Forest service, MSHP partner to address water hazards on Current River

DONIPHAN — Years of high-water incidents along Current River north of Doniphan have narrowed a stretch a water, making it difficult for boaters and floaters to safely navigate.

A partnership between the U.S. Forest Service and Missouri State Highway Patrol helped address the matter Tuesday, with a joint clean up effort.

The area below El Rancho Rio has been identified as “a high incident area with several logs and what we call strainers,” explained MSHP Sgt. Richie Ayers. “ … (The debris) strains the water. It’s catching everything except the water.”

Corey Large, a forester with the U.S. Forest Service, cuts a log in preparation for its removal from Current River below El Rancho Rio. DAR/Michelle Friedrich

Several logs were barely visible just below the water’s surface Tuesday morning, with additional trees and rootwads protruding above the water line further downstream.

When the river is up, as it was Memorial Day weekend, traffic can go both directions without any problems, Ayers said.

“Memorial Day, you couldn’t see half of the logs,” he said. “The water went over the top. In summer, this is what we have when the water drops” — exposed snags and hidden obstacles.

“Now, it’s just one chute” for boaters and floaters to pass through, which “is not much room,” and that chute has debris in it too, Ayers said.

The area, he said, has been a problem for four to five years, with the chute becoming “worse in the past year.”

“We have spent many hours pulling people out” from the rootwads, said Ayers, who indicated he and other Marine Division troopers get several calls each week to the stretch of river below El Rancho Rio.

Due to its narrowness and the debris, Ayers said, it is sometimes a “little bit of a chore” to access the stranded.

The debris, Ayers said, has built up over the years, with many of the fallen trees becoming intertwined.

“Every year it catches more and narrows the river down a lot,” Ayers explained. “Where it narrows, the current gets swifter, and that makes it harder” to navigate.

Ayers said every time the water rises and goes back down, “new things get added … It’s amazing; nature at its finest.”

For the past several years, Ayers said, the patrol and U.S. Forest Service personnel have teamed up to clear debris from the river.

With a chain already attached between the rootwad and bulldozer, Forester Daniel Oldham cuts the tree as Forester Corey Large watches from the bank.DAR/Michelle Friedrich

Using chainsaws and a bulldozer, U.S. Forest Service personnel began working Tuesday morning on the first of two locations below El Rancho Rio.

As he piloted a patrol boat, Trooper Caleb Morgan provided water access for foresters.

Their goal Tuesday was to “get in here, this 150 to 200 yard stretch of river,” and clean it out, Ayers said.

Foresters Corey Large and Daniel Oldham used chainsaws to cut what Ayers described as a “tangled mess” of several logs and rootwads.

“When we started, I couldn’t get my boat through, now I can,” Ayers said as the work continued.

On Wednesday, Ayers said, the bulldozer would be used to pull numerous fallen trees protruding in the water near a large gravel bar.

The work will “open the area for boaters and tubers” right along the bank to “alleviate anything that catches the floaters and obstacles for boaters to go around,” Ayers said.

By widening the chute for boaters, Ayers said, it gives floaters more room toward the shallow water on the east side of the river.

The cleanup, according to Ayers, is something the patrol and Forest Service has been doing for several years.

“They have the equipment and personnel trained for this,” Ayers said.

The U.S. Forest Service, he said, also owns land along Current River.

“We know it’s a very popular river,” said Cody Norris, public information officer for Mark Twain National Forest.

Forest service personnel, he said, pay attention to river dangers, and “sometimes we need to go in and address those areas that have become more dangerous.”

Norris said the Forest Service relies on the highway patrol and those in the communities to “let us know about extraordinary hazards in the water” that need to be addressed.