River Condition

Pam and I drove down to see the river about 5pm. It's up, at BRL it is up to the first step on the river stairs and the rocks are covered. This will link you to the river gauge so you can keep up with the river changes. Remember this is the East Fork gauge, so the river at BRL is higher and moving a lot more water.

Shut-Ins

Here is a photo of the area where the superintendents home once stood. They have filled the basement with soil and mounded up the soil on the outside of the foundation. I've been told that a large boulder that washed down the mountain will be placed in the center of this area. While I was out at the Shut-Ins they were moving the trailers that are serving as offices for DNR, Ameren, and Mactec from their spot at the enterance to the Park to a new and larger work area to the east on Highway N. I could also see work that is being done on an area that will be open to walking where all the large rocks that came down off of Proffit Mountain were deposited.

I'm Back

My out of state visitors are on their way home, so I'll get back to business. We had an inch and a half of rain yesterday. I see that the East Fork gauge is up over a foot. I'll head to town later today and let you know how the river looks then. Had a couple of BRLers stop by yesterday and they wanted to know what was causing the green cast to the river. DNR says very small clay particles, but I admit I still don't understand. We took our guests out to the Shut-Ins area and I will post a photo later today of some of the work out at the park. We also went up to the Lower Reservoir, but did not observe any work going on.

Kayak on Proffit Mt.

A letter has been sent to FERC proposing setting up an artifical whitewater course on the scour down Proffit Mt. You can go to the FERC site and then to the "project correspondence" page to read this letter.

April 27/ May 27

One month from today many of you will be down to Lesterville for the Memorial Day weekend. Seems like just yesterday Pam and I were in St Louis for a New Years party. Weather has been great this spring and yesterday was like summer in the pottery. We had three groups stop by and they definitely made out week. We are looking forward to seeing a number of old friends this weekend.

Lower Reservoir

The Missouri Department of Conservation has sent FERC a three page letter with their concerns about the Ameren plan to clean out the lower reservoir. You can read the entire letter by going to this web site and clicking on "Project Correspondence" and then opening the pdf from MDOC. Here is an excerpt from the letter.

We also expect additional turbidity and sediment transport in the East Fork and Black River, due
to the disturbances associated with sediment removal in the lower reservoir. Upon completion,
water quality will be improved in the reservoir, but the river will continue to be degraded, due to some mobilization of the excess fines in the East Fork and Black River. It is important to note
that only the fine sediments (clay, silt, and sand) are contributing to the depressed water quality
and biological concerns.

This and That

Had another half inch of rain last night and it was 47 this morning. Expecting temps in the 30's tomorrow morning. We are already using over a quart of sugar water a day for the hummingbirds. I was worried that Katrina and Rita might have injured or killed a lot of birds, but things seem normal this spring.

I know that some of you that read this are coming down this weekend, so sharpen you pencils and wits and be prepared to leave you impressions on the river. Speaking of this weekend, the Celtic festival is this weekend in Arcadia.

Rain/River

About 2" of rain in the past 48 hours have raised the river 6". However, that goes from 25 cubic feet per second to 90 cubic feet per second on the East Fork which means a lot more is going by BRL. So every little bit will help clean the river.

Taum Sauk

Here is an article that was printed in a number of papers this morning that will add fuel to the fire over Taum Sauk.

Note - The service I use to post these notes (Blogger, owned by Google) has been having trouble lately. I could not make this post this morning, and I had problems yesterday. So if it seems that I have gone fishing its because of Blogger problems.

New Photos

Just found two pages of new photos from the work at the Shut-Ins.

Rain

We received almost an inch of rain last night and more is forcast over the next 48 hours. It won't be enough to get the river up, but at least it will help the flowers. Had another inch of rain Sunday night.

Here is a link to a St Louis Post editorial about the politics of the Taum Sauk event.

Water Quarlity

Here is a link to a DNR site with information on how they are testing the water quality in the East Fork of the Black River.

4000 and counting

As of noon on Saturday there had been 4000 site visits since Christmas day. Thanks for your continued interest in the Black River.

Lesterville's Finest

Members of the Lesterville Fire Department. headed by Chief Ben Meredith, are recognized by the Governor for their efforts on December 14, 2005. We're all real proud to call them neighbors.

Lower Reservoir Plan

If your coming to Lesterville this summer this may be the most important document you can read. Ameren has submitted a plan to clean out the lower reservoir to FERC. As soon as they approve the plan work will start to remove the clay from the lower reservoir. To read the plan go to this FERC page and click on "project correspondence" and then down load the "Lower Reservoir Plan". This is a 5+ mb file and will open in MS Office. I never thought I'd say this, but I hope this June is as dry as last year. If we have a lot of rain while this work is going on I think the river will get real nasty. Let's all hope this works out as planned.

This and That

First here is a link to a map of the work that DNR plans to do to the East Fork above the Shut-Ins.
Second, the Govenor honored the members of the Lesterville Fire Department that played such a large roll in the events of December 14, 2005.
Third, if you have not filled out the survey about the future of the Shut-Ins the deadline is Sunday the 23rd.

Finally, I've been told that the foundation of the superentendents home has been covered with soil and the area has been surrounded with a fence. I was also told that one of the large rocks that came down the mountain on the 14th will be placed inside this fenced area and will have some sort of plaque attached to it with information about the events of that day.

Tourism Director to Step Down

Tourism Director John Robinson submitted his resignation effective Aug. 1, 2006. Mr. Robinson came to Lesterville for one of the DNR meetings and one of his assistants came to the following meeting and riled the crowd when she stated on a number of occasions that Lesterville was part of the "Arcadia Valley". Tourism has posted a web page about the Black River area, but if you read it you will see a number of errors. So thanks Ameren for experienceblackriver.com which is doing a great job getting the area tourism message out.

Missouri Sues Ameren

The AP is reporting that Attorney General Jay Nixon will sue Ameren over the Taum Sauk event. I'm sure that there will be many more news stories about this action in the coming days.

Ameren Editorial

Here is an editorial written by Mark Birk, a vice president at Ameren, that appeared in todays Springfield News-Leader.

East Fork/Park Work

Here is a link to a page of photos about the work in the state park area. From what I've heard the park will probably be closed again after tourist season and will be at least another year of rebuilding until its complete. I'm going to have some visitors from Iowa next week so we will probably get out to see the work at the park in person.

Q & A

I received the following email today.

I am just curious what your thoughts are on the new clean-up
schedule and whether or not it will help or hurt the river.
Fortunately for us we have a couple of months to hope 
that the river clears up.

Well, I'm not as optimistic as I was a couple of months ago.
We have only had one rain that produced enough water to get
the river up and moving.  The storm last night missed us and
with the July like weather we are already very dry.
I understand Ameren's position that the river will never
clear as long as there is a lot of clay in the bottom of the
lower reservoir.  I have no way of knowing what the reservoir
cleanup will do to the river, but a couple of weeks ago a
firm came in with what amounted to an industrial pool vac
and did a demo cleanup up on a small section of the East Fork.
From the video I saw they did not accomplish much and the
river was cloudy from their efforts.  So in January I said
that I didn't think any of you should buy a new swim suit. 
I think that is still good advice.  If you came down today,
the river at the lodge is not to bad, but I don't know what
the work on the reservoir will bring.

Meeting Notes

The monthly DNR meeting last night was only attended by about a dozen hard core locals. The most important information that I received is Ameren is going to start cleaning out the lower reservoir as soon as they receive the final permission. I have a friend that is working for Mactec, Ameren's enviromental contractor, and he said that two large mining dump trucks were delivered yesterday, and they were expecting two more today. Sounds like the clay they take out of the lower reservoir will be deposited on some land that Ameren has on the west side of the river near the Walker Branch road. I know that some of the folks that read this blog are planning on coming down the weekend of April 29. If they have started this work by then you will get to see the river at its worst. Here is a fact sheet that Ameren made available.

River Gauge

If you click on the River Gauge link from the list of links at the right you will see that the flow of the East Fork took a big drop yesterday. And the rest of the graphs show a big anomaly yesterday. Hope I can find out what all this means tonight. The drop in flow could only come from closing the gates on the lower reservoir dam, but I don't know why they would be closed. Stay tuned.

Best Time to Visit?

One of the most frequent questions I get at the pottey is, "what's the best time to visit Lesterville?" I always answer April 15 and October 15. Right now the dogwood and red bud trees are in full bloom, and a lot of wildflowers are blooming on the forest floor. You could go canoeing today and have the river to yourself. Same is true in mid-October, and that is when the Fall colors are at their peak.

As to the river today, it is clearer than it has been in a few weeks. I think because no one was working at the Shut-Ins or the Lower Reservoir over Easter weekend, therefore no one was stiring up the clay.

Next Meeting

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources will hold the fifth in a series of monthly informational meetings Tuesday, April 18, to discuss progress made on water quality in the Black River and recovery efforts at Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park near Lesterville. The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at Lesterville High School, Highway 21 and Elm, in Lesterville.

The format of the meeting will provide participants the opportunity to visit one-on-one with representatives from various agencies, including the Department of Natural Resources. Individuals can ask questions of the particular agencies concerning topics that are of interest to them, whether it is water quality in the Black River or the department's plans for interim visitor services this summer at Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park.

Hope to have some information about cleaning out the lower reservoir and plans for the Shut-Ins after this meeting.

Wilderness Lodge Newsletter

The new owners of Wilderness Lodge have posted a copy of the letter they sent to former guests of the lodge on their web site. You'll have to go the lodges home page and click on Newsletter.

Thanks for all the Fish

This is one of the funniest editorials I have ever read. Enjoy!

River Clay Glaze

Here is a mug that was glazed with the clay that is in the river from the December 14, 2005 Taum Sauk event. The dark brown glaze is made from 100% river clay fired to 2400 degrees, the only thing I did was sieve the clay through an 80 mesh sieve to remove the small grains of sand that are found in the clay. I probably have enough clay to glaze 60 mugs and I may try to harvest some additonal clay in the future.

Green River Lodge

Had three couples stop by the pottery yesterday. Two couples were from BRL (2nd week of July) and they thought the lodge should be renamed, Green River Lodge. The other couple camps in the Lesterville two to three times a summer and they said that the river looked better than they feared, and if you didn't know what it used to look like it was pretty in its green coloration.

We've had two days with the temps in the low 90's, kind of scary for mid April. Hope this isn't a sign of the summer to come.

Easter Eggs

If you haven't heard the latest from Jefferson City, here are two related pieces of news.

Egg #1

Egg #2

Wilderness Lodge

Pam and I delivered some new hummingbird feeders to Wilderness Lodge yesterday. They have converted the old conference room (it's really a seperate building) to an arcade room. The play ground equipment has been moved to an area between the dining room and the new arcade room.
This allowed them to add additional parking where the play ground used to be near the office. The grounds have been cleaned up and work has started on the cabins. The lodge will be open for regular business in early May.

Explore Black River

Kevin Perry, the webmaster of exploreblackriver.com, stopped by the pottery this morning while I was glaze pots for tomorrows kiln firing. He told me about his visit to Silver Mines the evening before. Here is a link to Kevin's observations about the St. Francis river area.

Hummingbirds

Had the first hummingbird at a feeder this morning.

Report for Work

As I've posted earlier we will be open this weekend if any of you make it down to Lesterville. I am going to ask those of you that stop by between now and June 15 to please put you thoughts about the rivers condition in writing (emails or comments) so that I can post them here for all to read. That way the Black River community will get the reaction of a lot of folks other than me.

Taum Sauk Power Plant

Here is the St. Louis Post article on the balancing act that went on between power, profit, and safety.

Email to FERC

The following is from an email to FERC about the Upper Reservoir.

Tom Hollencamp called to inform us that a storm went through the area of Taum Sauk last week and the liner is now loose and is billowing over the top of the parapet wall. There is concern that it may get caught in the transmission lines. He wanted to cut it off. I advised that he should goahead since it was safety related.

He also indicated that the approval, for the overall restoration work has not been approved by the MO Attorney General yet.

Forest Land

I'm sure if you live in Missouri your local paper has published a number of articles on the sale of National Forest land to raise money for rural schools. Todays Springfield News-Leader had a great editorial on the subject.

Computer Magic

The Mid-Continent Geographic Science Center in Rolla has posted two digital flyover videos of the Upper Reservoir. The links to these videos is under the aerial photo of the reservoir.

Odds and Ends

The Missouri State Park Advisory Board will meet Friday, April 14 at the Tradition Inn in Farmington. The meeting will begin at 8:30 a.m. at the hotel, located at 1625 W. Columbia, and the public is encouraged to attend and participate. I may try to go to this meeting.

The next DNR meeting in Lesterville is April 18 at 7pm, at the school as always. I have had two different people tell me that Ameren is going to start cleaning out the lower reservoir. Was told tonight that some equipment had been moved in below the dam, possibly to install some sort of filter before work begins on the reservoir. I hope I can find out something at the meeting on the 18th, but if anyone reading this blog knows any more detail, please leave a comment or send me an email. The East Fork is a lot more cloudy than it has been in past weeks. I'll try to swing by the reservoir on my way back from Farmington tomorrow.

Full Report

Here is a link to the full report of the Forensic Invistigation of the Upper Reservoir. Should make good Sunday reading.

Taum Sauk Report #1

Got home from our trip to Cape and found the front page article in the St Louis Post about the first report on the dam failure. Also had an email with the official Ameren press release about this report. I'm sure there will be a lot of reaction to this news in the next few days.

Weekend Plans

Pam and I leave Friday morning for Cape Girardeau where we will conduct a tile decoration workshop on Saturday. If you are down on Sunday (4-9) we will be open. I've had two emails asking about Easter weekend. We will be open Good Friday and Saturday and Sunday, so if you make a family outing come on by.

Here is a link to the press release about the new features on ExploreBlackRiver. If anyone made it to the St. Louis meeting about the Shut-Ins please send me a email with about your experience. You can get my email address at peolavalley.com.

Taum Sauk Investigation and Other Stories

Here are two links about the Taum Sauk event and the Shut-Ins. Don't forget this is the day for a St. Louis meeting about the plans for the Shut-Ins, hope some of you can participate.

New Bridge/Old Bridge

Decided to redo this post and just put the photo up. The web site that this came from is a bit of a problem to operate. So for you old BRLers this photo should be something special.

Experience Black River

Just had a call from Kevin Perry of the Forrester Group. Kevin has been given the task of getting the ExperienceBlackRiver.com web site up and running. There have been a few pages posted for about a month, but as of today there is a lot of information about all the businesses and attractions in the Lesterville area. So please check it out and keep it bookmarked for future reference. The newspaper ads paid for by Ameren point everyone to this site.

Changes for Upper Reservoir

Here is a link to a KSDK news report about changes to the Upper Reservoir. On a related note a friend has suggested that someone could make a mint this summer by offering helicopter tours of the East Fork, Upper Reservoir, and the Shut-Ins. So if any of you know a firm that offers this type of service you ought to let them know. I can just see a heliport in the BRL field. To bad the name "Field of Dreams" is taken.

Shut-Ins This Summer

For those of you that do not get the St. Louis Post Dispatch here is an article about the Shut-Ins programs for this summer. I've also heard there is a good article about the Black River in the Riverhills Travler, but I haven't seen it yet.

River Report and DNR Meeting

The river is up a little (less than a foot) and at BRL it is cloudy green instead of clear green.

The meeting about the future plans for the Shut-Ins was interesting. I expected them to have some proposals, but instead they really wanted to hear what we thought. I hope all of you have or will fill out the survey and I really think that if you could make it to the St. Louis meeting on Wednesday you would find it interesting. There are going to be two follow up meetings, one in June and one in August and then the final plan will be presented in September.

My main recommendation was that they find some land at a higher elevation to build the campground. Problem is, the high land we think of as part of the park is a designated wilderness area and other land that could be used is west of highway N. Also learned about the possible rerouting of the Ozark Trail. Even though I'm not sure how my old body would react to heading up Proffit Mt. I sure look forward to the chance to hike up the scour. I think it will be interesting to visit the park this summer, even though there will be a lot of restrictions as to what one can do. There seemed to be some concern about making the Memorial Day deadline to let the public back in, but I'm sure that they will have some sort of program available by that day. There are a lot of park employees and contract employees working very hard to see this area recover and I hope you all can come down this summer and see where they are with their work and what their plans are for the future.

Storm/Survey

I had to make my last post with an alternate internet service (Maglobe) that I mainly use when I travel because my home service was knocked out by the storm. Don't know if it was equipment problems or network overload. There was a lot a damage down in the bootheel. But a quick walk around this morning and everything looks fine here. I'll let you know about the river after I head to Farmington later this morning.

If you have not filled out the Shut-Ins survey please do so, I've had some interesting emails from some of you about the comments you left at the end of the survey. Thanks.

I'll let you know about my impressions of the park redevelopment meeting tomorrow.

Hummingbirds

For those of you that feed the hummers take a look at this map. I'm going to put my feeder out this Thursday. Keep the sugar juice fresh and you should be able attract the birds.

We had another inch plus of rain this afternoon and the ground was covered with 50% marble sized hail. I love spring, but I am tired of this weather pattern.

Odds and Ends

First, we had a good storm around 6am (daylight time) that dropped about an inch of rain. More expected later today.

Second, this is the week of meetings about the Shut-Ins and the river.
Open houses for input on the long-term redevelopment of Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park will be held at the following dates and locations:

* April 3 -- 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Lesterville High School, Hwy. 21 and Elm in Lesterville;

* April 4 -- 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources Conference Center, 1738 E. Elm St. in Jefferson City;

* April 4 -- 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Farmington High School cafeteria at 1 Black Knight Drive in Farmington;

* April 5 -- 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at St. Louis County Library, Oak Bend Branch, 842 S. Holmes Ave. (north of Big Bend).

This long-term redevelopment plan will closely follow the regular conceptual development plan process used for all state parks and historic sites, but this one will be at an accelerated pace. Following the April series of open houses for initial input, two more rounds of meetings will be held. The goal is to have a redevelopment plan in place by early fall.

Third, while checking Experienceblackriver.com to see if they had posted any new material (get busy Kevin, hint, hint!) I noticed a link for Black River Lodge. While its not exactly a web site, I suppose its better than nothing. I did notice that the web site for Wilderness Lodge has been updated for 2006.

Finally, this Tuesday is election day. Here in Reynolds County we will be voting with voting machines for the first time. Up till now we voted on paper ballots that were hand counted and then the ballots were sewn together with a large needle and cotton twine. Another old tradition is gone.

Shut-Ins Survey

DNR has put up a special web site with a survey about your opinions and ideas about the Shut-Ins. Since I know that most of you will not be able to make it to one of the meeting where this will be the topic, I encourage you to fill out the survey. I found that the first time I tried to go to this site, my browser told me it didn't exsist, but the second time I tried it worked. You can also get to this link from the Shut-Ins damage page.