The Mississippi River was literally my back yard while I was growing up. The son of educators and river enthusiasts, I spent the majority of my time on, in, and around the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.  My brother is a commercial fisherman who on occasion, sometimes makes an appearance as a Big River Educational Workshop expert.

While attending high school and college, I worked as a commercial shell diver, a commercial fisherman, and barge hand during the summers.  I sometimes lived on the islands of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers during that time. While there, I noticed that the condition of the rivers was getting worse due to the accumulation of trash on the shorelines.  I set out in the spring of 1997 to make a difference... one river at a time…one piece of garbage at a time.

At 22, I picked up a phone book and started calling companies to find someone that would help me with my goal.  After many closed doors, I finally got my first corporate sponsorship from Alcoa, Inc.  10 years later, I am charging my barge down 6 of our nation's rivers, picking up trash and making amazing progress.  LL&W now has a team of 10 employees, a fleet of workboats and barges, many corporate sponsors, and has engaged thousands of volunteers in river cleanups throughout the United States.  The major projects of LL&W focus on the protection, restoration and preservation of our nation's major rivers and their watersheds, expanding environmental awareness and responsibility encompassing the river and to create a desire and opportunity for stewardship and responsibility for a cleaner river environment.  This mission is accomplished through river cleanup, riverbottom restoration, educational workshops, Adopt-A-River Mile and the MillionTrees project. 

Not only am I working to clean up the rivers of garbage, I am working on an ambitious effort to grow and give away a million fruit and nut bearing hardwood trees to help restore watershed ecosystems.  By removing invasive plant species and planting the native hardwood trees, the riverways will provide food and shelter for wildlife and will help preserve the riverbottom ecosystems.

To help further get my message out, National Geographic published my biography in April 2007, called “From the Bottom Up: One Man's Crusade to Clean America's Rivers”.  Numerous national and local media have extensively spread the word, and I have received numerous honors and recognition for my work, including The Jefferson Award, presented by the American Institute for Public Service.

Supporter and musician Ben Harper said, "He does the work of a hundred men, a thousand men... even more."  My philosophy is simple: “We try to get as many people involved in cleaning trash in the river environment.”  I  don’t see myself as an environmentalist so much as a “regular person who saw a problem and wanted to do something about it.”

Check out LL&W's Web site and sign up to volunteer at a clean up… coming to a river near you!