Clean up underway on Mississippi

The annual Mississippi River Relief–Big River Cleanup starts today (Saturday) in the Twin Cities and will end in August in the Quad Cities. Anne Hunt, who heads the Minnesota effort, says some of the junk they pull out was dumped along the banks.Hunt says junk collected includes tires, 55-gallon drums, mattresses, couches, bowling balls and snow blowers. This is the first leg of a 400-mile, summer-long clean up of the Mississippi River. Hunt says volunteers will meet in Hastings, Minnesota, this morning for a few festivities. She says they’ll be putting people into shallow draft boats and portaging them to some remote areas along the Mississippi River to do a big cleanup. They hope to attract about 300 volunteers this morning alone.