Friends of Pool 9 to offer limited River Clean-Up June 3 after spring flooding


Called off in April due to flooding, Friends of Pool 9 to host River Clean-Up June 3 ... The Lansing Marina shows evidence of near-record flood levels of the Mississippi River during the spring flood of April 2023, when levels reached 19.61 feet at the Lansing gauge. This year’s spring flooding forced the Friends of Pool 9 to call off the annual River Clean-Up Day originally scheduled for April 22 of this year. A scaled back version of the River Clean-Up Day has now been scheduled for Saturday, June 3. Submitted photo.

The Friends of Pool 9 (FOP9) Board of Directors had made plans for the Annual Pool 9 River Clean-Up earlier this spring, but it was not to be with the spring flooding that took place. Conditions quickly rose to the dangerous level as near-record crests occurred the following weekend of the planned event, reaching the fourth highest level ever recorded in Lansing at 19.6 feet.

Flood waters made it too dangerous to send volunteers out to collect debris, and there will be another year. For historical information, record water levels at the Lansing gauge are as follows: 22.5 feet on 4/24/1965, 19.93 feet on 4/21/2001, 19.90 feet on 6/20/1880, and 19.61 feet on 4/28/2023.

The Friends of Pool 9 organization has scheduled a work day on area beaches, resetting 23 fire rings as well as a scaled back river clean-up for Saturday, June 3. The effort has been impacted due to the short preparation time and June being a busy recreation time with the other landings not having space for dumpsters on weekends along with other river users.

Those who are interested in being part of the beach-fire ring group should call Blake Schoh at 563-538-4454 or Alex Galema at 563-568-7294.

A dumpster for flood debris that may have already accumulated or will be collected June 3, will be located along the riverfront in Lansing between the VFW building and the Bob Henkel property (120 South Front Street), south of Shep’s Restaurant. Volunteers and a tractor will be available to assist with unloading debris from boats from 9 a.m. to 12 noon at the river front Saturday, June 3. The dumpster will be available throughout the weekend but volunteers will have to get debris into the dumpster on their own outside of the 9 a.m. to 12 noon time Saturday.

To date, Friends of Pool 9 volunteers have collected and removed more than 168,800 pounds (84.4 tons) of debris from the river and recorded 9,900 hours of volunteer time to keep Pool 9 clean. In 2022, 100 volunteers collected 12,160 pounds of trash (excluding recycled metal), an average of almost 122 pounds of debris per person from the Mississippi River.

“Thanks to all the volunteers that make this effort such a success, it makes us proud to be members of Friends of Pool 9, Upper Miss Refuge, Inc.,” Clean-Up organizers shared.