Volunteers make Turkey cleaner, safer

ELGIN -- A clean river is getting cleaner this week as hundreds of volunteers paddle the length of the Turkey, scouring its scenic banks for refuse.

"It's mostly old junk, flood debris that has been in the river a long time. You don't find much litter, which shows the pride locals have in their river," said Brian Soenen, coordinator of Project AWARE, a weeklong river cleanup program sponsored by the Department of Natural Resources.

About 400 Project AWARE (A Watershed Awareness River Expedition) volunteers are spending all or part of the week cleaning up, learning about and exploring 90 miles of the Turkey and its two main tributaries, the Little Turkey and the Volga.

Project AWARE, in its ninth year, has struggled in the past with high, muddy water and inclement weather.

"This year the stars aligned, and the river and the weather have been perfect," Soenen said Wednesday before the crew shoved off from Gilbertson Park in Elgin.

The volunteers, he said, have had nothing but good things to say about the Turkey.

"They love the clean water, the scenery and the intimacy of a smaller river," he said.

Intimate, yes, but still dangerous, as several volunteers discovered when a wicked snag in a swift narrows overturned their canoes.

"What a way to start the day," said Charleen Jones of North Liberty, who was thrown into the Turkey along with paddling partner Shawnna Larison of Marion when the current pinned their craft against the log.

"I was a little scared. The current was strong," Larison said after other volunteers helped recover their gear and get them to shore.

Exemplifying the volunteers' can-do spirit, Larison's husband, John, soon produced a chain saw from the bottom of his canoe, climbed out onto the snag and sawed off the hazardous log.

That same spirit was evident throughout the day as volunteers teamed up to remove trash that was too big and heavy for a pair of paddlers.

Nine volunteers armed with shovels, pickaxes and a come-along rope pulley spent 15 minutes prying loose and emptying a rusty 55-gallon metal barrel filled with mud.

The Larisons and Jones lashed two canoes together so they could haul out a bulky pig feeder washed into the river by a past flood.

When Greg Beisker of Des Moines unearthed a 20-foot-long metal culvert, he hailed George McClain of Cedar Rapids and his son, Quinton McClain of Cedar Rapids, who helped him haul the ungainly load to the trash pickup site at the Cable Avenue bridge about 10 miles above Elkader.

"We just happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time," George McClain joked.

McClain, making his first AWARE journey, said his family has often canoed the Turkey and wanted "to give something back" to the river.

"I always thought this was RAGBRAI on the water until I met about 80 AWARE volunteers Tuesday night," said Gary Siegwarth, who manages the DNR's Big Springs Hatchery. "These are serious people, river lovers who want to give something back."