Chasing the Channel – Blog No. 7

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