had Pregracke remembers the afternoon he looked out onto the Mississippi River and saw garbage everywhere -- tires lodged in the banks, appliances stuck in the mud, Styrofoam wedged into trees. So one day, he pushed off alone in his 20-foot aluminum boat, determined to clean up a couple hundred miles of his favorite river.

At first, people thought he was nuts, and Pregracke's requests for funding were routinely rejected. But after months of steady work, a local newspaper wrote a story about him, and then the Alcoa Corporation gave him $9,000. A few garbage companies even agreed to haul the trash for free.

Six years later, Pregracke, now 28, has made a career out of removing junk from America's rivers. "There's nothing else I'd rather be doing," he says. Pregracke's nonprofit, Living Lands and Water, now has corporate sponsors, five employees, four barges, two large cranes, and a steady stream of volunteers. From the Mississippi, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, and Rock rivers, he's hauled (to date) 9,000 tires, 700 refrigerators, 600 propane tanks, a 1970 Ford van, and five sunken houseboats. He's been featured in national magazines and even traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa, for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, but most days he's out there on one of America's rivers, leading a cleanup. So far two million pounds of garbage, and counting.
-- Lee Nelson