Chad Bedrocki is a man of many talents, but his passion for the Mississippi River and the work he does to keep it clean and safe for all of us on the river is one of the most important things we can do to protect the river and the people who live and work on it. He is a great man and an even better friend, and we had a great time talking about the river, and what it means to be a boater on the Mississippi and the other river tributaries in the Southeast, and how you can do your part to protect and protect the water we call home. I hope you enjoy this episode, and if you do, please remember to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms. Thank you so much to Chad and his crew for all the work they do to keep the river clean and clean up safe for everyone, and to all the volunteers who do their part to keep us safe and clean the river. Cheers, and thanks to everyone who has been a part of this journey with us and all the hard work that goes into making it a great day in the river! and thank you for all your support and all your hard work. Enjoy, and stay safe out there on The Mississippi River. See ya next week! - John Rocha and the crew at the Great Lakes Riverkeepers! Thanks to our sponsor, SONGS! . And thanks to all our sponsors! and sponsors for making this podcast possible. and our support is so much appreciated. Thanks, John Roperating and supporting us. . . . and we hope you have a wonderful day! , and we will see you next week with your support is coming back next week and next week. - The Riverkeeper - Thank you, John and the Riverkeeper! ! in the next episode of the Riverkeepers Podcast John R. is by John Rook and the Great Riverkeeper Podcast. by , & the River Keeper Podcast by Chad Bedrocky Thankyou, Thanks John Rigsby and the Crew at The Great Riverkeepers Club by the Great Mississippi Riverkeeper by , John Rowser by Bill and the City of Tuscaloosa, Inc., Inc. & is a little more than $500,000.
00:00:00.000I want to welcome our audience and introduce one of my great friends and, you know, one of the great, great, great longtime River activists, Chad Bedrocki.
00:00:11.000You look like you're in the pilot house of your tugboat, are you?
00:00:15.000Honestly, it's not just for the picture.
00:00:18.000It's because it's the highest point with the best reception.
00:00:22.000But yeah, it's a good place to be for sure.
00:00:58.000And we had invited Chad at that time to recruit him as the Mississippi Riverkeeper.
00:01:05.000I think, as I recall, you had swum the Mississippi at that point or something.
00:01:10.000You had done something really crazy that impressed a lot of people.
00:01:17.000But Chad now operates a series of barges.
00:01:22.000On the Mississippi, on the Tennessee, on the Ohio, he has 100,000 volunteers, and they clean up garbage, and they've cleaned up more garbage than anybody, I think, in the history of the world.
00:01:34.000How many pounds of garbage have you pulled out of the river?
00:01:37.000Within the next month or so, it'll exceed 11 million pounds.
00:01:41.000He used to go in there just in a bathing suit and pull out tires.
00:02:23.000Last time I talked to you, which was a couple of years ago, you had about, I don't know, three or four barges and a whole fleet of John boats that were actually out there with personnel pulling garbage up and filling the John boats.
00:02:37.000So we have five barges, we have two tow boats, we have six 30-foot workboats, That'll haul, you know, 5,000 pounds apiece.
00:04:10.000It's essentially being a muscle diver on the bottom of the Mississippi River, spending about 8 to 10 hours a day on the bottom of the river.
00:04:18.000That really solidified a connection to the river that most people have never had.
00:04:23.000When you're down there, you can't see anything.
00:04:26.000It's like being in a cave and You're the anchor for the boat, got a lead weight belt on about 100 pounds, and you're crawling upstream, but you can't see it all, but you can hear.
00:04:36.000And what you can hear are all these fish communicating, like, from all over.
00:04:52.000It was a great experience to have, and I basically, I can't say I crawled every inch of it, but I crawled about a 150-mile stretch of the river over six summer seasons.
00:05:01.000And so I just kind of, you know, had that experience and then camped out on all the islands to save money.
00:05:07.000And that's where I kind of, you know, just really fell in love with the river beyond growing up on it.
00:05:24.000It must also be scary underwater when you hear the propellers, the screws of these big barges that are probably scraping the bottom right near you.
00:05:37.000You can really hear, like, just regular motorboats.
00:05:40.000Like, they're really high-pitched, you know, and honestly, it's eerie because they, I mean, even if they're 100 feet away, they feel like they're right on top of you, and you have an air hose, you know, that gets pumped there, so you're always worried about the air hose getting cut or what have you.
00:05:54.000But, you know, you can hear a radio, too, and 28 foot above you.
00:05:59.000And that's how good you can hear certain days.
00:06:01.000Sometimes the current's ripping so fast that all you can hear is your bubbles and everything's flapping down there.
00:06:07.000But on certain areas, you can hear all the fish.
00:06:37.000Then Japan would punch little beads in them.
00:06:39.000Then they'd put those surgically and plant those little beads in their oysters.
00:06:43.000Then they'd have big racks in these oyster farms.
00:06:45.000Then it would serve as like an irritant to the oyster and cover it.
00:06:50.000The oyster would cover that bead and then they'd sell it back to you as a cultured pearl.
00:06:55.000I was part of the cultured pearl industry.
00:06:57.000I wasn't really high paid by any means, but it was a great experience to have.
00:07:02.000What I liked about it was The more you put into it, the more you got out of it, similar to what I do now or education or so many things in life.
00:07:13.000How many muscles would you catch in an hour?
00:07:17.000I mean, it depends on where you're at.
00:07:19.000You know, you're holding on to the bottom with one hand and you're feeling all around with little dish gloves on for the other hand and you'd grab it and you'd put it in a bag till you got You know, sometimes 80 pounds around your neck, but not all of them are alive.
00:07:33.000And once they're dead, they kind of blow up.
00:07:36.000They're more, you can feel them better because a shell that might be this big or maybe, you know, like the half the side of a football might only stick out a quarter inch out of the mud or substrate sand rock.
00:07:48.000So you'd be feeling every little thing you could down there.
00:07:52.000It was tough work, but it was great, you know?
00:07:54.000It's actually a peaceful place to be most of the time if you're not feeling like the current's too fast.
00:08:07.000But, hey, just to throw a shout out for what you guys do.
00:08:10.000I know, you know, you're talking about what we do and clean up rivers and garbage.
00:08:15.000But, you know, we're focused on the things you can see.
00:08:18.000And you guys, Water Keepers, are focusing on the things people can't see.
00:08:23.000You know, so I just want to throw a shout out for what you guys do.
00:08:26.000And, you know, we're all part of a bigger movement.
00:08:29.000And I appreciate you leading the way on all that.
00:08:32.000So, you know, I feel like, just to throw this out there, What I do is I don't know if it's sexy, but it's very result-oriented right then.
00:08:43.000You get to see your boatloads, your tonnage, your barge loads, you know, and sometimes what you guys are working on takes years and years to do.
00:08:52.000And so, you know, the patients and the things you deal with, I just want to throw a shout out and say thanks so much to you and your entire organization for all you guys do.
00:09:04.000What's the weirdest thing you ever found underwater?
00:09:08.000Do you ever see a car come at you in the current?
00:09:13.000So you're talking about when I'm down there?
00:09:19.000Either way, if you've got a good story, let's hear it.
00:09:23.000Okay, well, the worst thing you can touch underwater is a couch cushion.
00:09:27.000Because what do you think a couch cushion feels like?
00:11:41.000You know, Alec Mathis, and he was the...
00:11:44.000He was the second Hudson River keeper, and his first day on the job, he was kayaking around Manhattan, and he was up on the East River, and he found a body in the river.
00:11:58.000And he called the police on his cell phone, and had been there a while.
00:12:01.000Anyway, he called the police on his cell phone, and they said, push the body to the Brooklyn side.
00:12:50.000What do you do with all the garbage you get out of the river, Chad?
00:12:53.000We try to recycle as much as we possibly can.
00:12:57.000We pick up bottles and cans and barge loads of them in certain places.
00:13:03.000And so we sort out everything as a crew.
00:13:06.000Certain barges are used for different, like one's just a tire barge, you know, and one's just a scrap metal and appliances.
00:13:12.000And then we have our plastics and big plastics, small plastics.
00:13:16.000But we want to be able to recycle as much as we can.
00:13:19.000So what we did is we put on an event called Recycle Like a Rockstar and hired like a DJ and smoke machines and laser beams.
00:13:26.000It made it like an event, you know, and like a fun event.
00:13:29.000And we can do about 60,000 to 70,000 pounds with 150 people, recycle every bottle and can that comes in is recycled.
00:13:38.000And so we try to do as much as we can, not only getting it out of the river, but then doing something with it.
00:13:44.000We have one stuff is just for all the toxic chemicals and the batteries and the propane tanks.
00:13:50.000You know, that whole section is, we'll hire an environmental company to come in and take them all away and We've done like 5,055 gallon barrels or some number like that, a thousand refrigerators.
00:14:03.000And, you know, so it's, it really is an efficient river cleanup operation.
00:14:07.000We have like an excavator and cranes and for the big stuff, the cars and boats and it's evolved, but just out of necessity.
00:14:18.000Yeah, I want to again thank you for, not only for everything you do, but for your generosity to the water keepers.
00:14:26.000And there's a number of water keepers who have gotten boats from you, boats that you've kind of worn out and, you know, you've been really generous about giving us patrol boats for our work.
00:15:23.000You're very generous and your legacy is not only the trash you've pulled out, but the training and the resources you provide other organizations for their cleanups too.
00:16:29.000Somebody just put one up and then it just been growing and, you know, it's just, yes, it is very, they are really creepy, actually.
00:16:36.000You know, it's just something interesting for all the students that come here, the people, and try to make it festive and, I guess, Weird to a certain degree, but what it is, the barge is really, they shock people with just how much stuff, the volume of the stuff we're bringing out.
00:16:52.000And really, the efficiency of what we do is really what's important too, because to have to get little dumpsters everywhere and all this is just tough to do for where we need to work.
00:17:03.000So this thing is, it's cool in so many ways.
00:17:07.000So, you've gotten into a new racket recently, I've heard, which is planting trees.
00:17:18.000Basically, people think that I see wildlife all the time because I live on the Mississippi River on these islands.
00:17:26.000It's normally where we park our barges.
00:17:28.000And the truth is, there's not a lot of food for wildlife on a lot of these islands.
00:17:32.000Going back, the steamboat era cut all the trees down.
00:17:36.000They couldn't use them for fuel until they switched with coal to coal.
00:17:39.000Then the trees started growing back up, but then the dams were building and changed the hydrology.
00:17:44.000So a lot of the hardwoods that create a lot of food for wildlife, like acorns, they weren't flood tolerant and they could only survive on the higher islands.
00:20:21.000Then about, I started a restoration on five years ago at that strategic spot with a prairie restoration, all this.
00:20:28.000Put a lot of money, a lot of time into this.
00:20:31.000And then I heard that they're going to build a new bridge in the next five years, and they're going to blow the other one up.
00:20:37.000And then it did hit me one day that basically that herd of bison, if you fill the westbound lane with, literally structurally, you could do this, 16 inches of dirt, except for the center span with nine inches of dirt, and you plant your grass, prairie grass.
00:20:54.000Those bison literally could eat their way over to Iowa and eat their way back over in Illinois.
00:23:25.000We don't need growth to continue to do good.
00:23:29.000That's probably where I would see the organization, just more tonnage and going for, you know, 20 million pounds and those sort of deals and engaging another hundred plus thousand people and going to places that we haven't been and continuing to maintain the momentum that we've built in certain places.
00:23:48.000And just, you know, that's the real struggle is to go into new places that really need your help.
00:23:54.000I mean, we're working in places in the middle of nowhere, you know, where there are no organizations or Or that sort of deal.
00:24:01.000And then, you know, and you go back there and you build up momentum, but you know that there's a lot of other places that need us.
00:24:07.000So that's always kind of a struggle, but it is what it is, you know, just balancing that.
00:24:16.000And tell us what part of the river you're working on, because Mississippi is a very, very big river.
00:24:24.000Right now, we're, like yesterday, you know, there's crews, so the barge is one thing, but then we'll have a crew, like yesterday was up, basically up by Chicago on the Illinois River.
00:24:36.000Right now, I'm on the Ohio and Tennessee, and this, we're going to go, just work on the Ohio a lot with the barges and the big stuff, because the Escamator can do a lot here.
00:24:47.000And then we'll have two other crews working on the Illinois River.
00:24:52.000Basically, from Peoria, Illinois, up to Chicago, which is maybe like a hundred, give or take, mile stretch on that river.
00:25:14.000And I know you guys are doing a lot with plastics, and man, it's just...
00:25:20.000I would say it'd blow your mind but I know you've seen a lot so it might not blow your mind but most people would blow their minds when they come out here and they just can't believe how much like two of our people this went out they probably got I don't know 2,500 pounds of stuff in the last five hours just two people so that gives you any instance but that's pretty And how can our viewers support you or even better volunteer for you?
00:25:50.000I mean, if they live in a place where we're going to work, great.
00:26:07.000I'll take all I can get, but it's important to, you know, focus on the local.
00:26:12.000Because truthfully, like, we come through these places and we work with all these local different organizations, but they're there all the time.
00:26:20.000You know, I don't want to be the 800-pound gorilla coming through there and But yeah, I'd say local.
00:26:26.000And if you're interested to come out and check us out, please do.