The power of one

(Above) Chad Pregracke, who was named as one of CNN’s Heroes of the Year in 2013, shared his story of cleaning up the Mississippi River with Clear Lake students last week to kick off Earth Month.-Reporter photo by Chris Barragy.

Pregracke turns his personal misson to clean rivers into a national movement

What a difference one person can make.

Chad Pregracke has been on a mission for the last 20 years -- to clean up America one piece at a time.  Last week he shared his inspirational story with Clear Lake middle and high school students as Earth Month activities kicked off locally.

Pregracke grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River.  The river was his backyard, literally.

“When I was 15, I began commercial shell diving with my brother and over six seasons I was on the bottom of the river 10 hours a day in the dark.  I got to know the river from the bottom up and it taught me that the river is alive,” he said.

By the time he was 17, Pregracke was working on tow boats and during his travels on the river he began to see garbage-- tons and tons of garbage, littering the backwaters and shores of the river he loves.  He committed himself to doing everything he could to clean up the river.

He eventually realized that more hands could make a greater impact.  Armed with photos showing literally tons of garbage in the back waters of the river, he began to call on businesses to sponsor his mission.

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The Alcoa company as the only one to respond to his initial plea, offering matching money when Pregracke secured other funding.  When no one else would fund his fight, he wrote a budget for his one-man operation and thankfully Alcoa signed on.

“They said ‘this is unbelievable’ when they saw the photos I had taken.  I said ‘no, this is unacceptable.’”

Pregracke chuckled as he recalled that his parents were out of town for two weeks when he began his operation.  He used the shoreline in front of the home as a staging area for the huge amount of waste he was hauling out of the river.  His action created a wave of publicity, with CNN, ABC, Fox and other networks sharing his story.

Soon communities were helping him to reach his goal to clean 435 miles of shoreline.

“We were so successful that I was spending half my time trying to get rid of garbage and the other half doing the work.  The solution was to purchase a barge which could be used to hold all the garbage, saving time making trips to shore to unload,” he explained.  The barge also made a visual statement to the public about Pregracke’s work.

In 1997 he established the Living Lands and Waters non-profit and to date has led about 1,000 cleanup projects along major rivers, including the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois and Potomac.  More than 98,000 people have helped remove an estimate 10 million pounds of garbage from rivers.

In 2013, Pregracke was honored as one of CNN’s Heroes of the Year.

“The earth is not destroyed all at once, it’s piece by piece.  It’s the little things that all add up,” he told students.  “We’ve gone from boat loads to barge loads.  Our goal now is to clear 1 million pounds a year from America’s rivers.”

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