Chasing the Channel – Blog No. 1

Chasing the Channel – Blog No. 1

About two weeks ago, I kayaked 48 miles of the Kansas River with some of our long time volunteer Kaw River Guide’s. Our goal for this trip, was to practice preparation for an even greater challenge, to kayak all 173 miles of the Kansas River, all at once, later this summer. We are in the final weeks of preparation and will be making an announcement soon about our journey. I sincerely hope that you will all join us in spirit on this journey, and maybe even some of you will join us to paddle for some of the pre-designated sections of the river where we would love to have some company.

The last few months have been challenging for all of us and certainly FOK as well. We’ve been blessed with plenty of work to keep our minds busy including updates to our website, new updates coming for our river access map, creation of a virtual kids about water program, many grants written, and coming into the home stretch of our beloved Riverbank Restoration Project. We are grateful that we have had opportunities to remain busy.

One of the projects that we’ve been working on since the flood waters receded last December 2019, is doing a complete river check of the entire Kansas River to check for new erosion and pollution. What is quite amazing, is that we continue to see new dumping sites in 2020 and new violations of dumping sediment into our rivers. Lucky for all of us that Friends of the Kaw exists along with our countless members, because if you dump trash from your property into the Kansas River, we will find it and we will enforce it. Let’s just say we’ve been busy this spring. If you see dumping, please report it to riverkeeper@kansasriver.org. Let’s do this together…keep our river clean!

As always, thank you to each one of you for your continued and steady support. We are so very grateful.

If we can help you find ways to connect to the Kansas River, please give us a call or send us an email. We are happy to help you protect, advocate, and discover the Kansas River.

For the river,

Dawn

Your Kansas Riverkeeper