Meet our new Greencorps Member (2021-22)

Hello! My name is Alanna (she/her) and I am a 2021-22 GreenCorps member serving with Mississippi Park Connection. 

I’m originally from Laramie, Wyoming, which shares a name with the river that flows through the western side of town. It provides the largest source of drinking water and is a favorite spot for dog-walkers, fly-fishers, and science teachers interested in outdoor learning. A path runs along its bank before wandering into a mile-long loop that encircles thousands of young cottonwood and willow trees. These trees are helping break down contaminants left behind by a Union Pacific railroad tie-treating facility that landed the area on the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of Superfund sites. The Upstream of Laramie, some of the river gets diverted through a mountain tunnel and from one river basin to another. Wyoming sued Colorado over the tunnel in the early 1900s in a conflict that sounds pretty typical for water in the American West. But tunnel or no tunnel, whatever water is still flowing eventually joins the Mississippi. 

I moved to Minneapolis this past summer from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, another riverside city where I lived for a year and spent much of my free time hanging around a mile-wide stretch of the Susquehanna. It kept me grounded and entertained, seeing the river change through the seasons and the variety of ways people enjoyed a shared space: posting up in lawn chairs for a card game, climbing over debris after a big winter storm, fishing, painting, paddling, and so on. All this reliance on the river also worried clean water advocates who monitor its regularly unsafe levels of bacteria and who are urging leaders to address stormwater and sewage pollution. Looking back, I wish I’d paid more attention to the issue or searched harder for ways to help. 

I have a B.S. in agroecology and environment and natural resources and an M.A. in journalism. I love learning about the stories rivers carry and the role they play in people’s connections to place.  And I’m excited to join MPC staff and volunteers in taking action to care for this famous river via its floodplain forests and prairies.