20 years of cleaner streams

One of Missouri’s largest volunteer programs celebrates its 20th anniversary this month.

The Department of Conservation estimates 80-thousand people have been or are members of the four-thousand stream teams formed since the Roubidoux Fly Fishers of Waynesville became Stream Team Number One.

The department figures those teams have provided more than one-and-a-half million hours of volunteer work. Stream Team Biologist Sherry Fischer figures the teams saved the department 2.6-million dollars last year, alone.

And she says the streams are a lot cleaner. The department says the teams have removed more than 6,000 tons of trash from Missouri’s streams. .

The department says stream teams are involved in almsot three-dozen activities including jumk removal. They also check water quality, work on stream access, watershed mapping and zebra mussel monitoring, and other things.