Moved to blogger

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

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...

Ravine has flooded

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.

Last Cleanup Day…for awhile

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

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?

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

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.