What started out as one guy with a jon boat picking up trash along the Mississippi in his hometown has since evolved into one of the largest, best known, most inspirational organizations in the country. In this episode, Educational Facilitator Mike Coyne-Logan describes how Living Lands & Waters (LLW) grew from the hands and mind of Chad Pregracke to the purpose-driven organization it is today. We talk about LLW’s core mission and how it has evolved over time from clean ups to also include summer camps, planting trees, and teaching about conservation and stewardship. Clean ups remain their primary purpose, though, and they run them across the Midwest on rivers large and small, even a couple of lakes. Mike talks about the logistics required to arrange clean-ups, some of the unique items they’ve found, and how they managed to pull 52 cars out of the rivers around Pittsburgh. We talk about where all that trash comes from, what they do with it after it has been collected, and what we can each do as individuals to reduce the impact of trash in our rivers.
Show Notes
Support the Show
If you are enjoying the podcast, please consider showing your support by making a one-time contribution or by supporting as a regular contributor through Patreon. Every dollar you contribute makes it possible for me to continue sharing stories about America’s Greatest River.
Don’t want to deal with Patreon? No worries. You can show some love by buying me a coffee (which I drink a lot of!). Just click on the link below.
Transcript
Mon, Jan 13, 2025 8:28AM • 1:03:58
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Plastic pollution, Living Lands and Waters, river cleanups, conservation classrooms, volunteer participation, Mississippi River, Chad Pregracke, tree planting, invasive species removal, educational outreach, recycling efforts, community engagement, river stewardship, environmental awareness, river restoration.
SPEAKERS
Mike Coyne Logan, Dean Klinkenberg
Mike Coyne Logan 00:00
When you talk about plastic pollution to kids, and you just talk to them and put out, they might take some of that in. If they come out to a barge and see a barge full of all this waste that you’ve collected, you then talk about it, and then you do a cleanup with them, where they’re out there getting their hands on it. I mean, you can just see it in their eyes and how they respond. It registers on another level. It makes them more conscious and aware of their personal decisions on a daily basis. And that’s that’s really cool.
Dean Klinkenberg 00:55
Welcome to the Mississippi Valley traveler Podcast. I’m Dean Klinkenberg, and I’ve been exploring the deep history and rich culture of the people and places along America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, since 2007. Join me as I go deep into the characters and places along the river, and occasionally wander into other stories from the Midwest and other rivers. Read the episode show notes and get more information on the Mississippi at MississippiValleyTraveler.com. Let’s get going. Welcome to Episode 54 of the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. And welcome to 2025 I hope you got a relaxing break at the end of the year and some fresh energy to get going here in 2025, ready to get back out on the river as soon as the weather allows us to do so. And if you’re hardier than maybe I am, maybe you’ve already been out already this year. So we’re kicking off 2025 with an interview with Mike Coyne Logan from Living Lands and Waters. And if you’ve been anywhere around the Mississippi River the past 10 plus years, you probably know a lot about or you’ve heard a lot about this organization already. They are the premier river cleanup group, and they’ve inspired so many other folks to create organizations similar to theirs in their hometowns. We’ve got a couple of others here in the St Louis area in Missouri, so you probably know a little bit about their work. But in this, in this interview with Mike, we’re going to go a little bit deeper. We’re going to talk about how this organization went from one guy, Chad Pregracke, with a jon boat picking up trash in his neighborhoods around the Quad Cities, how it grew from that to the big organization that it is today. So you want to stick around to hear how that organization grew the vision that drove it all. And while they’re known for their cleanups, in particular, they have grown far beyond just doing cleanups, and these days, they also have conservation classrooms. They plant trees and have trees that give away to others to plant. They host summer camps, but probably the conservation and stewardship component of their of their mission have grown more than anything else since they were founded. So in this episode, we talked some about the history of the cleanups as well some of the logistics that go into pulling off events like these. It’s very complicated in some places, it takes a lot of planning to make this work, and Mike describes some of what goes into that. We of course, have to touch on some of the odd or unusual things that they found during these cleanups. Mike tells us a little bit about this past summer, when they managed to arrange to extract over 50 cars from the rivers around Pittsburgh, from the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in the Pittsburgh area. We talk a little bit about the number of volunteers that really help drive these cleanups, and the numbers are in the 1000s, and that’s a key part of this really, you know, this organization, the mission, is so inspiring that it gives all of us an excuse to do something good, and that we probably need a lot more organizations that do just that. So it’s an entertaining and far ranging discussion about the Living Lands and Waters. I hope you’ll stick around and and listen to the whole interview, because Mike’s got a lot of interesting things to say, including a couple of tips on what we can do as individuals to reduce the need for organizations like Living Lands and Waters to spend so much time out there picking up our trash. One quick announcement. I’m going to try to do this more often this year, but I have some presentations set up for this year, and I want you to know about those .Coming up on Saturday, January 18, just a couple days after this episode releases, I’ll be at the Hayner Public Library in Alton, Illinois, at the Genealogy and Local History branch downtown to talk about the past and future of our river towns with a little bit of a look at the economic history of our communities and what. You might be able to do to turn the fortunes of some of the places along the river that we love that but that are having a hard time of it. I’ll have a few ideas on some things we might be able to do to bend the curve. As always, thanks to those of you who show me some love through Patreon, for as little as $1 a month, you can join the community, and you can get early access to these episodes, and you get to just make me feel good. And hey, you know, $1 a month, I’m pretty cheap. It doesn’t take that much to make me feel good. If you’re not into the Patreon thing, then go to my website and you can buy me a coffee there. So go to MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast, and from there, you can figure out, or you’ll see a link to how to buy me a coffee at that same link, MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast. You’ll find a list of all of the previous episodes, all 53 previous episodes, as well as the show notes for each of those episodes. So go back and indulge binge listen and enjoy some history and culture from the Mississippi Valley. And now on with the interview. Mike Coyne Logan began as a volunteer with Living Lands and Waters in 2005 and was asked to join the crew in 2007. He graduated from Northern Illinois University in 2000 with a degree in History and Teaching, and he currently lives on their fleet of barges on and off for seven to eight months out of the year. His role, besides general barge work, cleanups and senior programs manager is acting as one of the educators on Living Lands and Waters’ floating classroom barge. He also does a lot of educational outreach in the local community during the winter months and helps conduct educational summer camps locally as well. Mike is excited for his 18th year on the crew, and a little riparian birdie told me that he also likes cookies, so maybe we can get an address and you can mail him some. Mike, thank you so much for joining the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. T
Mike Coyne Logan 07:15
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Dean.
Dean Klinkenberg 07:17
Well, it’s really a pleasure to be with you today. You’re the first guest of 2025 so we get to welcome in the new year and dream ahead a little bit about the season to come as we’re sort of locked in the middle of a snow and ice right now.
Mike Coyne Logan 07:30
Yes, yeah, no, for sure, yeah, yeah.
Dean Klinkenberg 07:32
I don’t know about how it is for you, but we got one of our biggest storms in a couple decades here in St Louis, which isn’t saying much for other parts of the country, but for us, it was pretty crippling.
Mike Coyne Logan 07:41
Yeah, we got lucky. We missed that. It’s funny, because we’re North too.
Dean Klinkenberg 07:45
So well, why don’t we start with just kind of the background on Living Lands and Waters. I imagine all the folks listening to this podcast are already kind of familiar with Living Lands and Waters, but why don’t we just kind of go through, kind of some of the origin story, how it began, what the founding mission really was for this organization.
Mike Coyne Logan 08:03
Yeah. So the mission was started by my friend and boss, Chad Pregracke, who grew up right on the Mississippi River, just outside of the Quad Cities or East Moline, Illinois. So, you know, literally, the river was his backyard. He spent a lot of time just playing, working, fishing on the river, and one of the jobs he did in the summers in high school and college with his older brother, was working as a commercial shell diver, essentially, just, you know, with a go kart engine, and a garden hose and in a weight belt and in some gear, you know, wetsuit, he would go to the bottom and feel around. And a lot of it is, you know, he talks about a lot of is just, you know, using your other senses, because your vision is not very good down there, but how those were intensified and and it was, it was another way to to realize, you know, he always talks about how you could tell it’s alive, though it was the sounds, you know, like, you know, catfish kind of sound like bullfrogs, the clicking of Buffalo and Just, you know, but you could feel the life down there too as you collect these shells. And he would camp on islands to save money up and down the river with his brother. And it was all his time, just growing up, working on the river. He he noticed all the trash in these more remote spaces that you may may see traveling by, but not on the level or magnitude, or you may not get out to these other places that you know, unless you have a boat and you’re cruise around and stopping these different places, just how much stuff had accumulated over the years in these different locations. So from there, he was like, I want to do something about this. And he started reach out to officials in the state, asking for funding. They all turned down for a variety of different reasons, you know. But overall, I kind of felt, since he was so young, you know, high school student at the time, to take on this huge task and clean up the Mississippi River, you know, he didn’t get he you know, some were interested. Some said they didn’t have the money. But, you know, there’s all these different reasons. But he also felt, just because he was so young, that going this huge task. So, you know, could have given up there. Fast forward, he’s in college. His buddies had a NASCAR race on TV. Noticed, you know, that that on the cars and the drivers, you know, suits, had all these sponsors, you know. And he thought, well, maybe I’ll get a sponsor. And he, he took that, he ran with it. Started reaching out to different companies locally. Started on the phone book with A reach out to coming in as Alcaa. Now it’s Arconic. I think it changed Apollo. But anyways, he went in, pitched this idea, along with into a lot of other companies, but arconic was the only one that kind of said, we’ll see we can do. Got back to him and gave him that first set of grant funding, which was $8,400. it was enough money for him to go out on his own, jon boat skiff and clean up trash that first year by himself. And it was crazy. And, you know, like, at one point he was staging trash in his parents backyard. They weren’t really thrilled about that, but also spurred the idea. Like one of the things that took so long is, how do I get rid of all this stuff, and how do it in a efficient, timely manner. And he got the idea, I think, from a garbage boat in New York that they couldn’t find a spot. Yeah, I can’t remember. Anyways, he’s like, that’s just visually, that’s it’s remembering. It’s powerful. He thought, if I got barges, I could store this stuff. It brings attention to the volume of stuff that’s out there. And, you know, that was what he had downline. But it wasn’t until he got some, you know, first he got some newspaper attention, local newspaper attention, and then from that to the AP, you know, for the local newspaper girl. AP, got wind of this story, this young guy cleaning up the Mississippi River and and it brought more attention and kind of validated what he was doing his mission and made people more aware of it, and from there, it’s just, it’s been a lot of obstacles, a lot of things he’s overcome, but it’s come a long way since his really, his humble, grassroots beginnings of just one guy in one boat with a $8,400 grant. So.
Dean Klinkenberg 11:54
Wow. So how much do you know about that first cleanup effort he did on his own? Like, where was he picking up the trash? And what did he find.
Mike Coyne Logan 12:02
I mean, you know anything and everything you know, just tires, barrels you know, from from bottles to, you know, just anything and everything you think, anything, anything you think of that is in your home or would be in a landfill you’re fighting in the rivers and just, I know that it was just tough, you know, it’s him by himself, and you’re also trying to do the work, but then fundraise and keep the thing going, you know. And I think he had to take out loans of his own to keep this, you know, he’s so passionate about he was doing it was and just to build legitimacy and get this thing built and keep it and sustain it. So I know it was tough. I know it was a lot of work, and sometimes it’s good to remind yourself of just all the people like, how far it’s come and how good we have it, especially for a nonprofit, and what it’s built into since Chad first started.
Dean Klinkenberg 12:56
Right. This remarkable to me, too, like so he kind of knew from the beginning that he this wasn’t just going to be a one time cleanup, right? That he wanted to basically create an organization that would do this almost year round across the country. Like he had a vision from the beginning of something much bigger than just picking up trash once or twice in his in his backyard, basically.
Mike Coyne Logan 13:18
Yeah, I think his vision was, his vision is always expanding. I mean, Chad’s the guy with a million ideas that not only has those ideas, but tries to follow through on everyone that he has. So the rest of us are just trying to keep up with him. And you know, just that, that courage and that passion, that drive, that it’s just, it’s cool to see someone that has something that’s that’s doing something to help, help out the world we live in is it’s impressive and it’s inspiring, and it’s like I said, the rest of us are all just trying to keep up with him.
Dean Klinkenberg 13:47
Yeah, that’s what. That’s awesome. Sorry. So what year was that that he did that first cleanup?
Mike Coyne Logan 13:53
So initially it was started. The organization started in 1997.
Dean Klinkenberg 13:58
’97, alright, so by the time you joined some eight years later, what was it like at that point in time? What was Living Lands and Waters like when you joined?
Mike Coyne Logan 14:07
So there was a there was a there was a crew of people, about six or seven of us. We had a smaller, 400 power, 400 horsepower tow boat and four barges. A house barge was an old headquarters that was kind of retrofitted, and you kind of hope stuff worked, you know, like you’d have to get propane tanks to run, like our stove, or just our heat in the colder months, we had a, we had a water tank that hold about 1300 gallons of water. But that runs out pretty quick when you’re living with seven or eight people, um, opposed to now, we have like a 35,000 gallon tank. So little thing, like, little nuance, and then, like, there was, like, one, like, window air unit. So like, imagine June or July, and we’d share rooms with, you know, two other guys, and it was fine, and there was one bathroom, and it it was fine, but it wasn’t the Ritz. Let’s just say that. It was, like, very bare bones, nice, but, man, a lot of things that I hope you go out there and be like, I hope everything is working, because after a long day of just cleaning stuff out of the river. Like, is the heater? Is the hot water heater going to heat? Is the generator, you know, is it? Is it going to have issues, you know, from this little tow boat that would run to the house, or we’d have to run another just all these little things are like, getting propane and putting 100 gallon propane tank in a boat to go get it filled and carry it sometimes over riffraff, I could go on and on, but Right? Really, really appreciate the accommodations we have now compared. And like I said, wasn’t terrible, and it was fine, but man, is a lot nicer what we the digs we have now, and we’re very grateful for that.
Dean Klinkenberg 16:00
It wasn’t like, at the end of the day you got to retreat to a luxury suite on the American Queen, you know, yeah,
Mike Coyne Logan 16:07
Yeah, no, exactly, no. It wasn’t fun. No, don’t get wrong. It was fine. It was it was good. But there was, like, I said there’s sometimes you’re like, man, I hope stuff works. You know, like in the summer, you don’t sleep in the living room because that’s where the AC was, right, window unit, which is still, you know, hey, people had it a lot worse. So anyways, yeah, it was, it was just, it’s a lot different, and things have come a long way since then.
Dean Klinkenberg 16:32
So when people ask you today, you know what the fundamental mission or purpose of Living Lands and Waters is, like how do you respond to that?
Mike Coyne Logan 16:42
Our main mission is obviously cleaning up rivers, clean up trash, creating awareness of this issue and the problems that surround this river pollution, particularly like plastic pollution, and then also, you know, the awareness of, you know, protecting and restoring not only our rivers, and educating about people about the importance of rivers, but the watersheds of those rivers as well. Because it really starts there, right? It’s not just what’s in the river. It starts with how we manage the land around it, too, and and doing different events and activities besides river cleanups that kind of go right along with that mission.
Dean Klinkenberg 17:20
So alright, so then let’s kind of go through just last year a little bit so from this one cleanup in 1997 that Chad did with an $8,400 grant and and by himself. What, what did Living Lands and Waters do in 2024?
Mike Coyne Logan 17:37
How? How long is the podcast?
Dean Klinkenberg 17:42
How many cleanups? Like, what else did you do?
Mike Coyne Logan 17:46
Well, like, so on average we, on an average year, we pull about 500,000 pounds of trash. This year, and we track it all through in Excel like, every barrel, every tire, every bag, and we put in a calculator with an average weight, so it’s not BS numbers. And I actually do all that. And then I think this year, we’re under, we’re like 400 it was just under 500,000 but 400 you know, 50s between four I’d have to look, I’d have to look, look up. I don’t have the number off the top of my head. But anyways, it’s like 450 plus, or something, 450,000 plus. And one of the highlights this year is in Pittsburgh, and we’ve done this in the past, but we have an excavator now donate to one of our sponsor’s John Deere, and with the help of like, a police dive team, the Hamilton County rescue team in Pittsburgh, we removed about over 50 cars with that excavator. So that was one of the highlights amongst that. It’s just all the other cleanups we do with different volunteers over, you know, 1000 volunteers we work with on about nine, nine rivers and a couple other lakes, two other lakes. So it’s a lot of traveling, you know, from the Ohio River, the Tennessee River, the Illinois River, the Rock River, the Tennessee River. I’m gonna miss some rivers here this year anyways, but we’ve worked in total since he started, about 29 rivers. This year I believe it was like nine and a couple of lakes. So that. And one of the cool things we start our year out with the cleanup efforts, is with college students. You know, over 100 college students for the first three weeks in Memphis. It’s our alternate spring break program, which I love. And like I said, we’re all ready to get outside. And you feel the energy of these college students that come down in a location of backwater channel of Mississippi River, and just most of it being primarily plastic and bag waste, a lot of tires as well. And anything like I said, anything everything you think about, just from that, those three weeks, we moved over 100,000 pounds worth of trash. Do a lot of work on the Ohio, starting just above Cincinnati and working down to around Louisville. Yeah, and then a lot of, and that’s with our barges and a lot of stuff we do. And then, like I said, the Pittsburgh event. So we have an excavator barge. We have two tow boats now, one, we still have the four horsepower tow boat. That separated and moved up just to Pittsburgh by itself, while the other fleet of barges remain on the, you know, Ohio, lower part of the Ohio doing work, not only doing cleanups with a lot of our sponsors, employees, community members, students that come on to our floating classrooms. We do workshops with those students, and that’s where our base operation so. And then, on top of all that, we just we have one floating classroom that is dedicated to conservation efforts learn about the ecological importance of the river. We have another classroom barge that worked in the Quad Cities and in St Louis, and this barge is dedicated to introducing students to different careers on the river. It’s on its own and not, you know, from a conservation officer to a biologist to fish and wildlife to working on barges, you know, working at a grain elevator, loading grain, and just all these different careers a lot of kids might not be aware of that are connected to the river, you know? So, so that then we had our million trees projects where we gave away over 170,000 trees. We work with schools to one of the biggest parts is keeping these trees alive. They’re little saplings, so we have to wrap them, sometimes individually, and that takes a lot of help. You know, we don’t have the manpower as a staff, so we need community members, sponsor volunteers, schools. We go into schools, and school kids will help wrap these trees. Rap their wet their roots in newspaper, put them in plastic bags and storm and reefer trailers. And those get distributed throughout the US, and they’re mostly oak trees. Then we have, like, invasive species removal programs that we do, probably did, at least, you know, between six and a dozen of those. And then, and then we do summer camps too. For kids that you know, that may you know, these are these programs, like the Boys and Girls Club, kids who wouldn’t get out just to connect them with the river, we do some of those programs as well. So and then this time of year, a lot of planning, we do a lot of outreach, a lot of repairs. So that’s, that’s kind of it, and that’s long, but that’s kind of, it may not sound like, but a summarized version of everything we did.
Dean Klinkenberg 22:44
Well, that sounds like a lot.
Mike Coyne Logan 22:47
There’s only, there’s only 13 of us and 10 crew members, and, you know, three, three office staff. So it’s a it’s a lot, you know it is, but we get a lot of good help and support too.
Dean Klinkenberg 22:58
So about how many volunteers did you work with in 2024?
Mike Coyne Logan 23:02
We work with, off the top, I know in cleanups, we work with over 1000 I want to say, like about 12, 1300 and then with our trees program, we probably work with another, I’d say easily, 1500 to 2000 but we work with a lot of, I mean, over the years, I think we work with just from cleanups, over 130,000 volunteers, and that’s one of the really cool parts. And in a big, a big reason, we’re able to do what we can do and create more. And that’s the best way, I think, create awareness, right? Is get people out there to help us do the work we do.
Dean Klinkenberg 23:40
Right. That’s how you build stewards, right? Is that that hands on work, getting people out there and feeling that, you know, that hands on connection to the to the river’s world.
Mike Coyne Logan 23:49
Exactly. And I’ll tell you what we do workshops, we bring students on, and we do a lot of hands on lab activities, from water testing to, you know, games involving like how invasive species can wreak havoc in an ecosystem and watershed models, and it’s a lot of hands on stuff, but the biggest thing that you see, that it really you know, just from teaching, just seeing it really register, is when you talk about plastic pollution to kids, And you just talk to them and put out. They might take some of that in. If they come out to a barge and see a barge full of all this waste that you’ve collected, you then talk about it, and then you do a cleanup with them, where they’re out there getting their hands on it, it registers. I mean, you can just see it in their eyes and how they respond. It registers on another level. It makes them more conscious and aware of their personal decisions on a daily basis. And that’s that’s really cool to see.
Dean Klinkenberg 24:49
Yeah, absolutely, to see that light go on.
Mike Coyne Logan 24:52
yeah, because you’re not, you’re walking about it, you’re not just talking about it, you know?
Dean Klinkenberg 25:00
So the trees program, you’re planting trees in the floodplain, forests, is that right train to replenish some of the floodplain forests.
Mike Coyne Logan 25:10
That’s a part of it. Yeah, that’s how the mission started. You know, we work with different agencies to find, you know, good spots to plant those trees on the when we can near the river, but a lot of it is just, we get the trees and then we give away to people that need them, or one, you know, they have the space sponsors and employees, you know, people doing from all types of groups, from school groups to to, you know, maybe someone that’s doing some restoration work along a river, and they want these trees to be, you know, planted there. So sometimes we actually do the planting with bigger trees. But from our tree program, these are all our one to two foot saplings we’re just getting out to people to plant. So it’s a little bit of both, but that’s but the majority of it is these smaller saplings that we distribute. And we chose an oak because pound for pound, they support the most life of any tree in North America. And a lot of these trees early on were just, you know, harvest, especially ones that are near the river, you know, for hardwood, exactly makes sense.
Dean Klinkenberg 26:15
So do you already have the whole calendar for 2025 mapped out?
Mike Coyne Logan 26:20
No, we’re working on it.
Dean Klinkenberg 26:23
I was wondering how far in advance you have to plan for some of the for this work.
Mike Coyne Logan 26:27
It’s a lot, I mean, a lot of is in advance. And then you just, you get your major things you know you got to do, and then it’s like, once you get those set, okay, now we can start filling these other dates. And we’re literally, that’s what we’re a lot of what we’re doing right now, all of us, I mean, like spring break. Callie runs our spring break program. It’s, it’s a lot of planning. When you got students from a bunch of universities coming in and get them housing and figuring out catering, and then we get that big a group, we’ve got five work boats, but then we hire out friends that have bigger work boats, because we don’t have enough just to get kids out to the different locations in this backwater channel in Mississippi. To make it more efficient, not only do you need the boats to take, you know, the kids to locations, but then you have to have garbage boats from all the trash they get to fill and then take it back, unload and sort on our barges, that stuff. So, you know, it’s a lot, and when you’re communicating with anyways, you could, you know, communicate different kids, different groups, getting deposits, getting their hotels set up, and lodging and and all that stuff.
Dean Klinkenberg 27:42
Hey, Dean Klinkenberg here, interrupting myself, just wanted to remind you that if you’d like to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that is set in places along the Mississippi. My newest book The Wild Mississippi, goes deep into the world of Old Man River. Learn about the varied and complex ecosystem supported by the Mississippi, the plant and animal life that depends on them. And where you can go to experience it all. Find any of these wherever books are sold. So just for like, a regular cleanup, like, if you’re going back to Pittsburgh and you’re going to do a cleanup there, what are like, what are some of the details, the practical steps you have to go through before you begin to pick up that first piece of trash?
Mike Coyne Logan 28:37
Well, so a lot of it is just like having friends that do what we do on a smaller scale. And like, for example, we have a Evan Ramsey is a guy that works for a couple groups, the Allegheny CleanWays, and also the Tireless Project already did in the past and and the River Keepers, and he lives in that area, so he made us aware. We went up there and scouted. So we actually flew in last winter, and with his help in his boat, we had to scout. We know we had a sponsor. Didn’t want us to do work in there, but we also don’t want to step on his toes and like, what do we need? As far as you know, helping, he’s like, Hey, I know these cars. You got an excavator. And instead of bringing all our stuff up there, we brought that excavator to do that work, because he had known and then then it’s also, then coordinating. We had developed this relationship with a dive team in Cincinnati, and they were just really easy to work with. And they were, they’re all about like, well, we can do some training up there and help you guys. And we’ve done this before. We’re more aware of the work to because, you know, then you have the is it stolen? Is there maybe a body potentially in these cars? So you always have to contact authorities pulling those cars out, and then they have the equipment. And we recently just. Is in the divers, so they’ll market, and then then we know where to grab with our excavator to pull that stuff out. So.
Dean Klinkenberg 30:10
So I have to ask, and like, were there any bodies?
Mike Coyne Logan 30:13
No, not from the cars that we pulled, but other other things. It’s like, sometimes people make us aware. Like in Memphis, it was a sponsor from a greenovator, like, Hey, you have to check this spot out in this backwater channel. And we went down there with a few boats. And we got down there, we’re like, holy, you know what? This is crazy. I mean literally miles and miles of like float in this backwater channel. It just floating plastic bottles and trash and Dean, I’m not kidding you, in the years we worked there, we pulled over, you know, just a million pounds in this area, and it’s just litter that comes in from the city in a creek that drains about 50% of the watershed. And it’s so much better. But, you know, like anything, everything comes every every year. So that’s the importance, too, of like doing these workshops. You know, you can, you can be reactive to these problems. But the cool thing with these workshops is, you know, creating future stewards, making them understand the problem and what they can do on a day to day basis, like reducing single use plastics, keeping where you live, clean. 80% of the trash we find is just litter on community streets that eventually works its way into our rivers. So those are, you know, you don’t have to, you know, it’s maybe not as sexy as coming out in on the river, but those things are important, you know, the daily decisions we make.
Dean Klinkenberg 31:39
Yeah, I think that’s probably one of the you know this better than me, I I’m sure, but I think probably one of the common misconceptions is that all this trash, it’s just people throwing their trash in the river. That’s how it got there. But really, most of it washes into the rivers from other places. As I understand it.
Mike Coyne Logan 31:57
it is, it is in in a like plastics is definitely, that’s the one thing I try to preach to people, just the amount of prevalence of plastics in our society is just we need to, like, really look at that and try to think of alternatives. Or if we do create, like, closed loop systems where, because I believe only, like, 10% of plastics produced are actually recycled, you know, making it more convenient, making a better system getting away for some of these single use plastics. I just read something today, there’s two garbage trucks worth worth of plastic to enter the oceans every minute, every minute. Two garbage trucks, and it’s having, you know, dire consequences for in 90% start it comes from our rivers, you know, inland waterways, and oceans from there, so and then again, that 80% of that starts is just litter in our neighborhood. So just, you know, those connections.
Dean Klinkenberg 32:57
So how do you decide where to go for a cleanup?
Mike Coyne Logan 33:03
Okay, yeah, so, so for cleanups, we some is like, hey, a sponsor is like, Can we do a cleanup here? Like, um, maybe let us check because you got volunteers for two or three hours, right? You don’t want to spend it just floating around looking for stuff. And, you know, on the Mississippi that’s a broad flood plain, or there’s islands down in your neck of the woods, St Louis or Grafton, you’ve got to go out and scout, and then maybe go in 200 yards where stuff gets flooded. You know, it’s not always right near the shoreline, or find those locations. And then, can you get a can you get a boat in there? Maybe it’s too shallow, maybe you got to do it from the land or approach a different way. So there’s a lot of prep work to figuring out how we can maximize these people’s time and not just waste them just, oh, we got two bags. We waste our time just looking for stuff. You got to do the prep work to find where’s the best, safest place to take these people to get the most bang out of their buck.
Dean Klinkenberg 33:58
Are you? Are you sticking mostly to the Midwest, middle of the country?
Mike Coyne Logan 34:03
For the most part, we’ve worked all the way out east on the Delaware, the East River, the Potomac, Anacostia, all the way to Pittsburgh on the Ohio, up to the Allegheny and Monongahela. I always butchered the pronunciation the other one. But and then West, we’ve worked as far west is the Missouri, the Cedar River, yeah. So mostly, mostly the Midwest, we haven’t got too far west when it comes to rivers. Like I said, the farthest is the Missouri, the Cedar and some other smaller rivers west.
Dean Klinkenberg 34:40
So, yeah, I was joking before about, like, whether or not you found any bodies in the cars you pulled out. But I remember, like, 10 plus years ago, I was on the barge for an event, and I remember there’s a display on there showing off some of the more unusual items that you’ve pulled from the from these cleanups. Can you just kind of run through some of the more interesting things you found?
Mike Coyne Logan 35:00
Yeah. So the first one always like talk about is the Civil War mortar shell found on the Ohio River in Paducah, Kentucky. And so we found this. Some volunteer found the shell. It was all rusted and like a, you know, a projectile looked like a about the size, it looked like a giant bullet, the size of about a nerf football. And not knowing, not being a bomb expert, and just a dumb garbage man, I put it in a milk crate, and, you know, drove back. It’s just bounced around in that milk crate. He left it, kept it there, and then I’ll never forget, he was like, Hey, can I get that back? I go, Yeah, you can have that. It’s you found it. You know, we, at this point, put on our Facebook page, and people are like, hey, you need to get that checked out. Could still have black power to go off. So I have to reach back out. This guy, Hey, you need to maybe get this checked out. So he has to reach out, because he’s, he was out of town for something. So he gets back me a week later. Never forget it was on a Tuesday. He’s like, Hey, I called the police. They brought their bomb expert there to my apartment. They said it was still alive. They brought the bomb squad to his apartment complex. Evacuate his entire apartment complex. Wow. Take this took this thing away to be detonated, and I’ll forget the text is like, how was your Monday? Because I never was on Tuesday, because he asked if the end of the text was, how’s your Monday? Like, not that damn exciting, but that we found big safes literally, and people probably think this is a BS story, but we found it 19 in Cincinnati, we pulled this, I mean, a giant safe with the concrete, you know, the metal casing, and we had to cut it up with we had to break out the concrete, then torch open the metal in the middle. We opened it up. And I’m not lying just to they found like, one penny in there, but it was near a scrapyard. I don’t know if it rolled out of there over the years or what the story was. But anyways, we found a couple big safes like that. Never a big score. Chad and early in the career, found a surveillance tape from a bank robbery, like on one side of the bridge. They found a bunch of, this is in Minneapolis, a bunch of tapes from a bank robbery and then or a bunch of empty money bags. And the other side, they found this ball that was wrapped up in like saran wrap and duct tape, and they opened up it was the surveillance tape from the robbery that the guys must have thrown off the bridge, but they had protected it. So he called the police. He’s like, I’m a crime solver. Now I’m solving crimes. He said, the guy pulled up to a boat ramp. He’s like, just put in the trunk. So he threw the trunk and just took off. He’s like, You never heard. He never knew. What the heck? What the heck else happened with that story? Uh, other unique items. I mean, just this year in Cincinnati, with the dive team and just in different locations, like a lot of Lyme scooters. Unfortunately, people throw those, a hollowed out grenade, a couple guns, a pig’s head, a horse’s head, wrapped in saran wrap in a cooler, a mission coin box from like a a veteran who was in this, like, military box with all these mission coins. And that was a unique find, and we try to reach back out to the guy. But I guess it was, it was a weird situation where that guy, I think might have had some, I don’t know he was like, I think he might have been in prison or so it was, I don’t know all the details, but we tried not to say we just kept it and try to get back to this guy. But, I mean, we’ve, we have found some bodies over the years, a good story that was one time a guy jumped off the bridge in St Louis, and some ladies like, Hey, do you guys have boats? Kind of knowing the answers. We’re just hanging out after a cleanup. And St Louis, the water is pretty ripping, you know, down there, right off, right off the cobblestone there, off the East Bridge. You jumped off the East Bridge, and we went, and I’m like, There’s no way we’re going to see this guy. And I yelled at some other guys, and it was some carpenters building our new barge we lived on now. They got in the boat with a with another guy, the ladies yelling from the shore. I can’t hear, and I’m glad these other guys got in the boat, because I want to be able to pull this guy. But he, I thought he’d be gone. He was hanging on to like a little light fixture at one of the pillars of the bridge. So he had jumped off, and then realized this isn’t maybe I don’t really want to do this. So lady, luckily, that lady con has pulled then we just literally pulled him out, two guys and the other guys, but I couldn’t see him. They saw him, pulled him in, took him to shore. The police had been called, just dropping off. And then I think we literally went back to like it was really weird. We think we were drinking beers after a cleanup on the cobblestone. We just did that just happen kind of thing. Wow. That was so that was. Those are some of the crazier stories and things.
Dean Klinkenberg 35:44
Have you encountered animals very often when you’re doing cleanups?
Mike Coyne Logan 40:09
We do. I mean, you know, obviously we see quite a few deer, you know, beaver, a lot of turtles, flying carp, the silver carp. We’ve seen those, especially down in your neck of the woods on St Louis, you know, snapping turtles. I think I’ve only seen like an otter twice, a lot of lot of crawfish.
Dean Klinkenberg 40:39
Probably a fair number of snakes.
Mike Coyne Logan 40:42
You know, not as much you think. You know, people are scared of theirs, but they’re pretty, you know, they stay away. You know, we’ve seen them, but for the most part, I mean, last year in Memphis, it was funny, there was a a snake. There was a suitcase washed up the shore, and a guy in the crew cut it open. There was a giant snake living in it. That was so but they’re rare. You know, that’s usually it’s farther south, where we get concerned, but that’s why you try to go there early, where it’s still kind of cold and they’re more dormant. But we see snakes, but not like, not too many. I mean, they’re, they probably try to stay away from they’re not thinking we’re a meal. They’re just, we’re, we’re, we’re like, we’re, we’re a threat to them. They’re not. They’re not. Yeah.
Dean Klinkenberg 41:24
Yeah, exactly. So, 500,000 almost 500,000 pounds of trash last year, and you know, in the millions over the course of the the existence of the organization. What do you do with all that trash once you’ve collected it?
Mike Coyne Logan 41:40
We recycle as much as we can, all the scrap gets recycled. A cool thing that Chad and his wife used to be on the cruise started another company where we’re taking like the barrels, the buckets, the milk crates and two fours and fives plastic, which is awesome because we used to have to pay to get rid of that stuff, and it takes up a lot of space because a lot of people don’t take those bigger take those bigger bolstered plastics. Grinding that up to make heavy duty pallets out of. So what’s cool about that is it saves us money from our end, but these pallets are a lot more durable and last longer than opposed to wood pallets that people say get recycled, but really don’t last that long. And all the hardwood trees you have to take down to make these pallets. So these pallets are lap, they’re more durable, they last longer, and then they’re also in top, made out of waste, a percentage of it, you know, not all of it, but it’s other recycled materials, but a good percentage. I mean literally. There’s warehouse full of stuff that we’ve got that goes into making those products. Once again, Chad’s a guy with a million ideas, and it tries to follow through every, every single one of them. So, and that’s Green Current Solutions is the name of that.
Dean Klinkenberg 42:48
Alright, yeah. So, so then, as you’re doing the as you’re collecting the trash, you are you separating things on site into different piles, for, for different destinations?
Mike Coyne Logan 43:01
Yeah, for so we keep all the tires separate. They’ll get recycled as well, all the bags with just random, you know, little things. We even have events where people sort through those at least once a year. And then for the bulkier plastics I talk about, we try our best to keep that separated, and we do, but we still pull it out. So sometimes it gets so full before you gonna load it, we have to go back through and, like, pull barrels out, or people will be going home with the truck, take six things. We’ll bring in a 30 foot trailer, load it up with all these two fours and fives that take back to the factory. So the logistics, you know, setting up a location to offload these cars and with a scrapyard on the river, doing these events where we bring people out and then put bags on these big tables that we build, just using like plywood and just tables we rent. And then, you know, putting it on with these, like railings, and then doing it, and then working with different recycling facilities and putting, you know, non recyclables in one dumpster, recyclables in another, to waste oil and like e-waste, we separate all that stuff. It’s, it’s, it’s cool to see, like when I first started, we recycle the tires. We’d recycle the scrap, but it’s evolved to us being better about recycling, more of this stuff, you know, creating the recycle like a rock star event, where we sort through the bags and Chad, creating this entity where we keep all these bulkier plastics separated. But it’s, it’s a lot, you know, to do it all and try to do it the right way. You know.
Dean Klinkenberg 44:41
I can’t imagine to see it the time you’re there in a particular site, then, yeah, it, it takes a long time just for one cleanup, because you’ve got to do all the prep, all the planning for it. You’ve got to get all the equipment there and organize volunteers. You know, I think we see, we tend to see the day of as kind of the main event. And in some ways, I suppose it is, but there’s so much other stuff going on before and after that. Because even imagine, once all the trash was collected, it does, as you said, it takes a while then to find a home for all of that.
Mike Coyne Logan 45:14
Right. And some of it goes to a landfill, like big, bulky Styrofoam. There’s stuff. Are we just like some of the bags? Do we sort through every bag every year? No, we just don’t have the time. We did. Did recently purchase a big, giant hopper barge, which are like, you know what you put green in, because most of the other barges just everything’s out top so you can see it. But this gives us more storage. I mean, literally, I think we have like, 1000 tires in it from last year. And then we’re going to in it so big, we’ll have one section of it, tires, one section of it, you know, bag stuff, and then that creates more space. So where, when we get this stuff this year, or, you know, as time goes on throughout the years, and then you’re only doing, maybe, instead of offloading two or three times a year, you can do, like, one big offload, because it’s, it’s just like I said, it’s a lot of logistics to get rid of it, get rid of the right way.
Dean Klinkenberg 46:05
Right. And again, like, to make something like this happen on this scale, you have to have a lot of partners too, like, so can you speak to that a little bit? It’s not just the volunteers who turn up, but you must have partnerships with a lot of different kinds of organizations and companies.
Mike Coyne Logan 46:22
For sure, like a lot of barge companies, like helping us to have spots to fleet up, are those people knowing you know, having contacts in city that know other contacts that you know, or know someone better at a scrapyard, or knowing scrapyard contacts and where those locations are in different parts of the river. You can’t have enough friends on the river, you know, and everybody, luckily these days, we get a lot of, I mean, we’ve built a pretty good reputation, and that people are pretty good to us. And we’re very fortunate, from just, you know, community volunteers to our company sponsors, and we’re very grateful that. And I think it’s cool, you know, it’s not just, Hey, we need money to do this, but it’s one thing to take a check from a company, but it’s another thing to, like, get their employees out there and and see what we’re doing and making them aware of this problem, like I said, getting their hands dirty. And people like it. I think the cool thing about what we do is, you know, you know, we live in this, like, pretty you know, you think, I believe it’s we were thought by social media that we’re a lot more divided than we are. But when people work together, people respect hard work. I think people want outlets to do good things. And it’s really cool. People respect that. It brings people together, and then it makes them I think, think about other issues and the value of our our natural resources and our rivers. So that’s what I love about it. It’s, it’s, it’s action, and it’s bringing people to better, creating, you know, a cool, you know, community, you know, in different locations and and connecting people to what, what, you know, these valuable resource a lot of times we take for granted.
Dean Klinkenberg 47:59
Right. Yeah, the rivers bring us together, right?
Mike Coyne Logan 48:01
Yeah, I mean, it’s life, right? I mean, it’s life and it’s, yeah, it is. That’s, that’s for dang sure. I read a crazy stat the other day, and you think about water and its value, and always trying to think of things that, you know, when you go and talk to students or talk to people, what’s going to like, hit them. But, you know, we talk about the amount of water that actually gets utilized to drink water. It’s like less than 1% of it is water, and a lot of people don’t have access to clean drinking water. It’s almost a billion people, but there’s three, I think there’s more people that die from waterborne illnesses that were killed in all us and all US soldiers killed in all the conflicts in US history. Every year, there’s like twice as many people that die from water paralysis. And that’s one of those things, like, man, you know, it’s not as but it’s a really important resource that, dang, we need to, not that people don’t, but sometimes even myself. Every day, we need to remind ourselves this, the importance of this and the value of it, right?
Dean Klinkenberg 49:04
Right, right. Maybe we take that for granted here, because we don’t have that experience so much anymore with people dying from waterborne illnesses in this country.
Mike Coyne Logan 49:12
Yeah, and even then I looked up a stat. I looked up a stat, though, and according to the CDC, there’s still, it’s not as many, opposed to like India, where it’s like four to 400 to 500,000 you know? But it’s still they, I think that they said 6000 over 6000 people. And that’s definitely one’s way too many, right, right?
Dean Klinkenberg 49:36
So, what have you kind of learned from, uh, learned about big rivers from your your work with Living Lands and Waters like has your has, your perception or what you think or believe about Big Rivers changed at all over time doing this work?
Mike Coyne Logan 49:50
You know we know more about I think sometimes kids we think of like these exotic, cool environmental places like the rainforest or the amazon, but we have a lot of these really cool environmental mirror, you know, just, you know, really cool habitat and environments here in our own United States, and a lot of times in our own backyard that we we don’t think of them that way. You know, of all the life and how cool it is, and other people see the Mississippi or these other rivers is, this is really cool. We got to go see it. But if you grew up on it, not that you don’t, but you’re like, Oh yeah, in our educate in our and I think the other thing is, like, meeting so many cool and smart people and learning more and more about how, just how cool these big river systems are from not only as being, you know, environmentally, but as a working river and and the people you meet in these communities, I don’t know. It’s just cool, and then we’re kind of spoiled. I think we’re just a lot of good people out there, man. It’s cool, you know, and they gravitate to what we’re doing. So that’s refreshing, you know? So.
Dean Klinkenberg 51:07
Absolutely. Yeah, it’s nice to have a job that generally, people really appreciate what you’re doing, right?
Mike Coyne Logan 51:15
No, it’s great, yeah. We’re like, Yeah, yeah. For it definitely is. And meeting a lot of cool, interesting people. And it’s, it’s definitely and, like I said, just taking for granted, just how cool. You know, sometimes you’re out scouting, you’re in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, in an island, you’re like, Wow, this is, this is cool, you know, like, and being able to share that with others, you know, like, if you get more people to share in those experiences. Man, it’s just, it’s good for the soul. Man, I saw, it really is. It’s hard to, anyway.
Dean Klinkenberg 51:48
Yeah, no. Preaching to the choir here. So are there from the volunteers and the people that you you encounter, are there some common, like, misconceptions people tend to have about the big rivers that you come across?
Mike Coyne Logan 52:06
I think some people think, like, oh, like, there’s like, even students like, oh, we get our water from there. Or, you know, oh, it’s, it’s gross, it’s really nasty. And it is, and it’s, I mean, it isn’t person. We do need it to be better. You know, they can always be better. We can do, you know, there’s things that we can change make better. But I don’t think it’s as bad as people think it is. I mean, it isn’t, isn’t like, don’t get me wrong. There’s still It depends where at but, or just how cool it is like, or how like, intimidating, it depends where you’re at. Because, I mean, the river up here, the Mississippi River in the North versus below St Louis, it’s a little bit more you gotta it’s a little different river, you know, once you get past the lock and dams. But that, I always feel like kids are like, we’ll do water testing, like it’s still gotta share problems I’m wrong, like saying between litter and other stuff, but it’s, it’s sometimes cleaner and better than they think, and it’s based on some of the tests we do, but that’s taken a lot of work, you know, people that care, and it’s not, it’s not one of those things like we’re done now. It’s always better, right? You know, like, and improving and maintaining that awareness and maintaining, you know, when people make decisions like, you know, taking that stuff in effect. Because, once again, the value right, the value of just on a selfish reason, not for other that for selfish reasons as human survival, we need to protect this really, these really important resources.
Dean Klinkenberg 53:32
Absolutely. So what are the messages you give people about how they can can better care for the river then, particularly when it comes to keeping it clean air, free of trash?
Mike Coyne Logan 53:42
I just, like I said, the main thing is I talk to students is like, hey, reducing plastic. I talk about, like, maybe one of the biggest hustles out there, bottled water. In 2018 $31, billion are spent on bottled water, and in 60% of it is tap water, put a bottle sold towards for a lot more money, right? I go, Hey, kids, how much do your parents ever point about the price of gas? Yeah? I go, Well, how much is it for a 16 ounce bottle of water? On average the gas station, they’ll say about two bucks. I go, what’s 16, goes in a gallon eight times that’s $16 a gallon. You’re paying for water that’s not any clearer than necessarily, the water from your tap. And another thing is, they’ve done studies, consumer reports based on some studies. An article a few years ago said, you know, people that just strictly drink bottled water consume about 86,000 more micro plastics year from the breakdown of these materials in it. And then you think about all the things that come in plastic. So, hey, get away from the stuff. Is our is our infrastructure perfect? No, but that just goes you can invest money into public water infrastructure that would be cheaper every year than what you spend on bottled water and make it, you know, more affordable forever, you know, just that’s something that should be a basic human need to write, right, in my opinion, right?
Dean Klinkenberg 55:10
Well, and I think maybe sometimes people struggle with trying to figure out where to get drinking water if they’re not at home to, you know, if there’s not a drinking fountain, they they assume they’re, they’re not going to be able to get a clean water to drink somewhere. But tap water, almost everywhere in this country is fine. So you can go into the bathroom someplace and fill up a bottle with tap water from there.
Mike Coyne Logan 55:33
Yeah. I mean, I think we’ve been, you know, you see myself. I remember when bottled water first started, like, what is wrong with our water? You know? Like, it’s convenient. But anyway, it’s just like that message and just thinking of other ways to reduce our plastics, like even straws. People like straws. Really. There’s 500 million straws used every day in the United States. That circles go up too enough time we survive without straws before, you know. And it’s like, and then I saw a comedian going and ran about little straws. How does it kill the turtles? Like, it’s a vast ocean. Don’t speak. This is just a small part of the problem. I’m like, you fool. It’s like two garbage trucks worth of plastic. We need to, like, reexamine our overuse of these plastics that the production continues to go up. So that’s one. Is, like being conscious as consumers, you know, those are votes, you know, and we’re not perfect. I mean, it’s, it’s hard to totally get away from plastic. I get it and some, and it’s fine if we’re gonna use plastic, just make a closed loop system. The other thing is, like, keeping where you live clean, right, just not littering, and understanding those connections, like that storm drain leads to, potentially a river that’s that creek or that little gully over time, you know, making those connections, or stuff we put on our lawns, or, you know, stuff like that, blah, blah, what we can do just being conscious of this stuff, I think, is barely, you know, at least, that’s the first step. And then, you know, making, you know, not eliminate plastic all together, but little things make a big difference. And a lot of people, like Chad says a lot of people doing little things makes a big impact.
Dean Klinkenberg 57:04
Absolutely and I think people are looking for ways that they can do something to contribute to especially when the large scale solutions seem so unobtainable or so far out of reach, like finding practical little things that we as individuals can do on a day to day basis. I think it feels good. I think it gives people a sense of hope that, yeah, we can do something.
Mike Coyne Logan 57:29
Yeah, it’s kind of like this. What’s that story about the guy on the beach and the guys watching this one guy throw starfish in the ocean? She’s like, you’re never going to save them all. It’s like, well, made a difference for that starfish. It’s like, it’s a ripple effect, right? You know, when people first, when Chad first started up, you know, I hear a lot of people like, you’re not going to make a difference. It’s crazy. Good luck with that. But it’s not only the stuff that Chad’s done, but these other organizations like that have spawned, like the Missouri there’s other words that kind of mimic his motto, Mississippi River Relief that does stuff the same stuff on Missouri or Missouri River Relief, Keep Tennessee, Keep Tennessee Beautiful. They have a rivers thing that does stuff on the Tennessee River, and it’s smaller, but they’re she’s this. This lady started inspired by Chad, and she pulls out over 100,000 pounds of trash or more every year, you know, with volunteers. Um, and then there’s, there’s more, I can tell you. But just, just that ripple effect of Chad is energy, and that’s real man, that’s a real thing. It’s, it’s, it’s contagious, right? Negative and positive energy contagious. And it’s just, it’s real and it’s tangible. It feels good when you can do tangible things.
Dean Klinkenberg 58:45
I mean, it’s, again, it’s that ripple effect, as you say, like, you know, Chad had a fairly simple idea, and he was able to grow this and get some attention for it, and that inspired a lot of other people to do similar things in their backyard. So there are dozens of organizations around the country now that do very similar cleanups that, you know, maybe they wouldn’t have if someone like Chad hadn’t come along to get it going first.
Mike Coyne Logan 59:10
Yeah, no, it’s cool. And I mean, even like doing like in the winter, I’ll get these calls from these ironically Lego leagues, which is plastic, but they’re like, some of their things as solutions to, they’ll have these Lego League groups of solutions for, like, reducing, like, plastic pollution, or, you know, pollution problems for oceans and rivers. And you’re having young kids thinking of innovative ways, you know, coming up with and that’s, it’s just cool to see these little, little offshoots. And a lot of times I’m like, Well, I can tell you this, but you guys know more about, you know, I’ve learned stuff from you guys today. That’s, it’s cool that, you know, it’s cool to see.
Dean Klinkenberg 59:48
Yeah. So you spend much of your year working on the river. Like, are you? Do you get to recreate or take it easy on the river at all?
Mike Coyne Logan 59:58
Oh, for sure. I mean. Mean, we try to keep a standard schedule from seven to four, five-ish that obviously can change when stuff comes up and, you know, there’s a stuff that other day to day chores you got to do, or some, some kind of incident comes up where the day is longer. But, you know, try to, you know, on the weekends we’re in a town, go check out music, if we’re in a cool location, and go, you know, go see some sites where we’re at. Sometimes the crew goes into a town and has a couple beers. That might happen, you know, just that. And just, you know, like a lot of us, like, I’ll go to a gym in a nearby town for there for a while. And, yeah, there’s time. I mean, then just, you know, hanging out, you know, playing cars or playing games on the barge with the crew. It’s kind of like your family away from home.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:00:53
Right, yeah. So with all that time you spend on the river, are you a sunrise or a sunset person?
Mike Coyne Logan 1:01:02
I’m more the older I get. I’m more of a sunrise person. I’m the old guy now that, you know, he got the younger bucks. I’m the old guy that’s in his room watching maybe Netflix or just reading it then, you know, earlier than some of those young kids. I just can’t do it like they’ll be out there laughing in the galley, and I’m like, All right, I’m like, All right, I’m going to bed, not every night, not every night on a week. I can try to hang with them on a weekend, but yeah, anyway,
Dean Klinkenberg 1:01:31
Mike, thank you so much for your time. This has been fantastic. If folks want to know more about Living Lands and Water, follow the work that you’re doing. Like, what are some of the main places they could go to to keep up?
Mike Coyne Logan 1:01:41
So we have our website at LivingLandsAndWaters.org and just has a lot more information about the programs, events where we’re going to be. We try to put our schedule for the year as far advanced as we can on there. And then we’re also on social media to Instagram Living Lands and Waters and Facebook at Living Lands and Waters too, and follow. You know what we’re doing, unique finds and stuff like that.
1:01:44
And that would also be a great place to go if they were looking to donate some some money or something else to help with the the mission?
Mike Coyne Logan 1:02:10
Yeah, I I’m gonna just, yeah, we need money, or we’re gonna have to fire the youngest crew member. Baby boy, I just, I’m gonna make a I’m just gonna get to try to, maybe I’ll send pictures or show you. Baby Boy, no, I’m just, no, no, yeah, that was much appreciated. And we like to think we get a lot out of what we, you know, the money we give and we appreciate every, you know, even from my cousin sending $50 or from our bigger sponsors. So, yeah.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:02:36
Awesome. I’ll put all that in the show notes. There’ll be links to all that in the show notes, people can just go there and find it for themselves, and I guess that’s it. That’s a wrap. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. I’m a huge fan of Living Lands and Waters. You all do great work. You’re inspiring. Thanks,
Mike Coyne Logan 1:02:54
Dean, appreciate appreciate it. Man, appreciate you having me on. I really do.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:02:58
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the series on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss out on future episodes. I offer the podcast for free, but when you support the show with a few bucks through Patreon to help keep the program going, just go to patreon.com/DeanKlinkenberg. If you want to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that’s set in places along the river. Find them wherever books are sold. The Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast is written and produced by me Dean Klinkenberg. Original Music by Noah Fence. See you next time you.
