Tag: Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative

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Plastic Is Top Trash in Mississippi River Corridor

(Credit: Mississippi River Mayors Cities and Towns Initiative)

Plastic is the top trash left behind in the Mississippi River corridor, according to a new report from the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative (MRCTI) and the United Nations (UN) Environment Programme.

(Credit: Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative)

In April, citizen-scientists collected litter in St. Paul, Minnesota; St. Louis, Missouri; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana for the beginning phase of the Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative. They collected 75,184 pieces of litter and 75 percent of that — 660 pounds — was plastic.

The top items included cigarette butts (filters are made of plastic), plastic food wrappers, and plastic beverage bottles. These were followed by plastic foam fragments, aluminum cans, hard plastic fragments, and plastic bags.

(Credit: Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative)

“Community members scientifically surveyed areas greater than 20,000 football fields to gather this valuable data with Debris Tracker [technology],” said Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineering professor at the University of Georgia and National Geographic Explorer. “The results show that there are opportunities for interventions in each pilot city to reduce the quantity of plastic ending up in our environment and the Mississippi River.”

(Credit: Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative)

Memphians collected and tagged litter in April, too, using the UN’s Debris Tracker. They found 158 pieces of litter near Mount Zion Church on Weaver Road close to T.O. Fuller State Park. There, they encountered beverage bottles, food wrappers, assorted bits of rubber, metal, and plastic, and more. On Overton Square (the block containing Saltwater Crab, between Diana and Florence St.), they found 124 piece of litter, including straws, cigarette butts, plastic cups, food wrappers, and more.

The Mississippi River corridor is a draining system for 40 percent of the continental United States. Litter in cities gets to the river from storm drains and smaller waterways. It poses a threat to the river’s environmental quality and ecosystem health.

Litter along the river ultimately makes its way to the Gulf of Mexico and into the ocean. Approximately 11 million metric tons of plastic enter the oceans every year, with rivers contributing to a significant portion of that amount.

(Credit: Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative)

“We learned a lot through this new approach regarding where waste gathers, how much of it there is, and the type,” said Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome. “We now have valuable information to help support not only existing storm water programs but improve our waste management systems and infrastructure going forward.”

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Report: Floods Cost Mississippi-River States $6.2B Last Year

CREDIT: Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative

Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative

Mayor Rick Eberlin of Grafton, Illinois pilots a boat full of media during a press tour of flooded areas of his city last year.

Floods cost 11 Mississippi-River states $6.2 billion last year, according to a group of mayors representing cities and towns along the river.

The Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative (MRCTI) released the finding and more in meetings with federal officials this week in Washington, D.C. There, they are, once again, pushing infrastructure proposals to improve resiliency along the Mississippi River from the “acute shocks and chronic stresses” the region has sustained.

Flooding along the river was worst last year in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, MRCTI said, with each state incurring flood-related costs of $1 billion-$2 billion.

Last year, Grafton, Illinois lost 80 percent of its economy because of flooding. Vidalia, Louisiana saw 270 consecutive days of flooding, a new national record, MRCTI said.
[pullquote-1] “There is definitely an upward trend we can chart over the last few years,” said Bob Gallagher, mayor of Bettendorf, Iowa.“The spatial scale and duration of the 2019 Central U.S. flooding set many records. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it’s plausible to expect this trend to be more frequent with damaging riverine and urban floods to continue.”

The flooding trend is expect to continue this year. While the National Weather Service said last week the 2020 spring flood season is expected to be less severe than last year’s, flooding is expected, particularly in the upper and mid-Mississippi Valley.

“This all begs the question of what we’re doing to address these issues and mitigate our seemingly mounting risk,” said Sharon Weston Broome, mayor of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.“Meeting these challenges is part of the reason for the MRCTI visit to Washington, DC.”

Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative

Clarksville, Missouri used temporary flood structures to save their downtown as the Mississippi River moved up Main Street last year.

MRCTI officials met with key officials and pushed proposals that would cost $6.85 billion but would mitigate “mounting climate risk,” create more than 128,000 jobs, and generate more than $20.5 billion in economy activity. The money would be spent on improvements to the built and natural environments to protect cities along the river.

Memphis will soon embark upon such an improvement project at the Mid-South Fairgrounds and in the Belt Line neighborhood. But these improvements are thanks not to feds but to private funds and foundations.

Memphis and New Orleans each won money for projects through the very first Environmental Impact Bond Challenge from capital firm Quantified Ventures, the McKnight Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

“Memphis will focus its Environmental Impact Bond on financing a suite of green infrastructure projects concentrated in the Fairgrounds and Beltline neighborhoods to reduce local flooding, improve water quality, provide community green space, and revitalize underutilized areas,” according to a MRCTI news release.

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New Fund Would Help Mitigate Disasters Along Mississippi River

Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative

Mayor Rick Eberlin of Grafton, Illinois pilots a boat full of media during a press tour of flooded areas of his city.

This year has been the longest and largest flood season for the entire 31-state Mississippi River Basin, and leaders there want new tools to help them mitigate flood disasters and more.

Mayors in the Mississippi River Valley estimate disaster-related losses in their cities are above $2 billion. The flooding, for example, has damaged homes, temporarily displaced families, and delayed farmers’ planting at record levels, according to the Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative (MRCTI).

Check out MRCTI’s full report on flooding here:
[pdf-1]
Cities along the river also need to be prepared for wildfires, earthquakes, storm surge, chemical spills, and more, the group said Wednesday.

Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative

Satellite image shows the Mississippi River swelling below Memphis.

The group says it needs access to funds to allow their cities to clean up disasters and help prevent them in the future. A new bill introduced Wednesday could give it to them. The Resilience Revolving Loan Fund (RRF) Act was filed by U.S. Reps. Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) and Rodney Davis (R-Illinois).

“From the drought of 2012 to the excessive heatwave that gripped our area last week, Iowa has seen several multi-century events stack up and worsen over the past few years,” said Mayor Frank Klipsch of Davenport, Iowa. “We need solutions to these impacts that are different than the same old conventional approach — we need real innovation. The RRF provides a new tool to help us prepare.”
Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative

Clarksville, Missouri uses temporary flood structures to save their downtown as the Mississippi River moves up Main Street.

Red Wing, Minnesota Mayor Sean Dowse called the fund “good fiscal policy.” He said taxpayers get a $6 return for every $1 invested in disaster-resilience programs and mitigation efforts.

Greenville, Mississippi Mayor Errick Simmons said the “Delta has been flood-fighting nonstop for nearly nine months.”

“If we are going to preserve and enhance our economy, we will need to achieve real resilience,” Simmons said. “Some of the most vulnerable communities to climate risk are in the South. Alleviating vulnerability means no longer approaching solutions just inside our backyard, but at regional and corridor scale.”

Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative

Satellite image shows the Mississippi River swelling near St. Louis.

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Mayors’ Group Focuses On Economic Impact of Mississippi River

Mayors from cities along the Mississippi River have always known it to be mighty, but they didn’t know just how strong it was until last week.

Yes, the river pumps millions of gallons of water past its cities every day, but the mayors found that it also pumps billions of dollars into them each year. The group had those dollars counted, and the figure was “significantly higher than anticipated.”

The river generates $405 billion in revenues each year and supports 1.3 million jobs, according to new numbers released last week by the Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative (MRCTI). That’s a group of 68 mayors from towns and cities in 10 states along the Mississippi River. The group is co-chaired by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton. 

“The Mississippi is much mightier than even we realized,” said Roy Buol, MRCTI co-chair and mayor of Dubuque, Iowa. “We must now move forward strategically and purposefully to protect this national resource and economic force.”

 Counting the dollars and jobs will help the group of mayors in their efforts to bring national attention back to the Mississippi River, which the group calls “America’s most critical natural asset.” They’ll use the information as ammunition to lobby for the river. 

“If there’s a group of people in the world that get things done, it’s mayors,” said John Dickert, mayor of Racine, Wisconsin. “With almost 200 cities representing over 20 million people, we are a force that will be recognized in state capitals and in Washington, D.C., as advocates for this tremendous resource.” 

 Businesses and governments depend on the river for tourism, agriculture, and manufacturing, the top three industries for jobs along the Mississippi. More than 20 million citizens depend on the river as a source of drinking water, according to the MRCTI, withdrawing about 633 million gallons of water per day.  

All of these, the mayors said, depend on clean water. So, water quality is one of the group’s major areas of focus. The MRCTI will work with states to implement clean water goals and work with agriculture groups to incentivize sustainable farming practices. 

The Mississippi River Valley is the largest food-producing zone on the planet, according to St. Paul, Minnesota, Mayor Christopher Coleman. The valley will likely be tapped to produce even more food, he said, as the United States Department of Agriculture predicts farmers will need to produce more food in the next 35 years than they have in the last 10,000 years. 

But the “great unknown” in that request, Coleman said, is climate change. Over the last few years, he said, the change is responsible for historic flood events, a massive drought in 2012, Hurricane Katrina, and Hurricane Issac.   

He compared the Mississippi to other food-producing river valleys like the Amazon, Danube, and the Rhine. But if climate change impedes global food production, “the gap will likely fall on the Mississippi River.”

A delegation from the MRCTI will travel to Paris in December to attend the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and, so far, Wharton is slated to go. The group will discuss sustainable agriculture practices with those in the other food-producing river valleys. 

“A dramatic increase in agricultural output in our river valley using unsustainable practices could devastate our region and the natural assets we depend upon,” Coleman said.