pickin’ Up While Paddlin’ Down river cleanup. Roughly 30 volunteers, including a few conservation staff members, took 13 canoes and two kayaks down about two miles of the Des Moines River, picking up whatever they could find that didn’t belong.

“If our group doesn’t do it, nobody’s going to,” said Brody Bertram, trail technician with Webster County Conservation. “Anything that feels like it shouldn’t be in the river that is grabbable, we should try to take.”

The group started around 9:30 a.m. at the river access point in Sunkissed Meadows Park and floated about 2.3 miles down the river over the next several hours, finishing just south of the city limits around 12:30 p.m.

In those three hours, the volunteers collected more than four tons of metal, trash, debris, tires and appliances. The group fished out 72 tires, two TVs and three of what Bertram called the “heaviest microwaves ever lifted.”

-Submitted photo
Tires and old appliances were some of the main items recovered from the Des Moines River by a group of volunteers with Webster County Conservation during their annual Pickin' Up While Paddlin' Down river cleanup on Aug. 5.

“I’ve never lifted a microwave that heavy,” Bertram said. “It’s just nuts that it got so filled with silt that it took two people to lift them.”

Other interesting finds included an old Pontiac engine manifold, a vinyl copy of the music of “Mary Poppins” and a DVD of the second season of “Seinfeld.”

The bulk of the cleanup crew were volunteers from the Koch Nitrogen plant near Duncombe and an organization called Project AWARE (A Watershed Awareness River Expedition). The group rounded out with some conservation staff, friends and a few residents who just care about the state of the native waterways in the area.

“These folks were willing to trudge through the mud for a less than ideal situation, but man, did they ever help us out,” Bertram said.

Tires seem to be a common item that finds its way into the river as people improperly (and illegally) dump them. In 2022, the cleanup recovered 38 tires, and this year that number nearly doubled.

“It’s easy access for someone who wants to eliminate something,” Bertram said of the dump sites. “They could just throw it off the side of the road and into the river it went, which is a sad thing.”

Though the Pickin’ Up While Paddlin’ Down cleanup event is just once a year, anybody can pick a spot along the riverbank or on a sandbar and pick up the trash and debris that doesn’t belong, Bertram said.

As Webster County Conservation plans future years’ cleanups, Bertram said, they’ll keep moving south on the river until they reach the county’s southern border. Then, they’ll turn around and start over at the county’s northern border and make their way back down.

Collection stats

1 ton of metal

72 tires weighing 4,020 pounds collectively

1 ton of trash

2 TVs

3 of the “heaviest microwaves ever lifted”

In all, more than 8,000 pounds of unwanted material was pulled from the Des Moines River.