is chad pregracke s passion. over the past 17 years, he has developed an elaborate system to get the job done. it started off with one boat to now we have tow boats, cranes, fork boats. at the heart of the effort is a massive 800 pound barge. the tow boat bushes it wherever we need to go. three of the barges are used to unload and store the thousands of pounds of trash that chad collects. it looked like a floating junkyard but it s much more than that. this is what we call as a crew the garbage barge. actually all of the bag we need to go through and recycle as much as we can. over here this is our recycling barge. everything on this barge gets recycled. all of the tires, the appliances, the batteries, the
kentucky. it s kind of like a hub for the marine industry so all of the barges, tow boats, they are here. but barges aren t all you ll find on this river. one of the safety concerns is actually the flying carp which sounds crazy to a lot of people but they really do fly out of the water at high speeds and they get rather big. the carp gather in the warm shallow areas near the shore so when a boat comes by, they jump out the water. it s like a defense mechanism. it s the sound of the engine that s bothering them. that s one more concern that we have when we re doing a clean up. what we do is go ahead and run a boat without volunteers in it. run it up and spook them out of there. there we go. see that. he was in. he was out. that s how they do it around there. in and out. there they go. don t we scared. we re all right. we got one. they love flopping around. you don t even need a net.
you need help or you got it? look at that, she s got it. she s got it. you want to build on momentum. you want people to tell other people they had a great experience. come on down. it s my birthday and i was going to take the day off but i love doing this every year. and enthusiasm definitely helps especially with some pieces of debris like this old rusty buoy. the old shell technique is probably not going to work. you will help hold the motor so when we go to tip the boat this doesn t slide away. ever driven a motorbike, unicycle, tricycle. yeah. perfect. counting on you. one, two, three. give it up for emerson, folks. really holding it together
does and has fun doing it and everybody wants to be apart of it. we ll go into the o sir, i know you want to hug her. go ahead. unbelievable. when you re doing clean up, you want to make it safe, memorable, and fun. you can mix those three things, you ve got a good deal. once volunteers are settled into work boats, chad likes to encourage a little friendly competition. we want to create boat envy like i wish i was in that boat, those guys are having a good time. want to go chuck norris, that s code word. you guys yell, scream, high 5 each other like we re having the time of our lives and we follow it up with laughter. guess who i saw when i was scouting, chuck norris!