LAKE DELTON, Wis. -- It's been one week of cleanup on the Wisconsin River and volunteers and crews are 10 percent done.

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Department of Natural Resources officials said low water on the river is slowing the work.

"It keeps going down so for our boats everything takes a lot longer," said Chad Pregracke co-founder of Living Lands And Waters, the organization doing the clean-up work. "On the positive side more stuff is exposed for us to get, so I guess it works both ways."

On Friday, crews were working on site 84, a site with a substantial portion of a house left in tact, reported WISC-TV.

"It's the roofs, the trusses, the 2x4s, the electrical box and electrical wires and the structure itself," explained Living Lands crew member Tammy Becker. "It gets caught up in a log jam so it's all mangled."

Crews have removed 30,000 pounds of debris since Monday, all by hand.

"You've got to clip a lot of wires," said Pregracke. "It's kind of all held together by the internal wiring. And board by board, piece by piece, piece of carpet or whatever it is we load up the boats one by one."

Then the large boats are pushed back to shore.

There's no option of running the motor because the water is too shallow.

"It's about a foot and a half, if that, by the debris," said one volunteer.

DNR experts said six more inches on the river would be helpful, reported WISC-TV.

"We really need all the water we can get whether it's rain or water from the upper reservoirs," said DNR project manager Ted Amman.

"We need rain but we don't need 14 inches in two days or something like that," said Amman.

Crews say that every once in a while the debris will yield a clue as to what it was before the floods.

"We just found a checkbook," said Pregracke. "It's kind of weird to pick up pieces of people's lives."

"This stuff (roofing trusses) doesn't mean much until you see those little photographs, see a little bottle of perfume, a little pink shoe about this long or somebody's slippers," said Amman. "Over here we had this little kangaroo, those things remind you that it's husbands, wives and children involved."

"These are their homes," said Amman. "It's quite a catastrophic loss for them."

Amman said personal items like stuffed animals, photographs, even a personalized mouse pad, found on Friday, will be given to the local police department so the items can be returned to families.

Living Lands And Waters is also seeking between five and 10 volunteers daily until the project is complete. Anyone interested can sign up online or call (309) 236-0725.