A Clear Creek Cleanup

Seth Somerville, our land stewardship guy at Bur Oak Land Trust, recently organized a maintenance project on Clear Creek, which took place last Friday, July 21. Participants included folks from Bur Oak Land Trust, four local consulting firms, Johnson County Conservation, and City of Coralville. I didn’t attempt a headcount, but we had 9 canoes and 3 kayaks on the water, plus several ATVs shuttling along adjacent trails.

When it was time to get to work, Seth organized us into two groups. The group I was in used four chainsaws plus assorted other tools, and our job was primarily to open up log jams at least wide enough that kayaks and canoes could pass through. The other group focused on trash removal, which they would ferry to the nearest trail access for pickup by the ATVs. My own personal agenda was to also keep alert for teeth or bone from our now-extinct Ice Age megafauna – like mammoth or sabertooth cat. But with the creek up and extra muddy, this was a pretty improbable quest.

We launched from the Tom Harkin Trailhead and began working our way downstream. The chainsaw guys stayed well apart for safety and cut the larger logs into relatively short lengths so they were unlikely to create a new jam as they drifted downstream. There was also a lot of small wood caught in the big trees and the rest of us busied ourselves with dismantling the tangles. When a saw team was finished at one spot, they would leapfrog the other teams, and so we worked steadily downstream, often accompanied by a lot of nice firewood drifting by. The creek was rising due to two nice rains on preceding days, so some logs were just too far under to reach, even for an 18” chainsaw-bar. A chainsaw cuts wood very slowly when the bar is fully submerged and I think that it is just the drag of the water on all the teeth that slow it down.

The trash crew was alert for unique and unusual finds. Last spring I noticed that vandals had dragged a park bench away from the paved trail and tossed it over the cliff into the creek. Then it had been dragged upstream to a terrace with a nice view, if you were willing to go down a steep slope full of nettles to get there. Undoubtedly the work of older boys full of testosterone. Wish we knew who they are and could redirect that energy into dismantling log jams. Anyway, the trash team dragged it over to the nearby dirt trail, where the ATVs could haul it off. I’m guessing that Coralville will reinstall it somewhere less tempting, with no cliff nearby.

The camaraderie was wonderful, with friends I haven’t seen since Prairie Preview – maybe before. And this time we were part of a team. Big handshake with Will, warm hug with Rachael, Joe put his entertainingly weird spin on us grubbing for wood in a dirty creek, and when we finished, Judy and Brian were sweet enough to give me a ride in their canoe down to our pickup point, because my little kayak was full of gear and trash and I was walking the creek.

And people kinda kept track of each other. Someone passing me would notice that they hadn’t seen Amy for awhile and would yell out, “Have you seen Amy?” I’d yell back, “She already went by in her yellow kayak.” At noon, our agreed-upon quitting time, a couple of us dropped to the rear of the scattered participants and made sure that everyone stayed ahead of us and no one was left behind.

So it was a morning well spent, and Clear Creek from Harkin Trailhead to the Iowa River is now a lot more accessible to canoes and kayaks when it has a couple feet of water. Hope to meet you there. And thank you, Seth, for organizing this!