Environmental Progress - Summer 2005

In mid-June, 35 teachers from across Illinois gathered at the boat launch on the Illinois River at Havana, eager to board large jon boats for a short ride to a strange-looking vessel moored on the opposite shore. A brightly painted tugboat sat behind a barge that held the long green-painted quarters that house the organization known as Living Lands and Waters.

Chad Pregracke talks to Illinois teachers on board the barge in quarters that double as classroomand living room for Living Lands and Waters staff.

Living Lands and Waters is the brainchild and continuing living vision of Chad Pregracke. Growing up on the banks of the Mississippi River, he started noticing all the garbage that had been accumulating there. In 1997 he founded the organization of which he is president, with the goal of encouraging "protection, preservation and restoration of the natural environment of the nation's major rivers and their watersheds."

Now with a fulltime staff of 10, eight of whom live on a barge, and a towboat that plies the Mississippi, the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers, the organization joins with local volunteers (more than 20,000 so far) in picking up an amazing variety of debris and trash and conducting hands-on environmental education workshops for teachers and others. He has also developed sustaining volunteer programs, notably the Adopt-a-Mississippi River- Mile program, which now has more than 130 different groups working on "perpetual maintenance of the river."

A few days after the June teachers' workshop, which was co-sponsored by the Illinois EPA, Pregracke was named the latest recipient of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's PATH (People Are Today's Heroes) Award. The PATH award was presented to him on behalf of Gov. Blagojevich by Marcia Willhite, Bureau of Water Chief for the Illinois EPA. Appropriately, the presentation was made aboard the Living Lands and Waters barge, and was the latest of several awards citing the work of Pregracke and his organization.

Chad Pregracke receives a Governor's PATH Award from IEPA Water Chief Marcia Willhite.

On the June day that the teachers visited, Pregracke and his crew were hosting an aquatic teachers workshop, co-sponsored by the IEPA and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The workshops are designed to let non-formal educators who are professionals in their fields teach formal educators. The professionals on this occasion were Doug Blodgett of the Nature Conservancy; Michael Wiant, director of the Dickson Mounds Museum; Mark Pegg, of the Illinois Natural History Survey; Matt Peterson, and Randy Wiseman, both of IDNR, and Steve Kolsto, IEPA's Lakes Unit.

Kolsto summed up the group's perspective: "We were like modern day Huck Finns, exploring the past, present and hopefully a bright future for the Illinois River, from both the classroom and the water."

In addition to the June 16 event at Havana, IEPA staff members so far have joined in conducting five other workshops on the barge, with another Aug. 9 at Rock Island that included participation of IEPA Director Doug Scott.

The teachers are exposed to a range of demonstrations and experiences in this truly unique "classroom," such as Kolsto demonstrating the use of sampling equipment, planting trees, and collecting mussels. The teachers also are motivated by Pregracke's passionate commitment to cleaner rivers, and his high-energy enthusiasm.

"The workshops are awesome because it educates teachers about the river and it gets teachers excited, which in turn can get a lot of kids motivated, and that's kind of the future of it all, you know," Pregracke commented.

"We've removed about two million pounds of garbage since we started. But we're also doing new teacher education workshops here on the barge, as well as tree plantings on the islands on the upper Misssissippi River. We're doing as much as we can; it's about hard work and a fast pace," Pregracke said.

$50,000 SEP grant

Pregracke's organization was also the recipient of a $50,000 grant from the IEPA in 2004, underwritten by Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP) funds, used to help facilitate river cleanups and the River Bottom Forest Restoration Project, which will protect the watersheds by reducing nonpoint source pollution that enters the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. The river cleanups are community-based and involve local volunteer participation from diverse communities. Through hands-on experience, volunteers observe the effects that litter, erosion and siltation have on water quality.

The Agency is also currently working with Pregracke to create a video/DVD about Living Lands and Waters that highlights the program's goals and the ways it is meeting them and to inspire others to help our rivers.

"I think this thing's catching on not because of me but it's part of a movement really and we're just adding to it. People come out because they care, and a lot of people care," said Pregracke.

"You've gotta pass the torch on, because you can't be everywhere and people can't count on someone else to clean it up. It's not my river; it's everybody's river."