Environmental Protection Agency officials who oversee four regions of the U.S. gathered Tuesday on a floating classroom on the Mississippi to discuss issues facing the river.
The educational barge is stopped in Alton, Ill., and will be downriver near the Gateway Arch later this fall before heading to Memphis, Tenn., and St. Paul, Minn., next year.
The vessel is a refurbished 1930s crane barge that has been converted into a mobile classroom by Living Lands and Waters called the Mississippi River Institute floating classroom. It has swirling rebar along its edge depicting river scenes like a catfish and the St. Louis skyline.
Inside the classroom, the ceiling is a collage of driftwood pulled from rivers by the organization. Since 1998, Living Lands and Waters has cleaned up over 13 million pounds of garbage on 25 rivers, said Rachel Loomis, manager of the Mississippi River Institute.
“We find all sorts of garbage out there,” Loomis said. “We're finding single-use plastic bottles. We're finding tires, 55-gallon barrels, mattresses. So some things that we utilize in our everyday life and then some things that we have no idea how the heck these items are getting to the river.”
Regional administrators from each of the four EPA territories that line the main stem of the Mississippi toured the barge and spoke to students from Alton High School in the classroom. They stressed that water connects all of the states in their respective locales.
“It's important for all of us from these four regions, Regions 4, 5, 6 and 7 here today, to be able to talk about the Mississippi River together and our own interactions with it, but also what we can do in collaboration with each other,” said Meg McCollister, administrator of EPA’s Region 7, which includes Missouri.
One of the main issues discussed was the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, a large area below Louisiana that has reduced oxygen and can kill fish and other marine life. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said this year the dead zone is larger than average, about the size of New Jersey. The dead zone is created largely by fertilizer runoff from farms upstream.
Everyone needs to think about their place in the larger river system, said Earthea Nance, administrator of EPA’s Region 6, which covers the South Central U.S., including Louisiana.
“Because the water doesn't respect state boundaries, we have to work together to solve it,” Nance said. “Whatever gets thrown into the river upstream will end up downstream, and the same goes for other states that have tributaries that lead into the Mississippi River. So there needs to be a concerted effort that is collaborative in order to solve these problems.”
The high school students got a history lesson on water quality in the Mississippi, covering the effects of the 1972 Clean Water Act. Officials also highlighted the resurgence of the bald eagle, a species once endangered by pesticides in the environment but now populous enough to draw bird-watching crowds in winters in Alton.
Despite that progress, the administrators stressed that there is still work to do. In addition to the fertilizer runoff issues, officials said so-called forever chemicals, or PFAS, and microplastics are at the forefront of pollution challenges in the river basin.
As the classroom barge moves around the Mississippi, it will be towed from place to place by partner organizations, as if it’s hitchhiking, Loomis said.
“We don't actually stick out our thumb, but that's kind of how I like to explain it,” she said. “They come with their tow and maybe they have 15 other barges, or maybe only three, and they help us tie off to their barge and help us get to where we're trying to go.”
The barge will host classes and meetings in the coming months in the St. Louis region to try to strengthen people’s feeling of connection to the river, Loomis said, before heading to its next stop.
