About 250 volunteers will be in the Mason City area starting this weekend using canoes to clean up two rivers.
Iowa Project AWARE, which stands for A Watershed Awareness River Expedition, will focus its efforts on some 60 miles of the Winnebago and Shell Rock rivers in Cerro Gordo, Worth and Floyd counties.
Event director Jenna Pfeiffer says this is the 22nd year for the effort.
“Throughout the week, volunteers can expect to take to the river for about five hours or more a day and clean up the entire river and take out trash,” Pfeiffer says. “When they get back to camp, we have some educational elements for them that go over some of the local history as well as some water quality and different river things.”
Pfeiffer says volunteers have found some very interesting things in the state’s rivers over the years.
“We have found anything from a big freezer full of meat that was still rotting, you can only imagine how that smelled,” Pheiffer says. “We found old porcelain dolls in the river, fridges, old farm equipment, a lot of old tires.”
Pfeiffer says the public is welcome to attend some of the educational sessions, at East Park in Mason City or the Tosanak Recreation Area near Marble Rock.
“If you guys have a chance to see some educational events, they are free to the public,” she says. “Just bring a lawn chair and you’re welcome to join us.”
The first round of sessions is at 4:30 PM daily, with another at 7:30 PM.
(By Bob Fisher, KLKK, Clear Lake)