Just days after Garvin Brook flooded onto the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge. - USFWS photo by Mary Stefanski, August 2007.

Crews from Living Lands and Waters and Winona Excavating work to pull a camper across Garvin Brook. - USFWS photo by Mary Stefanski, November 2007.

Winona Excavating works to pull a semi-container from Garvin Brook. - USFWS photo by Mary Stefanski, November 2007.

One more dumpster full! Debris removed by the Winona Work Force on Garvin Brook. - USFWS photo by Brian Pember, May 2008.

On August 18, 2007, in one 24 hour period, more than 15 inches of rain fell on the steep blufflands surrounding the Upper Mississippi River in southeast Minnesota and western Wisconsin. The torrential rains caused mud slides and forced placid trout streams to swell beyond their banks. The devastation caused by flooding to people and wildlife was centralized but extreme, making national headlines across the country.

The City of Rushford, population 1,600, was jolted awake by sirens at 2 a.m. to find over 200 homes filling with water to a depth of five feet. The entire business district was lost as well. Closer to the Mississippi River, the placid Garvin Brook had torn-out a railroad bridge, flooded hundreds of homes, and destroyed acres of floodplain forest.

Garvin Brook is a haven for brown trout, flowing from high in the bluff country to a backwater channel of the Mississippi River. During the flood, Garvin swelled to 100 feet wide and 20 feet deep as it carved a path through homes, backyards, and finally the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge (Refuge) in Winona, MN.

Along the way, Garvin Brook picked up thousands of pieces of personal belongs; toys, gas cans, furniture, tires, photographs, cars, campers, boats and even a storage container made from a semi-trailer. All these items were dumped from the brook on the Refuge at a bend in the river which had become a giant log jam made from 100 year old cottonwood trees. The devastation was unimaginable.

Because of the silt and mud left behind, clean-up attempts on the Refuge were postponed until freezing weather made access possible. Lack of funding forced the Refuge staff to think creatively to get the clean-up efforts underway. The first step was to get a committment from Chad Pregracke, founder of Living Lands and Waters (LLW). Chad and two crew members came to the Refuge to clean-up what the refuge could not.  The crew from LLW arrived on the Refuge on November 27 and worked through December 1, 2007 when a snow storm forced them to abandon the effort. The LLW crew took on the task of removing three cars, one camper and a semi-container from the brook and floodplain.

Chad used his dynamic personality and endless contacts to mobilize equipment necessary to move large pieces of debris. From an excavator, to a towing-company, to a barge fleeting crew, he organized everything needed to get the job done.

The shining moment for all interested by-standers from the tiny community of Minnesota City was when the semi-container was finally out of the water. The container had been a safe storage facility for all the belongings of a 25-year old student who had gone to Colorado to be a nanny.  Jessica Neyers was on site the day Chad and crew pulled her storage container from the stream. As water poured from the open doors, photos of her trip to Hawaii came floating out, water logged and covered with ice.

When spring weather finally allowed, a volunteer clean-up was organized. Over 30 volunteers showed up on the cold, windy spring day to help remove trash from the flooded area. A dumpster was provided by the Winona County Environmental Services agency.

Later, refuge staff and the Winona County Work Force crew joined forces to continue the cleanup. For two days, the volunteer staff from the Work Force dug washing machines out of the sand, cut refrigerators out of the log jams and hauled enough debris out of the river bottoms to fill two 30-yard dumpsters.

Unfortunately, these efforts have only begun to remove the non-bio-degradable items from the floodplain. More cleanup is needed as well as removal of the log-jams and restoration of the stream banks.