Carlisle North River Cleanup was held on June 19, 2021, and was a great success! 25 community members, including 10 scouts, cleaned up a mile of the North River as well as 2 miles of highway ditches along the Carlisle Nature Park site and trailhead. Funding from Change-X and Microsoft provided for garbage bags, buckets, safety vests and trash pickup tools as well as drinking water and snacks. The event lasted for 3+ hours and a whole dumpster was filled with bottles, cans, car parts, plastic and Styrofoam materials. Tires were taken to the City of Carlisle where they will be recycled at a later date.
Friends of Carlisle Parks coordinated this project and were excited with the number of families and younger folks who helped clean up!
June 19, 2021, was a perfect day to have the North River and Hwy 5 Cleanup event. 25 volunteers including a scout troupe, several families and other individuals worked for 3 hours and walked many miles gathering cans, bottles, paper, car parts, tires, signs and all other sorts of debris. A special thanks to Friends of the Parks for heading up the event!
I'll post some pictures to show our team who were able to make it that day. We know many others were here in spirit but had conflicting events. As a Community we should be very proud of our youth and leaders who gathered together for a project that improves our community! Well done TEAM!!!!!
Just a reminder that we will be having our North River and Hwy 5 ditch clean up this Saturday starting at 8am. It should be reasonably cool at that time and we'll have plenty to drink and snacks to eat. Bring a friend or your family. We'll meet at the grain bins. Looking forward to seeing you there. And of course bring a friend if you like.
As a bonus you'll be some of the first to see the new North River walking trail that meanders along the North River from the SW corner of the property all the way to the Hwy 5 bridge.
Our North River and Hwy 5 cleanup effort is scheduled for June 19th! We'll meet at the Carlisle Nature Park Trailhead by the grain bins at 8am. Collection buckets and vests will be handed out at that time. We'll have light refreshments for all helpers. Please dress appropriately for the weather and brushy river environment.
Sponsorship for this event has come from Change-X and Keep Iowa Beautiful! All ages are welcome and this will be a family friendly event. A great way to teach our youngsters the importance of "not littering" and picking up after ourselves when out enjoying nature.
For more information, contact Denny Woodruff, 490-2775 or Tony Rhinehart 249-2055.
Welcome to several new members! Jake Sickels who sells real estate with Peoples Company.
Eric Birkenholtz, high school soccer coach who has 30-40 team members willing to help with clean up efforts!!!! And Jenny Sinclair who teaches in Carlisle Schools and loves canoeing and kayaking! Welcome to our group! Check in often as we will be planning a spring cleanup event for North River.
Several pics below of our Carlisle Nature Park and trail head as well as trail and river photos.
Have a great weekend out in nature! Carlisle the Natural Choice! Denny
I’m the Carlisle HS Boys Soccer Coach. Following your efforts here. If you ever see a need where 30-40 guys could help out please let me know. Would like to start something with the, where they are giving back to the community.
Eric we would welcome the help of your soccer team! Our group is talking about a spring cleanup of North Park as we lost so many trees from the Derecho. I suspect we will be doing a lot of leaf raking, branch gathering and trash pickup. I'll reach out to you as we get something planned! Really appreciate your offer for help. And yes we'd welcome help on the river cleanup. That event hasn't been scheduled as it will depend on river levels, spring flooding etc.
The Committee met on 3/4/2021 to continue conversations with regard to river cleanup as well as long-term planning for the parks. The meetings continue to have members attending both in-person and virtually.
Joe Schettler was invited to attend the monthly meeting representing Warren County Conversation Board. Joe will attend as he can keep a good connection between both local and county efforts. The county currently maintains 2,600 acres. We also discussed future participation/opportunity with regional water trail efforts.
We discussed marketing efforts for Friends of the Park and the creation of a website. We have a professional partner willing to develop the website in-kind, however we still need to develop content and determine hosting options/fees.
We also discussed volunteer recruitment and how better to provide updates to the community on the work the Friends of the Park has underway.
Committee members Scott James, Tony Rhinehart and Denny Woodruff met on December 4th and scouted the North River from the Carlisle Nature Park to North Park. This was a 3 hour effort as we identified a number of log jams that need to be dealt with. Some trash was found in the River but log jams appear to be a bigger issue. The group identified several locations where the River could be accessed for removing logs and debris. Land owners will be contacted and will likely want to join the project as it will help prevent flooding of their farm fields.
A major river cleanup will likely have to wait till spring or early summer as rain has made the banks slick and deer hunting season could pose a risk to volunteers.
Enjoy pictures of our beautiful River and consider joining our effort to make it a water trail!!
We are hosting our first planning meeting (12/1/2020) as we speak! Very exciting thinking through the critical steps and impact cleaning the river will have on our community. We feel there is opportunity to link our project with larger river improvement efforts in the greater metro area (Great Outdoors Foundation) and activate previous local planning efforts to expand recreational use of the river.
Members attending the meeting: Dennis Woodruff, Ruth Randleman (not pictured - taking photo), Scott James, Joe Jenkins, Paula Sampson,Tony Rinehart, Cassandra Halls (on phone)
Great first meeting for North River clean up which will happen this spring/summer. We'll meet Friday afternoon to scout out the river and define a plan for scope of the clean up. Hope to have a drone fly over so we can more carefully examine sections of the river which are difficult to access by foot. We'll be identifying the most serious log jams on North River and looking at ways that we may make a river trail from the Carlisle Nature Park area to North Park and eventually on to the Des Moines River. If you would like more information on the project, contact Denny Woodruff at 515-490-2775.
