Iowa Project AWARE prepares to pull millionth pound of waste from state rivers

When Brian Soenen founded Iowa Project AWARE in 2003, he wasn’t sure how long the organization would last or how big its impact would be across the state.

Flash forward more than two decades, and the river cleanup effort Project AWARE — which stands for A Watershed Awareness River Expedition — is about to hit a major milestone: 1 million pounds of trash removed from Iowa’s rivers.

The organization is set to hit the goal while on its annual trip July 13-18. This year’s route will clean up the Winnebago and Shell Rock rivers in northern Iowa.

“Every year of Iowa Project AWARE is a gift,” Soenen said. “You never know when it's going to be the last year, especially now, because it's 100 percent nonprofit and volunteer driven. Now is the only time you know you can do it for sure.”

Soenen said that removing 1 million pounds of waste from the rivers wasn’t necessarily the organization’s goal, but it is a number he and his team take pride in.

“... When we started looking at the weights, and it's like, ‘Wow, we're over 400 tons, then we're at 450 tons and now we're almost 500 tons.’ That's a million pounds of garbage,” he said.

Jenna Pfeiffer serves as the event director for Project AWARE, a role she moved into last June after working part-time as the organization’s co-director.

With a goal of working in conservation after graduating college, Pfeiffer said she never dreamed she would be part of an organization that does “such outstanding and foundational work” like Project AWARE.

“I'm just so grateful to be able to say that I got a piece of it, even if I’ve only been here two years. Saying I was a part of this is more than I could ever say,” she said. “Being able to watch (the millionth pound of trash) be pulled out will be just surreal to me, to be able to be a part of such an amazing organization with such an important mission to the conservation.”

A two decade effort

Soenen conceived the idea for Project AWARE in 2002 when he worked with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources coordinating IOWATER, a volunteer water monitoring program.

There are other river cleanup programs, but Project AWARE is different because it lasts an entire week, Soenen said.

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We thought “we could start where a river is little and end up at the end of the river, where it's big or where it empties into another river or body of water,” he said. “That essentially was the start of what became Project AWARE. It started as an incentive for how do we engage our own volunteers through the water monitoring program. And then it evolved, you know, over time, into what it is today.”

In the organization’s first weeklong cleanup mission, three dozen volunteers took to the Maquoketa River.

Now, Project AWARE has welcomed the help of nearly 6,500 volunteers across the state, making it Iowa’s largest volunteer river cleanup, according to the organization’s website.

Pfeiffer said there will be about 200 volunteers on the cleanup trip this year, which will span 61.5 river miles through Worth, Cerro Gordo and Floyd counties.

Since their first trip in 2003, the organization has paddled down Iowa rivers from border to border.

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Soenen said Project AWARE differs from other cleanup initiatives as well because they don’t take the trash they pull from waterways straight to landfills. Since their first event in 2003, he said about 88 percent of the waste they’ve pulled from the water ends up being recycled.

Most of the trash is either scrap metal or tires, Soenen said. The organization takes the materials to recycling and landfill facilities in the county where they finish the trip.

Building connections

In addition to meeting — and likely surpassing — its one-million-pound goal, Soenen said Project AWARE has influenced volunteers to take up conservation work outside the annual trip.

“I think the greater story, and what we've seen as throughout the 22-year history of Iowa Project AWARE, is that the greater impact is with the people who are impacted by it,” he said. “A million pounds is something to be super excited about (but) I'm even more excited about when I hear stories of how participating in that event has impacted volunteers’ lives, and how they've impacted the lives of others through that.”

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Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

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Comments: olivia.cohen@thegazette.com