In high school, my mother and I waded out into the water of our cold Crane Creek to fill up some vials with creek water. For me, it was just another one of my mother’s many volunteer activities. She had decided to become a Stream Team member, and so I would help her determine the health of the stream. She and I together were one little team doing one little job in small town Missouri.

But together the efforts of little teams really can make a difference. I didn’t know it at the time, but about 68,000 other Missourians across the state were (or would be) doing the same thing. This means that about one in every one hundred people in Missouri have been partners with us in caring for our streams over the last 25 plus years: cleaning them, monitoring water quality, advocating for better policies and/or educating others.

According to the the Streams Coordination Biologist at the Missouri Department of Conservation, Mark Van Patten, the Missouri Stream Team has been so successful and so long-lived because of their commitment to letting their volunteers lead. In 1989, Van Patten, a fly-fisherman, and several of his friends started trying to clean up the stream where they fished for rare, naturally-sustaining rainbow trout. According to Van Patten, the stream “was a mess,” full of washers and dryers, tires and other household items, and the small group of friends who spent time fishing there wanted to do something about it. But their first few cleanups just didn’t seem to go anywhere. There were too many dryers and not enough fishermen.

At about the same time, a Missouri conservation group was tossing around the idea of forming something called a “Stream Team.” This group would consist of volunteers, like Van Patten, who would help keep the streams and rivers of Missouri clean and healthy. They created a prototype brochure and while the brochure was still hot off the presses, Van Patten got it, filled it out and sent it in.

The conservation department wasn’t actually ready to start the program. But unlike many organizations that bow to organizational red tape, the conservation department decided to go with it. Soon, Van Patten, along with many other volunteers, were out in the middle of a stream with the former Governor of Missouri and former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, doing a lot more than they could have ever done by themselves. In 1991, this second annual clean-up (which continues even today) cleared out 14.7 tons of trash out of a mile and half of stream.

By 1993, only 4 years after the original idea, Stream Teams wanted to expand their efforts. They no longer were just interested in cleaning the streams; they also were asking for ways to monitor the health of the waterways. And so the state gave them the resources. “[The conservation department] gives you with the chemicals you need — all of the resources — and then you go into the stream, collect the samples and send them in,” said Jeanelle Wiley, a Stream Team leader of over 10 years (and my mother).

Monitoring the health of streams across the state is vital for fisherman, farmers, and anyone who loves wildlife. “I’m a teacher, so I wanted my kids to learn about the environment. So every year I’d take the class — I still do, even though I’m retired — twice a year — to the creek. They need to understand how the water quality is affected by our actions and how the water quality can affect us. And a lot of the kids do,” Wiley said.

Van Patten works with individuals and policies at the local and state levels to ensure that waters, like those monitored by my mother, stay healthy over time. “If the water changes over time, we go to the local level first. Maybe someone doesn’t know that their sewage is going into the stream, and so we work with them to find the source of the pollution and try to deal with it there.” A lot of the volunteers on the Teams advocate for better water policy at the state legislative sessions, as well.

But no one is forced into any of these roles. Van Patten said that volunteers like my mother stay on the team and participate because “we don’t tell our teams what to do” — we say “what do you want to do and how we can help?” This philosophy keeps people coming back and has made the Missouri Stream Team into one of the leading water conservation programs in the nation that other states are now trying to replicate.