Chasing the Channel – Blog No. 10

It’s been a whirlwind spring already along the Kansas River and our events are in full swing.  Before I get too much further, you can see all of our events on our calendar on our website:  https://kansasriver.org/eventcalendar/

There have been a few exciting things that we have been working on, but if you don’t follow us on social media then you may not know about it.  On Saturday, April 10^th we cleaned up Battery Cases in the Kansas River at Manhattan for the 4^th year.  We are slowly getting rid of all of the black dots all over the sandbars from Manhattan to St. George.  We had a great group of volunteers and partners that made it happen.  We also removed an old deep freeze and a refrigerator, both items we found over the winter. 

We also recently took a trip down the Kansas River through Topeka for a river check and were able to go through the new Topeka Weir chute!  We put up a video on our Facebook page if you’d like to see the view from my kayak.  We are so grateful for this safe passage for boats and for the ability of aquatic life to move up and down the river through this section.  There is a grand opening scheduled for Friday, May 7 in Topeka, sponsored by the City of Topeka and the Topeka Riverfront Advisory Committee.  If you have the chance, go and take a look at the new design.  We think you will love it too!  By the way, the second phase of the project will fix the south side of the river later this year, so the safe passage is only complete on the north side at this time.

As we start to celebration our 30th Year of Friends of the Kaw this year, we welcomed home some of our founders and early board members to participate in a documentary, to be published later this year. We are working with MattyDMedia out of Lawrence and are so excited to share this documentary with you later this fall!

We continued to monitor pollution and dump sites along the entire 173-mile-long river and turn those in to the agencies responsible for enforcement.  If you find any new dump sites or pollution, feel free to contact us at riverkeeper@kansasriver.org and let’s work together to keep our river clean!  The month of April is EARTH month, and to celebrate we have many cleanup events scheduled.  We hope to see you at one of those events, or out on the Kaw for one of our paddle trips.  Let us know how we can help you connect to the Kansas River.

Until next time….

For the river,
Dawn Buehler

Kansas Riverkeeper

Chasing the Channel – Blog No. 9

Spring is surely coming…

My last blog post was at the end of the year, reflecting on a great year of work for the Kansas River, despite being in a pandemic.  Fast forward to now and we have been incredibly busy.  You might think that we have little to do all winter, but actually the winter is a very different kind of “swamped”.  We spend our winter writing grants to fund our important projects, holding fundraiser events, participating in community discussions around water, getting our gear ready to go for spring…and the most fun thing we do is plan our calendar for the entire year!  Yes, we plan it all over the winter, down to every event.  By the way, please consider buying a ticket to the Wild & Scenic Film Festival – showing tomorrow night, Friday February 26….and if you can’t watch it on Friday, you have an on demand feature where you can go back and watch it through March 3, 2021.  Tickets here:  https://qudio.com/event/FriendsoftheKaw/register

What kinds of grants are we applying for?  We applied for a grant to do a Restoration Project in Topeka, a Rain Garden Restoration in DeSoto, and a grant for equipment for our work for the river!  Whew…and we are not done yet.  We are also planning some grants for amenities along the Kansas River Water Trail.  

By now, most of you have probably read our news about my Appointment by Governor Laura Kelly to the Chair of the Kansas Water Authority.  What an honor to have been asked and confirmed by the Kansas Senate.

Many of you might be asking yourselves, what is the Kansas Water Authority and how did Dawn get involved?  In the big picture way of thinking, the Kansas Water Office (KWO) is the planning agency for the state.  Established in 1981, the Kansas Water Authority (KWA) is within and a part of the KWO.  The Kansas Water Authority is comprised of 24 members of which 13 are voting members that are appointed from across the state, and 11 ex-officio members that are the directors or Secretaries of the various agencies that work on water.  This 24-member board is responsible for advising the Governor, the Legislature, and the Director of the KWO on water policy issues, approving the State Water Plan, budget recommendations, federal contracts, administrative regulations and legislation proposed by the KWO. 

The Kansas Water Plan also includes the Kansas Water Vision, the mission statement of which is to “provide Kansans with the framework, policy and tools, developed in concert with stakeholders, to manage, secure and protect a reliable, long term statewide water supply while balancing conservation with economic growth”.  Within the Kansas Water Vision are 14 Regional Advisory Committees (RAC) that work on goals and action plans in their respective local areas and watersheds and make recommendations to the Kansas Water Authority.  I have spent the last 6 years on the Kansas RAC, mostly recently as the Chair, assisting our 13-member committee with writing the goals and action plans that impact the Kansas basin, which includes the Kansas River.  It is here as a member of the RAC that I learned about the long-term water issues impacting our state. 

So what can you do to get involved?  Learn more about the work being done by the Regional Advisory Committees, Kansas Water Office and Kansas Water Authority here: https://kwo.ks.gov/  The meeting are public and you can really learn more about the issues by attending.  TALK about water…with everyone!  Share the importance of water to our state, our economy, ecosystem and recreation with your family, friends and local community leadership.  Watch our Kaw Minute on the Kansas Water Authority here:  https://youtu.be/1LcI3AlnhhQ

I hope to see you all on the river soon – we have some major cleanups planned for this year including another big tire cleanup near Shawnee.  We also have our tentative calendar scheduled and you can take a look:  https://kansasriver.org/calendar/

Notice the KAW 173?  We will be offering for folks to sign up to come along on four (3) day weekend adventures to paddle the entire Kansas River!  Lots of fun coming up this year….I am so grateful you are coming along for the ride – either virtually or on the river! 

Let me know if I can help you connect to the Kansas River!

For the river,
Dawn, your Kansas Riverkeeper

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