This is a project that had many "HAPPY ACCIDENTS".

A week ago on July 28th, 2023, Paul Marcussen found three 4" plastic irrigation pipes in a logjam on
the UMR. Neither Paul, Ev or I could get them to budge, so I decided to come back and make a project
out of getting them removed from the river.

They were located at a private property near the Goose Creek Campground and, with the help of the
Frederic Township Assessor, I was able to find the onwer of the property and, as luck would have it,
she was on the Board of Directors of the UMRA and she was very cooperative in letting us use her property
to do the project. Even though she was not going to be there when we did the project, she also gave us
detailed directions on how to access the property so we could get very close to the river without doing
any damage to the property.

We found the pipes quickly and Paul Ton attached a line to them and I pulled them out of the river with my car.

We were expecting three small pieces of pipe but after some heavy pulling with the car and some snapping
and banging from down on the river, three 40 foot long pieces of pipe emerged from under that logjam.

We had expected to put them in a garbage bag and dispose of them in town but now we had almost 125 feet
of muddy 4" plastic pipe to deal with. If you do the math, that's about 150 pounds of mud in each one of those pipes
plus the weight of the pipes. That's 450+ pounds or more. There was no way we were going to pull them out by hand.

My first thought was to drag them to Kalkaska but I knew that was not an option. Then Paul suggested we cut
them into shorter pieces and bundle them so they could go on the roof rack. That worked great and other than
lots of slime dripping on my windshied, we made it to Kalkaska for lunch at the BK there.

We finally decided to dispose of them at the DNR disposal site on Mill Rd south of Chums Corners.

Here's what it looked like after we finished the work.

We wish to thank the homeowners and the DNR for their help with this project.

All the photos can be seen here:

All the Photos from this project

Our work today was partially funded by grants from

The Consumers Energy Foundation

National Cherry Festival Foundation

Adams Chapter Trout Unlimited

And private donors like you.