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How We Work
Within our mission to build greenways, we implement conservation projects along the way, with partners, vendors and volunteers to:
- Create or improve natural habitats along greenways such as prairies, wetlands and forests, where plants, animals and pollinators thrive and storm and flood waters can be better managed.
- Build connections for people to stay healthy and make active transportation choices that reduce car pollution.
- Invite people to fall in love with and take care of nature through building greenways, ongoing education and volunteering.
We build greenways...
...to help manage and filter storm and flood waters
The land surrounding our rivers and our creeks is going to flood – let’s make sure it can!
While it can be an inconvenience to have a greenway closed during a major flood because it’s underwater, that’s the best thing to be out of commission. Let’s keep people and their places safe and let floodplains do their jobs to absorb, filter and release water back into the watersheds. We work with many partners and landowners to build greenways, occasionally acquiring important floodplain lands to ensure they continue to do their job.
- Our best practices to slow down, spread out and soak up storm and flood waters include:
- Preserving public lands adjacent to the greenways
- Improving streambanks and the ecosystems near waterways
- Replacing normal turf grass (which has very short roots) with a native grasslands OR or adding a rain garden full of native plants with deep roots to absord, clean and slowly release the water
- Amending the soils themselves
- Using permeable pavers at trailheads to let water seep through
...to improve natural habitats along the way, such as woodlands, wetlands and prairies
- Why do healthy habitats matter?
- How do we restore an ecosystem?
...with partners and community members
We know we have a bigger impact when residents of the region are informed, excited and ready to act!
- Signage, educational videos online, walking tours and other programs help people understand these ecosystems and become community stewards. Find the next program or event.
- Volunteer events from major, regional “Trash Bash” cleanups to small, neighborhood tree plantings, help take care of the greenways and get people invested. Ready to help?
- Donations to the Great Rivers Greenway Foundation can support this work beyond our tax dollars. Discover the many ways you can give to the Foundation.
...with experts and industry-leading practices
We cannot do this alone. We provide free workshops and trainings for our partners that help take care of the greenways so everyone knows how to manage stormwater, conduct a prescribed burn on a prairie, take care of native-to-Missouri plants.
If you’d like to learn more about the technical specifics of any of this work, check out our Design Guidelines.