News : AmeriCorps Maple teams spend day in Vinton before leaving on 8-week projects

AmeriCorps Maple Unit members work along the Cedar River in Vinton Wednesday.

Other Maple Unit members spent the morning in the Community Youth Garden, weeding sweet corn

AmeriCorps member Julie Slivka trims a tree along the Cedar River.

Maple members worked to build a retaining wall near the lift station near Veterans Park.

The members removed weeds and trimmed trees along the river, working with Parks & Rec staff.

Maple Unit AmeriCorps members prepare bricks for the retaining wall.

One team in the Maple unit will spend the next eight weeks living on a boat on the Mississippi River, and helping with improvements to the National Mississippi River Museum. Others will be traveling to other states for a variety of projects.

But on Wednesday, Vinton reaped another day of benefitting as the host city for the North Central AmeriCorps NCCC campus.

Four teams from the Maple Unit spent the morning working along the Cedar River and in the Community Youth Garden, improving the river bank area and weeding the sweet corn patch. Another group worked on the retaining wall around the sewer lift station, where a concrete flood wall was recently built. The project wll protect the facility from future flooding, as well as improve its appearance. An early AmeriCorps team built the Veterans Park area near the lift station.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, many of those Maple members walked throughout Vinton, asking residents questions for a survey about the city sewer system.