Why are there so many tires in the Kansas River?

Last weekend, Friends of the Kaw and our partners and friends removed almost 400 tires that were embedded in a Kansas River sandbar. How did we do that? One at a time, with a shovel and many volunteers and partners.

It was exhausting, I’m not going to sugar coat it. We dug each tire out of the sand, mud and water. They were heavy. Each tire full of sand on the inside and often sitting in a pool of water. Some of the tires were semi-tractor size and others were car size, but imagine a semi-tire full of sand! So heavy, often taking three people to get them loose. Our motto is “one at a time”. Every tire off the river is one less in the river, so we unearthed them one at a time.

The question though, that we got asked more than any other, was how did they get there? Sure, there are modern day polluters that we are unfortunately still dealing with, but most of the tires on the Kansas River have been there for decades. If you are old enough to remember, pre-1960, our rural areas had no trash system. Even many urban areas did not have adequate refuse systems until around 1960. We find many old dump sites along the river from this time period. The tires, though, were used as bank stabilization. At the time, it was believed to help stabilize the bank and keep the Kansas River from eroding the farmland. However, we now know that doesn’t work. Not only do they not stabilize the banks, but tires don’t break down, they don’t go away, and they can leach chemicals into the water.

My dad, a Kansas farmer, passed away in 2015 shortly after I started as your Kansas Riverkeeper. I grew up in the Kansas River valley and spent my childhood fishing, camping and boating in the Kansas River. Right before he died, he took me for a drive through the bottoms where I grew up and told me stories about the 1951 flood and about his lessons from the river. One of the things he told me was about a tire salesman from Kansas City that would come out to farmers and give them tires for free to use to stabilize the banks of their farmland. My dad said that this is one of the ways that we ended up with so many tires along the Kaw. I committed that day, that I would use my job and contacts to the best that I could to get the big sites off the river. We’ve made a dent, but we have more to do. We have more sites on our list – from just before Bonner Springs, Tire Island between Eudora and DeSoto, a site before St. George, and again around Tecumseh. And that’s not all, it’s just the sites at the top of my mind. Want to join us? We’d love your help, but in the meantime, do us a favor and take a single tire off the river next time you are out. One at a time, my friends…one at a time..

We owe a gracious thank you to the many that helped with the Eudora tire cleanup. Join us in thanking REI, Evergy Green Team, City of Eudora, Kansas Dept. of Wildlife Parks & Tourism, Kansas Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, Big O Tires….and a very special thank you to our Kaw River Guides, and boat captains Sam, Nick and Dennis. It takes us all!

Until next time, may you always have sand in your shoes.

For the river,

Dawn, Your Kansas Riverkeeper

Challenges of a non-profit….

Last Saturday, I headed west towards Manhattan in the early morning darkness.  We had planned a Kaw River Guide trash and camp weekend complete with many partners and friends.  As I headed down I-70, it was easy to get lost in the early morning sunrise with thoughts of how the day would go and that we would truly make another dent in the trash that had accumulated in the Kansas River with decades worth of illegal dumping. 

My grand thoughts were soon interrupted by the sound of our trusty pick up showing signs of stress.  Luckily, I made it to Manhattan, but had to leave the truck in town for repairs.  As a non-profit, ever dollar matters and the thing I dislike spending our money on is repairs, but we can’t do our work without that truck.  Well, $1,500 later, and we will have the truck back tomorrow.  My work before coming to Friends of the Kaw was as an accountant for well over a decade with an environmental consulting firm before switching to my science-based career.  Working for a for-profit business is so vastly different than a non-profit.  Everyone wants their donation to go to something grand like pulling trash out of the river or educating the next generation – and believe me when I say that most of the donations go to that.  However, there are things like paying personnel, fixing trucks, buying laptops and things that don’t seem quite as exciting, but are essential in order to make it to the place to clean up the trash and educate the next generation.  As the only non-profit dedicated to protecting the Kansas River, we pride ourselves on being a non-governmental public advocate.  But that comes with the fundraising side too – which is funding our work through memberships, donations and fundraisers.  It gives us the freedom to advocate, bust polluters and represent YOU – because our funding comes from the people.  So, to everyone that gives in some way to Friends of the Kaw – thank you!  Thank you for seeing the value of the work we do and the value of your donation – even if it goes towards a $1,500 repair to our only piece of road transportation.  I’ll thank you in advance now (and later) for purchasing a $25 ticket to the Beers of the Kaw Ale Trail – not just for the beer experience (although that’s pretty awesome), but also to help us pay for all of the things that you don’t see so that we can do the things that you do see.

Beers of the Kaw Ale Trail tickets will go on sale October 26, 2020.  We are finalizing the details and some of your favorite brewers are going to make this a great event!  We also have a Silent Auction with items that will make great holiday gifts, so watch for more information in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, we are headed out to the river tomorrow to begin the process of unearthing “about” 385 tires embedded in a Kansas River sandbar near Eudora.  Then on Saturday, we will continue to pull the tires out and shuttle them to shore at the Eudora Boat Ramp.  Thanks to great partners in REI, Evergy Green Team, Big O Tires, City of Eudora, Kansas Dept. of Wildlife Parks & Tourism, our amazing Kaw River Guides, and a couple of local fisherfolk with boats – we will get it done!  One cleanup at a time – my grand wish is to leave the Kaw cleaner and healthier when I retire – ready for the next generation.

May you always have sand in your shoes…

For the river,

Dawn, Your Kansas Riverkeeper

Advocacy…at the heart of what we do.

Fall is a spectacular time on the Kaw. If you’ve experienced it, you know what I’m talking about. This is also an incredibly busy time of the year for us at Friends of the Kaw, but who am I kidding, it is busy all year long. The river never takes a break from needing to be protected. That said, the fall is a great time to help people connect to the Kansas River and we have had a busy month doing just that.

We normally have wait lists for our events, but this year has been unlike any other. I think with the pressures of the COVID pandemic, people are looking for ways to spend their time outdoors and find new ways to explore. We held a Pop-Up Paddle, two Beginner’s Paddle Events and a Community Paddle at Eudora in the last month and every one of them had a wait list. One of them had 95 people on the wait list…let me say that again, 95 people. I think this speaks not to necessarily the popularity of Friends of the Kaw, but more to the place we are in as a world in the middle of a pandemic. We all need connection – with each other and with nature – and paddling on a river is one way to do that! We have a few more events coming up this fall and we hope you can join us and experience the beauty of Kansas only seen from the Kansas River.

I’ve been busy with my many advocacy related activities and boards where I represent the Kansas River in my role as Kansas Riverkeeper. I am on the Stakeholder Leadership Team for the Lower Kansas WRAPS (Water Restoration and Protection Strategy) and I’m happy to report that the group is gaining ground on delisting Stranger Creek for bacteria. We aren’t there yet, but this group is making great progress with cover crops and alternate watering systems to keep cattle out of the waterways. You can learn more about this work from our friends at Kansas Alliance for Wetlands and Streams here: https://kaws.org/ourwork/watersheds/lkr/.

I also Chair the Kansas Regional Advisory Committee for the Kansas Water Vision. We recently updated our goals and action plans for the Kansas River basin and presented them to the Kansas Water Authority. I have worked on this committee for 5 years and it is by far some of the most impactful work that I do in terms of finding ways to protect our water quality and quantity. I will write more about our work on this committee in the new year but for now you can read up on the state’s Water Vision here: https://kwo.ks.gov/water-vision-water-plan/water-vision.

What a full month of advocacy! Another project where we represent the river is on the Sustainable Rivers Program. This is a partnership between The Nature Conservancy and the Corps of Engineers to reoperate Corps dams to find more ecological flows while still meeting downstream needs. We had a two day online call to do a workshop on this program. I am happy to say that this program has the greatest opportunity to have long term benefits to the Kansas River ecosystem! You can learn more about this program here: https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/protect-water-and-land/land-and-water-stories/sustainable-rivers-project/. Friends of the Kaw is on the Steering Committee for this program and proud to be a part of it!

On top of all of those advocacy activities this month, we still find violations on the Kansas River. I have numerous violations that are being reported – from new dump sites to dredge cables that are left up, to discharges that look suspicious. Join us in keeping an eye on the river and if you see anything suspicious, you can report it directly to Kansas Department of Health and Environment, but please also contact us so that we can keep the pressure on to get it cleaned up. You can email riverkeeper@kansasriver.org. We are all in this together!

As always, if we can help you connect to the Kansas River, you know where to find us. Email, call, social media – or simply find us on the river. We are always happy to help.

May you always have sand in your shoes….

For the river,
Dawn, Your Kansas Riverkeeper