Clean Ravines

We're Done

2008-04-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

April 23, 2007

Spring is upon us and yesterday we celebrated Earth Day by digging up more yard to become new garden space. What we didn't do was attempt to do a spring cleanup in our ravine.

I hate to admit this but we are done. We've given up on the city taking any action. We've called and talked with City officials for years and nobody has helped us. Picking up some trash that blows in every year is one thing but there is no help for the relentless dumping that takes place by our neighbors. Why should we continuously pick up after these people when there is no incentive to make them stop?

I guess Moline's beautification policy is only for certain areas. To be honest I'm disgusted with the City of Moline and when we move it won't be within Moline's boundaries. Moline, IL has so much potential to be a beautiful town but they put their attention elsewhere. Drive around, it isn't just the ravines, there is trash everywhere around Moline.

The drought from the last two years also played havoc with our side of the ravine. Most of the plants dried up, exposing soil that washed away when we did get a rainfall. Now chunks of concrete that the previous owners illegally dumped are exposed, not to mention there has been settling. Between that and a few fallen trees, I don't think it's safe to take on a cleanup effort. I feel like I've let the wildlife down.

Here is an example of why its so discouraging:

A neighbor across from us decided to clean out their garage and preceded to throw things down the ravine. When they saw us watching them they created a junk pile at the top of the ravine, behind but still on their property.

Last year we had high hopes the Moline Neighborhood Improvement Officer would actually help us by writing letters. There was talk that the dumping neighbors would be forced to clean up what they dumped or they would be billed by the city once the city cleaned it up. After many weeks of nothing happening we cleaned up what had fallen on our side of the ravine. The other portion was never cleaned up. In fact more has been added. The neighbors trail of trash..

It's exhausting. In some twisted way we found that we were more of the problem. Our neighbors are angry because we should "mind our own business." Ravines are after all here to become land fills. The city got tired of our calls and to call the police during a dumping just annoyed the police. It's not their job to stop people from illegally dumping. Apparently nobody holds that job in Moline, IL.

Moved to blogger

2007-11-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

November 16, 2007

I've moved our Clean Ravines blog to Blogger because I was tired of always having to update the wordpress software on my own server. Except for the template being a little different, it already feels like home. :)

Our Ravine Obsession

2007-11-16T09:37:00.000-08:00

The fascination with cleaning up the ravine actually started before we owned the property. As a teenager I was able to convince local neighborhood kids to help clean up debris and haul junk up a hillside. It was a great success. We were able to clean up all the trash, recycle tons of metal and disposed of over 50 tires. To celebrate we threw a pizza party with pinata & games. I’m sure the motivating factor for the kids was the promise of a party, but as we finished the project it was apparent that they were proud of what had been accomplished.

6 years later I bought the property from family and moved back into my childhood home. My entire life and work evolves around gardening, wildlife and the environment, so I was really excited about owning a little pocket of wildlife while living in the city. I don’t know how many people living a few houses from a major interstate can say they have as much wildlife as we do. The downsize of having a ravine as a backyard is everyone feels inclined to dump whatever they want in it. This has been a big problem.

Since Moline has decided to change over to an automated garbage collection system, I fear that the dumping will only get worse. Now people will have to fit all their garbage in a 96 gallon container. There are a lot of rentals in our neighborhood that change occupants. When this occurs there is a lot of trash. Even though the city offers one free bulk collection a year, I don’t think many will take advantage of it. Not sure it would apply to the families or the house address, in which there could be several needed pickups a year depending on the amount of tenants that move in & out.

So we seek no dumping signs and awareness. We want people to know that someone cares about these little dips in the earth. We would also like to see tougher consequences if someone is caught dumping trash on private property. A fine and making them clean it up would be nice.

This is our story...

Our Spring Clean Up

2007-11-16T09:22:00.001-08:00

April 22, 2007

Despite a killer headache and steep entrance down to the bottom of the ravine we managed to clean up a bit. I still can’t believe how much trash we could gather with a little more time, but we had other things to do. 7 bags of trash was collected, bike, hose and a few larger items that were a real eyesore. Yes, we picked up a few of the items tossed by our neighbors that fell down onto our property. They still have yet to pick up the trash and we haven’t heard back from the the NIO yet.

Cliff even planted a few things on our hillside because a lot of the dirt (plants are gone from the drought last 2 summers) has been washed away uncovering some real ugly concrete. I know the ravine will never be beautiful but it’s home to so many beautiful birds and critters.

State works on drain

2007-11-16T09:18:00.001-08:00

April 10, 2007

You can always tell when the State is down in the ravine by all the loud fussing. I actually felt sorry for them trying to manuver all that big equipment down there. (Um, a shovel might have been easier.) I’m not sure what they did, but it looks like they got stuck.

Hope

2007-11-16T09:17:00.001-08:00

April 5, 2007

Today the new Neighborhood Improvement Officer came over to see the area of trash dumped there by our neighbor. I am so excited to report that it looks like this guy might actually be able to help us. He said he would try to talk to the neighbors today and ask them to clean up the trash they threw down the ravine. If they don’t comply the city will have someone clean it up and issue the neighbors the clean up bill & a fine. Also he said that he would send the surrounding neighbors a letter asking they not dump in the ravine.

This is the best news we’ve had in a long time because before this nobody seemed to be able to help. I hope the letters are sent soon because we noticed the landlords of the houses next to us finished cleaning their property and now there is a bike, hose and fire extinguisher on the ravine hillside behind the property.

NIO Calls Back

2007-11-16T09:15:00.000-08:00

April 4, 2007

Neighborhood Improvement Officer has called back today and will be stopping by sometime. I sure hope he can help us. I really don’t understand how someone can dump trash on your property and not be breaking a law? Isn’t that a police issue? Aren’t there fines or tickets they can write up on that?

I really think ravines are treated poorly when it comes to dumping issues…unless of course you live in a better neighborhood. Think they would get by with this in Wildwood?

Neighbor Dumps

2007-11-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

April 3, 2007

Ugh, this is what we have to deal with. While walking out to the bird feeders I saw our neighbor across the ravine throwing trash into the ravine. All sorts of junk that could have been easily thrown away. I was so mad! I shouted, “Couldn’t he throw that “crap” away in the trash?”. Guess I’m still a little ticked. After all the work we have put into the ravine it’s just devastating to see one moron do so much damage.

I called the police and talked to an Officer Hanna that told me it really wasn’t in their jurisdiction to handle such problems but he did offer to talk to the home owners. The trash still sits there. They apparently don’t want to cause problems but the trash still sits there. Officer Hanna suggested we call Rich ( City Fleet Manager) who said he couldn’t do anything but suggested we speak to the Neighborhood Improvement Officer.

Still the trash sits there.

Ravine has flooded

2007-11-16T09:09:00.000-08:00

March 25, 2007

This spring we’ve been blessed with some much needed moisture. After dealing with the last two years of drought conditions it’s nice to have the rain. Unfortunately the rain has shown that we still have serious drainage issues in the ravine. Our little stream has became a deep swamp because its unable to run through the States drain. It’s a very dinky drain in a bad location. Every year the State does come down with big machines to scrape the mud off? A shovel does the same thing but neither are a lasting solution.

Cliff dug an area for the water to drain & then cleared the top of the drain last year.

Now it looks like this:

It’s over 5 feet deep and 20 feet wide.

More pictures can be seen here.

Wet and Cold Spring

2007-11-16T09:07:00.000-08:00

March 15, 2007

Last year at this time we were able to get down in the ravine but cold temps and a lot of wet weather has kept us from picking up trash.

A quick look down into the ravine we can tell there is going to be a few bags of trash that will need to be gathered. Some of the trash looks as if it blown in from all the winds we’ve had. I hope we don’t lose anymore trees.

Last Cleanup Day…for awhile

2007-11-16T09:02:00.000-08:00

March 29, 2006

Not sure if this was the last day of our cleanup effort or not. We still feel there is a lot more that we would like to do but it looks like a wet and stormy forecast. The hillside is now a slick mass of mud so I can’t imagine we will be able to do much more with more rain on the way.

We had an early start at about 7:30 am and worked till after noon gathering trash & metal items. Finally we can see a difference and even though there are still large pieces we can’t remove, we feel good about the areas we were able to cleanup. I’m often discouraged by how one person can make so much mess, but this (I think) is rather amazing how much two little people can do. We both think it was worth our time and effort. Happy with the results.
I’ll post before and after pictures soon so all of you can see the difference. I know it may sound silly but even this little dump of a backyard can be a beautiful place during the summer. Lots of wildlife call it home.

Thanks to my fellow gardeners and environment lovers for all the suggestions.

I am really interested in the recommendations for native bog plants to help with the soggy issue and the pollutants. :) Thanks guys

Trash collected today: 16 bags of garbage, 3 lawn mowers, 4 more tires, heap of metal (including a washing machine frame) and 3 buckets of glass.

Out of sight, Out of mind

2007-11-16T07:15:00.001-08:00

March 28, 2006

I could have called today’s entry ’slip and slide’ considering the recent rain. Bringing stuff up the hillside proved to be a huge challenge and a rather amusing one. I stayed in the ravine for most of the few hours we were down there. I managed to start the far side of the ravine cleanup while Cliff worked on lifting tires out of the sludgy water. He is hoping that it will improve the drainage.

I can’t even describe my emotions when I ran across a new hillside of trash. It looks as if someone had dumped a months worth of trash. Ok, I guess I can describe my emotions - ticked. From the last time we did a major cleanup in the ravine this is all new. It’s very discouraging to see this happening over and over. We’ve called the police, called the city and nobody seems to care. Ravines are out of sight, out of mind. Here is a small sample of the types of items I collected. I didn’t see anything that couldn’t be thrown in a household trash bin.

After about 40 minutes I stopped picking trash off that hillside. I didn’t even get a 1/3 of it, but I didn’t want to be right in their backyards. It’s very frustrating. I have to wonder if this amount of trash was located next to city hall would they wait till suspicions of dumping could be confirmed? Majority of ravines are private property so why aren’t homeowners held responsible if they continue to let dumping occur? All the trash and debris eventually makes it’s way to the bottom creating a mess of problems for the city drainage so you would think they would be a little more concerned. They are being very helpful in disposing the trash we collect, but I wish there was a little more assurance in prevention.

Trash collected today: Started another tire pile, took up many piles of metal, worked on removing more debris from the stream and cleaned some trash from hillside.

The city came this morning and picked up yesterdays tire haul and metal pile.

Feeling Positive?

2007-11-16T07:08:00.000-08:00

March 27, 2006

It’s tough to feel positive when the task in front of you looks like this.

But even with sights like this, we feel we can tackle it or at least clean as much as we can. We only have a week before Cliff has to go back to work and I have to put the time into my business, so we had hoped the weather would be nice. Looks to be rainy soon so we really wanted to gather a substantial amount of trash today.

A little miffed that neighborhood teens had rearranged our tire piles and threw around metal pieces. Now everything we collect has to go up to our property the same day. Here is the drain a day after Cliff cleared it with one of our collected tires and a new ball stuffed in it. Cute, heh?

Happy to report that the City has offered to collect the trash we gather. I had been worrying where we would be able to take so many tires and metal pieces, so at least that is taken care of. Now we just need to figure out how some of the pieces will make it up the hillside.

It looks like we might be able to have no dumping signs and letters sent out. It feels as our cleanup efforts won’t be in vain.

Trash, Muck And Mud

2007-11-16T06:46:00.000-08:00

March 18, 2006

Summer of 2004 the State worked on a drain in our ravine after we had complained about serious Mosquito problems. The drain had been blocked so the highway runoff was sitting there and then back-up into our little stream causing big problems. The smell was awful.

After many calls both the city and state seemed to blame each other and nothing got done. Then miraculously one day I heard the state fixing the drain. Still have all the trash but the drain was working. Yeah!!! Problem is, until we get rid of all the trash at the bottom of the ravine there will always be places for stagnant water.

Apparently some neighbors don’t mind the look of a landfill behind their home or mind the smell of rotting stagnant water but I was really surprised they could ignore the mosquito population when West Nile has became such a scare.

So today we noticed there wasn’t anything draining. The stream was moving but then went still towards where the drain should have been. When I continued to bag trash, Cliff took a shovel and started creating a little stream and then he uncovered the drain. What a marvelous noise to hear that start to suck away the muck.

Many people might wonder why I keep referring to the city for help when it’s private property. The city has a 50 foot wide right of way through our property. The right of way includes a bottom portion of the ravine. Including this entrance point where a lot of dumping occurs. We are hoping that No Dumping signs will be placed.

Trash collected today: 10 bags of trash plus another metal pile.

First Glance

2007-11-16T06:40:00.000-08:00

March 5, 2006

Today was a brisk but sunny day. We decided that if we were going to venture down the ravine to pick up garbage now would be a good time before the spring thaw. The plants are barely beginning to to bud so we were able to get a good look at exactly what we are dealing with. It isn’t pretty. It has been 13 years since we had a major clean up so I expected trash but I didn’t expect the amount of tires and other big items.

Even the trash amount was staggering. I find it discouraged to see items that can be thrown away in kitchen waste bin. Why the need to dump into a wooded ravine? Another “shake your head” moment was when I found bags of composting leaves thrown down the hillside in plastic trash bags. How hard is it to dispose of things properly?

We spent seven hours picking up trash and sorting piles of metal. This is not an easy task since the ravine hillsides are thick with wild roses and at times I felt like I was climbing a 45 degree angle to get to the top. One of the most annoying problems is the amount of broken glass that litter the ground. I can’t imagine wildlife walking among the glass. I sliced up my shoes and tore a few bags, but I’m happy to report - no cuts, this time.

Trash collected today: 13 Trash bags of garbage taken from the ravine & a large amount of metal items. Still there is so much to take out. We started to collect a small pile of tires but we are unsure of where they need to be taken. A year ago the city of Moline said they would help dispose of them but now I’m not sure.