Remmel to Rockport, Wednesday August 12, 2015

[Cowper]

Jon Ellwood and I will be floating from the dam down to the ledge tomorrow, company is welcome!

Full disclosure: At least one of us will be in a jon boat, as we intend to remove a couple of larger trash items that were spotted this past weekend. Help with trash grabbing will be appreciated but is not a required condition for joining our group; if you just want to combine for the shuttle up and then enjoy the float down or even float at a different pace, then that is OK too.

Since Entergy's latest e-mail says the release doesn't begin until noon, I propose meeting at the ledge at 11:15 (ish). If you get there at 11:15 and are alone, do not despair, we really are coming. Just drink plenty of fluids and we'll be joining you shortly!

We'll also stick around at the ledge to play some, and will hit the litter that collects on the river right bank by Porterfields.

FYI, the newsletter from Entergy indicates a "normal" release is planned, ~4000 cfs from Noon until 10 PM.

[Cowper]

UPDATE: Meeting at NOON.

[Cowper]

REPORT: Woody H, Pam E, Mason E, Jon E, Eddie V and myself all floated downriver from Remmel collecting trash as we went, while Heather H went straight to Portfield's and bagged the trash there for our later pick up with the motorboat. Between the two efforts, we got pretty much all of the trash we could find from Remmel down to the Interstate Bridge just beyond the boat ramp. In fairness, it had been "knocked down" a bit, because Aaron A, Cate D, and myself had floated the same stretch the day before, also collecting litter, but I'm still extremely happy that such a small group was able to essentially complete the needed cleaning of 5 miles of river in only 2 days, and without really working that hard.

I'm also happy to report that by the time we got to the put-in on Wednesday, someone had clearly done a very good job of picking up there! I don't know who did it, but it was much needed and VERY appreciated! (One of the most common trash items: Boxes and other packaging of people who bought their tubes earlier in the day. This just floors me that people throw that stuff on the ground near their cars before they launch. And I know they KNOW they are doing wrong, because they never leave the receipts that might allow us to collect the trash and deliver it to their front yards!

Stay tuned: I think we need to do something from Rockport down to Grigsby Ford in the coming weeks, since I'm sure that area will be impacted by the stuff we see floating downstream from the ledge. This is the pattern we've also observed on the Caddo at Arkadelphia; some of the worst impacts are actually seen in the section immediately downstream of where most of the floating occurs.

If you're also on Facebook, we posted some photos on the ACC BOATR page, and Woody also had a few shots of the day.

PS - Does anybody need a 20' long, 8" diameter heavy wall PVC pipe, drilled to function as a French Drain? We'll likely be extracting one in the next week or two; its one item that was too heavy to carry out in the motorboat, but we have a plan!