An annual river cleanup and educational effort was recently completed on the Raccoon River, which included Greene County.

Greene County Conservation Director Dan Towers says Iowa Project AWARE (A Watershed Awareness River Expedition) has been in existence for 20 years and the non-profit organization travels to a different Iowa river to clean it up with volunteers, while also providing educational opportunities about that river and the local history. 

Towers says Project AWARE decided late to include two locations in Greene County, including Henderson and Squirrel Hollow park river accesses, on the first three days – Sunday-Tuesday – of the six-day venture.

“They had planned this on the Middle and South Raccoon (River), but because those river level were so low, at the time they planned it, so for those three days we were the fortunate people to get them because the other river was so low. And they did find a lot of material.”

Towers points out the Project AWARE was last in Greene County, on the Raccoon River in 2007, and 14 years later, the volunteers continue to find trash and other items in the river.

“I think a lot of the reason for that, the river changes continuously. So sandbars that existed before the last flood got moved and all of a sudden something that got deposited 50 years ago shows up again.”

Towers says some of the items that were pulled from the river this year included a dishwasher, scrap metal and a 450-pound blower from a structure. The event included other locations in Dallas County and the volunteers also camped at Springbrook State Park in Guthrie County and Hanging Rock in Redfield.