Getting Into Nature

The River des Peres Trail travels just about four miles through River des Peres Park on the western edge of the city limits, and along the River des Peres Drainage Channel. This is an older trail, and has sometimes not been well maintained, though it is described as great for mountain bikes. Road bikers may prefer to ride River des Peres Parkway.

Built in the early 1980s, despite protests from neighboring landowners, the trail formerly ended in a circle of asphalt about 50 yards from a park parking lot. Recent improvements include a pedestrian bridge crossing the River des Peres and a small creek. Additional improvements include a link to the Holly Hills and Christy Greenways. There is much hubbub about the future of the trail and the greenway project even has a Wikipedia entry online. Google and you shall find…

FOCUS: River des Peres Greenway Site

TELL US YOUR RIVER DES PERES STORY. AND WHERE DO YOU THINK THE MOST SCENIC VANTAGE POINT IS ALONG THE RIVER DES PERES GREENWAY?

PLEASE POST YOUR COMMENTS

DANELLE HAAKE and CINDY DUHIGG

The River Des Peres Watershed Coalition in the St. Louis area would not be the same without the active participation of these two dynamos. Their ambition is to save the River Des Peres in St. Louis from further degradation and to turn the area along its banks into a fine natural and recreational resource.

Danelle Haake says, “The River Des Peres and its tributary streams compose one of the few remaining bits of urban lanscape that connect us all… in the St. Louis area.”

Cindy Duhigg says, “If we can revitalize the river, I feel we can bring back our whole city and be proud… I think we can make it aesthetically pleasing as a greenway and recreation area. Other cities have done it. Why not us?”

For more information on the River Des Peres Watershed Coalition, visit their website: www.thegreencenter.org/rdp/

Cindy Duhigg, Danelle Haake, and Howard Webb of the Coalition were interviewed and photographed by Don Corrigan and Diana Linsley of the Times for their April 18, 2008 edition. Those articles and images may be found by visiting the Webster-Kirkwood Times and South County Times (note: different images are available for the two different articles).

What do you think? Do you think that the River Des Peres has the potential to be a great St. Louis greenway and recreational site? Feel free to share your comments.

Next week: Your River Des Peres Stories

Missouri’s great Meramec River is finally getting some good publicity after lots of negative news about overflowing its banks this spring. The winding wonder is now the object of a new film, “Meramec River: Miracles and Milestones,” and later in May the mercurial Meramec will host the National Poling Championship.

River poling is a unique way to get upstream without a paddle. The nation’s top canoe polers will compete on the Meramec at Route 66 State Park, just off Interstate 44. No admission will be charged and learning clinics will abound. The May 29-31 event will be the American Canoe Association’s 43rd annual poling competition.

In addition to the national poling champions who will be on the Meramec, St. Louis area river favorites will also be rolling out their pole-popping skills. Among the local canoe poling masters will be Mike Guenther, Marty Guenther, George Barhorst, Syl and Al Beletz.

No better Meramer River storytellers can be found than the Beletz brothers!

Al Beletz can catalog Meramec River characters going back decades. He knows the campers, floaters, tubers, paddlers and racers who’ve enjoyed the waters of the Meramec. Among his favorite mavens of the Meramec are such legends as:

• Ralph “Treehouse Brown.” He was the Dizzy Dean of Meramec canoeing and actually lived in a treehouse on the Huzzah. He won the 1965 canoe poling championship. He could carry a 200-pound log to the campfire. Of course, he couldn’t do that after he lost partial use of an arm in a duel.

• Emma Crow. She is described by Beletz as a “real Indian girl from Oklahoma,” who lived in a one-room shack near the Museum of Transport. She’d bring chickens in a cage on canoe trips. She’d break their necks and fry them fresh on a gravel bar when it was time to camp.

• Joe Schele. He lived on the river, surviving on a diet of ducks, squirrels and potatoes. According to Schele’s own diaries, the legendary riverman “bagged” 994 red and gray squirrels from 1932 through 1976. Some would say Schele murdered an awful lot of little critters, but then they never ate squirrel stew with Joe.

• Arno Storbeck. As the German caretaker of Stites Beach, a Kirkwood recreation area on the river, Storbeck got tired of those who described the Meramec as especially treacherous, full of deadly eddies, whirlpools and undertows. Storbeck, used to say: ‘Das ist bullshit. There is no magical undertow,’”

The Meramec River is treasured by nature lovers for its tall bluff areas, scenic bends, its flora and fauna and its excellent gravel bars for relaxation. Environmentalists have done much to take this once degraded stream and to slowly nurse it back to health. According to the Open Space Council, river restoration work on the Meramec began in earnest in 1967 with the first annual Operation Clean Stream.

Of course, the Meramec River also is treasured – not just for its natural attributes – but for the great memories it has provided for those who love the outdoors along the river. Do you have some Meramec stories to tell? Do you know some Meramec characters like Emma and Arno? Please share them on our blog site here. We can’t wait to read more Meramec memories!

Get a whiff of this: The big stink that rural folks have been making over giant factory farms has suddenly wafted into our own sweet suburbs. The cows have finally come home.

Some of those poor cows have ended up in ground beef packages at our local school districts. Lindbergh and Kirkwood were among the St. Louis area districts which were warned about tainted beef that may have been sold to their food services.

Fortunately, a food supply check revealed that Lindbergh and Kirkwood did not have the lot numbers of questionable beef. Other schools, locally and across the country, including Ladue, were not so lucky.

Estimates of the amount of tainted beef actually eaten in school cafeterias range as high as 20 million pounds.

Almost 50 million pounds of beef, recalled because of failure to cull out crippled and sick cows, were distributed to schools nationwide. U.S. agricultural officials issued the recall after a Humane Society investigation.

Employees of meat giant Westland-Hallmark Co. were discovered to be shoving sick and crippled cows into queue for the slaughter. Injured cows were forced to stand with electric prods and water hoses. TV networks aired scenes of injured cows being shoved to slaughter by
forklifts.

For several years now, our country cousins in rural Missouri have been warning us about the loss of family farms to factory farms and giant agribusinesses such as California’s Westland-Hallmark.

Our outstate friends have been complaining about stinking CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) ruining the atmosphere at our state parks. They have banded together in Citizens to Protect State Parks and Historic Sites (CPSPHS).

Animal waste reservoirs on giant farm operations have a history of being poorly maintained and even breaching – pouring filth into creeks and streams. Members of CPSPHS argue that the odor from the CAFO’s swine manure is not merely a nuisance, but a real respiratory health
hazard involving harmful chemicals.

Now we find stinky air and polluted streams aren’t the half of it. The other half of the story is the vulnerability of our food supply at giant farms and processing plants.

“When you put 3,000 cows in a giant meat grinder, good things do not come out the other end,” said Kat Logan, executive director of Missouri Coalition for the Environment.

“It doesn’t take a whole lot of pathogens to taint a huge amount of meat when it is processed that way,” said Logan. “It doesn’t take a lot of sick cows in a mass slaughter like that, to make a lot of people very sick. That accounts for this huge recall.”

Logan’s environmental group will sponsor a panel on “The Battle for Control Over What We Eat” at the Schlafly Tap Room at 21st and Locust in St. Louis, 3 p.m., Sunday, March 2.

She said it will be a good meeting to find out what you can do to fight for safer food. Why not drop by for a beer? Think twice before ordering a burger.

-Are you upset that more area streams and rivers are being declared unsafe for play and recreation?
-Are you disturbed about proposals to sell off parts of our national forests for short-term gain?
-Are you concerned about the air and water pollution posed by waste reservoirs on factory farms?
-Are you wondering if anybody else is upset, or disturbed, or concerned about environmental degradation?

Please join the conversation and share your opinions.

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Missouri has a natural heritage worth preserving and many outdoor sites worth protecting. Although these state assets have often suffered from neglect, they have actually come under assault in the first decade of this new century.
No natural site shows the scars of this degradation, if not destruction, more than Johnson Shut-ins. On the early morning of Dec. 14, 2005, the collapse of AmerenUE’s Taum Sauk hydroelectric plant reservoir sent a billion-gallon tsunami of water into the popular state
park.

If the huge reservoir had ruptured during the busy summer season, the disaster could have resulted in lost lives and serious injuries. Johnson Shut-Ins remains in a state of serious disrepair months after the deluge. Let’s hope state officials closely monitor how AmerenUE
carries out its plans to restore the area under a recent agreement.

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Everyone who loves nature and the outdoors has special places – bluffs, springs, streams and caves where they like to hang out. To make this Nature Notes Blog more interactive, please consider sending us a description of your special hideout. Also, please alert us if your
special place is facing neglect or degradation.

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Here are some other recreation areas that are of concern right now:

• PIGS VERSUS PARKS Among the parks facing threats from big farm pollution are Arrow Rock, Roaring River and the Battle of Athens State Historic Site. The state’s loss of family farms to new “factory farms” has had deleterious environmental consequences as well as an economic impact. Animal waste reservoirs on giant farm operations have a history of being poorly maintained and even occasionally breaching, pouring filth into creeks and streams.
More plans for CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) have inspired ordinary, rural citizens to become vocal activists. Residents have banded together in the Citizens to Protect State Parks and Historic Sites (CPSPHS) to oppose CAFOs and to push for legislation that would create a five-mile buffer zone around state parks.

• STREAM CONTAMINATION The beautiful, clear Jacks Fork River in the Ozark National Scenic Waterways is one stream that you might expect to be protected, but you would be wrong. The Jacks Fork, which connects with the Current River at Two Rivers below Eminence, has appeared on the state’s impaired waters list for almost a decade due to high levels of fecal coliform bacteria. Fecal coliform can often indicate other forms of bacteria that cause dysentery, hepatitis and more.

A federal study in 2006 using DNA testing traced the fecal coliform bacteria to horseback trail rides in the area below Eminence. According to the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, the National Park Service appears to be doing “not much” to rectify the situation. Not only has the Park Service failed to impose any new limits on trail rides, it has a history of developing horse staging areas in the Riverways. Canoe renters in the Eminence area complain that the contamination is going to ruin their operations on the river.

• BLUFFS FOR SALE While Missouri has succeeded in preserving some choice river bluffs at places such as Meramec State Park and Trail of Tears State Park, other prime vistas are for sale to the highest bidder. In the St. Louis region, some of the best lofty plots have been snatched up in the St. Albans area for construction of McMansions that overlook the south side of the Missouri River.
The integrity and viability of bluff lands can be lost because of poor environmental management; because of industry and quarry activities; and because of the developers who gobble up the best tracts. As more bluff land disappears, the remaining high tops call out for crucial protections and should be declared part of our state and national public heritage.

•FORESTS FOR SALE. Mark Twain National Forest in southern Missouri has been included in a Bush Administration plan to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forest to help pay for rural schools. The proposal covers a disproportionate amount of land in the South and Midwest, while actually benefiting schools in three West Coast states.
Sierra Club activists and other environmental groups maintain the proposal is a wrong use of public resources. They contend that selling off America’s natural heritage is not the way to fund government services, and it’s unwise to be “holding a bake sale on bits and pieces of our limited national forests” for short-term budget needs.

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You don’t have to be an environmentalist or a conservationist to want to protect outdoor sites. Let your voice be heard on these issues. Once again, to make this Nature Notes Blog more interactive, please consider sending us a description of your special hideout. Also, please alert us if your special place is facing neglect or degradation.