A UNITING EFFORT
Improving water quality one relationship at a time
Steve demonstrates how to monitor for invasive species at an Adopt-a-Launch site.
They describe themselves as “three old guys who love to kayak,” but they’re on a mission to see the East River become a paddling destination that the entire community can be proud of. Tom Bayer, Paul Weiss, and Steve Warner have been friends for a long time, and they’ve been working to clean up the river since the early 1990s.
“This river was a garbage dump. Literally. It was the garbage dump,” said Tom.
They could see the legacy of that use when they would go out to paddle.
One day they launched out onto the river, and found a group of Girl Scouts doing a trash cleanup in the park. The kids asked the canoers to pick up the trash in the water that they couldn’t reach.
“Within 100 yards, our canoe was full,” Tom remembered. “We had to leave garbage in the river that day, because we couldn’t fit more in the canoe.”
Thankfully, for a variety of reasons, that shoreline has since been cleaned up. “But what hasn’t changed,” said Tom, “is the quality of the water.”
The East River is never going to be a crystal clear trout stream, but these friends see the potential. “The river looks so brown, so poor,” said Steve, “but up close it’s beautiful. We’ve seen otters, muskrats, and sandhill cranes by the thousands in the fall.”
With not much else to do during the shutdowns of Covid, Tom found two reports about the East River and proposed that the friends read the reports together like a book study.
After learning about the concerns and realizing that much of the response had been driven by volunteers, the guys were inspired. There were contact emails included in the report, and they reached out.
Brown County Land Conservationist Mike Muschinski answered within hours and turned out to be the connection these three friends needed. Suddenly they found themselves invited to county and community meetings about cleaning up the East River.
“The river goes through De Pere, Allouez, and Ledgeview. It requires coordination,” said Steve.
“Having people outside the loyalty of individual communities helped keep the focus in one place,” added Tom.
Before long, the list of collaborators grew and a vision emerged to create a water trail to parallel the land trail. “Lots of really big water advocates were involved,” said Steve.
Before he retired, Mike told the friends that Fox-Wolf was looking for someone to adopt the launch at Green Isle Park on the East River.
“We said yes!” said Tom. “We live right on the water and near here.”
It became one more tangible thing they could do to help the river they loved.
“The issues of water quality are so big, so complex, people don’t know what to do,” Tom said. He loves telling his story to show people how they can help. “We could find hundreds of people who would be willing to do something to make this a better place,” he shared. “It’s not too late to fix this. I’m going to do all the little things I can.”
The work isn’t done yet, but these friends are noticing more people using the river, fishing and kayaking. “Just look at the data,” said Steve. “They are doing fish surveys and can tell you things are better.”
“We sit back after everything and say this is amazing!” Tom said. “What a uniting effort for lots of people.”
Watershed Moments is a publication of Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, sharing the stories of how your donations have impacted lives in our community. Read our latest project updates, make a secure online donation, or become a member at www.fwwa.org
