Good morning, D.C. The federal government is observing Veteran's Day today, which means Washington is much quieter than normal this morning. The chilly, wet weather certainly isn't helping make the work day, for those of us who are at our desks, any more inviting. Keep in mind that post offices, banks, schools and local government offices are closed for the day as well. Coal Train Clean-up Continues: Workers are still out cleaning up the site......

The Associated Press is reporting that seven cars of a freight train have derailed over the Anacostia River. No injuries have been reported. Six of the seven cars are in the river, and another is hanging off the trestle. Coal and some hydraulic fluid and oil ended up in the river, but the fire department says it's been contained. We'll update again when we learn more. UPDATE 4:45 p.m. Thanks to an anonymous reader......

>> The District's poverty rate is the highest in nearly a decade, and the employment rate for African American adults is at a 20-year low. [WaPo] >> ACK! OMG! The Hair! The Hair! Blood on the Hair! [Princess Sparklepony] >> bam! smack!@ Pow! [craigslist] >> WASA says it has repaired the two holes that were leaking raw sewage into the Anacostia River. [WaPo] >> Adam Clampitt has filed papers to run as an independent......

The Anacostia River, which has been blamed for altering the gender of fish and producing a funky smell, just got funkier. The Post is reporting that raw sewage is flowing into the Anacostia River from a leak in a major sewer line that carries untreated waste from a pumping station in Southeast Washington, D.C. Thanks, WASA! The cause and size of the leak was not immediately known, and WASA's chief engineer claimed it was the......

Morning, Washington. We hope you were out enjoying the fantastic weather, especially since the environment has been front and center in the news this weekend. As you must have heard, our former Vice President turned Global Warming Guru had to shove over the Oscar on his mantle to make space for half of a Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe after the news you were inspired to go check out the 20 amazing houses built on the......

Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues. The Washington Highlands neighborhood of the District of Columbia is terra incognita for many Washingtonians. Tucked up against the District’s southeastern border with Maryland’s Prince George’s County, the area is walled off from the rest of the city by Oxon Run Park, the Anacostia Freeway, Bolling Air Force Base, and the Anacostia River, not to mention the yawning gap between its economic......

Tom Knott: Once again, Tom Knott has managed to take what seems to be an isolated incident and turn it into evidence that liberalism of any sort is just evil. This week, Knott recounts the badly-handled trial of a Liberian immigrant accused of raping a seven-year-old girl in Montgomery County. Due to some bad decision by the trial judge, the charges were eventually dropped, though the county has stated that it will appeal. Regardless, it's......

After two long months of being shut completely for a major overhaul, the Frederick Douglass Bridge, aka the South Capitol Street Bridge, finally reopened to commuters this morning. DDOT actually reopened the Anacostia River crossing one week ahead of schedule overnight. When was the last time you remember a major construction project being finished early? Overall, it looks like the strategy to close the bridge completely, despite its inconveniences, was a good one. By......

We kid. Kind of. According to the Washington Business Journal, the Uline Ice Arena and the surrounding area may be the next frontier in development in the District. The arena, which is just north of Union Station and hosted the first Beatles concert in the U.S. in 1964, is being looked at by developer Douglas Jemal as the anchor for a new entertainment district along the lines of the popular East End/Verizon Center area. While......

Coming in on the closing days for the Nats at RFK, everyone seems to be bracing for what the new stadium in Southeast and the surrounding area will have to offer. As the Post detailed earlier this week, huge chunks of land in Southeast and Southwest are slated for development, creating the potential of a new and vibrant Anacostia River waterfront in the coming years -- much of it centered around the $611 million stadium.......

When this photo popped in the DCist Flickr Group, I assumed that epmd had gone on a trip out west somewhere — Texas, Utah, something like that. But no, this is our very own Anacostia River! As furcafe notes in the comments, it looks like one of those natural history museum dioramas. We almost expect to see pronghorns having a drink. And adding to the wackiness, the shot was taken by a camera from......

Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues. For much of the past year, this column has taken a hard look at many aspects of District life, from crime and schools, to transportation planning and development, to the uneven distribution of growth in the city, and found them wanting. It’s never difficult to be critical of the way things are done in the District, and yet there are obviously many......

In case you missed the news yesterday, the Washington Post has devoted an extraordinary amount of front page column inches to the record breaking temperatures D.C. saw yesterday. At 12:05 p.m. on Wednesday, the temperature hit 102 degrees at Reagan National Airport, according to the National Weather Service, breaking the previous all time high record for Aug. 8, of 101 degrees, set in 1930. The oppressive heat also had a number of other newsworthy......

Yes, you heard it here first -- the District's pro soccer team might be moving out to Loudoun County. Or Baltimore. Anywhere but here. Why? The stadium, of course. D.C. United had long ago requested the rights to build a stadium at Poplar Point, an unused stretch of federal land along the Anacostia River. But, unlike the publicly financed $611-million baseball stadium it would sit across from, D.C. United owner Victor A. MacFarlane promised to......

Exciting news this fine morning for the many Washingtonians who draw their paychecks from the USDA — you may still be paid after you die. The Post reports that the The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributed $1.1 billion over seven years to the estates or companies of dead people, though granted, they were actually all farmers instead of government employees. Now we just have to figure out the best way to pretend to be a......

Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues. I'll admit, it isn’t easy for me to talk about crime in the District with many of my friends, particularly those who live in the suburbs or outside the metro area entirely. In the minds of those who don’t often visit, Washington is still the murder capital of the United States, still caught in crack wars, still a place into which one......

Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues. The news came as absolutely no surprise to most observers of the city of Washington, but it still managed to produce banner headlines and an outbreak of hand wringing. Which, I suppose, should also have been no surprise, in a city where issues of race and income lade every public policy discussion. Earlier this week, the Census Bureau released new data on......

This weekend, as Washingtonians celebrated Earth Day with Anacostia River cleanups and tree plantings at the National Zoo, the Post highlighted the Capitol Power Plant, a coal-burning blight to Southeast. Thanks to Senators Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the familiar smokestacks continue to burn coal in the heart of the District, a clear violation of the Clean Air Act. In 2000, when officials wanted to stop using the dirtiest of fossil fuels, the......

Good morning, Washington. As you might imagine, the news is still dominated by coverage of the tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech on Monday. Many of the shooter's writings have been found and are being pored over; with classes canceled for the week and many students heading home, it seems likely that today's news cycle will focus on the killer and his motives. Governor Kaine has also ordered an independent investigation into the school's......

Chad Pregracke's excellent new book, From the Bottom Up, is a young man's memoir about cleaning up rivers, but it's also a powerful bildungsroman navigating a clash of ancient and modern worlds. Pregracke used to work full days walking along the bottom of the Mississippi river breathing out of a hose and picking up mussels. This job paid well for a teenager and had the added benefit of terrifying his mother. One day he got......

For months, there have been virtually no developments in United's attempts to build a soccer-specific stadium at Poplar Point, east of the Anacostia River. That changed yesterday, when Steve Goff's indispensible Soccer Insider ran a post announcing a potential roadblock to stadium development. Given the abundance of Goff's own reporting on the blog, we were surprised when he went and posted a press release in its entirety. The "press release" was titled in forboding capital......

Good morning, Washington. Need something to warm your funny bone (or at least your sense of outrage) on this appropriately cold winter morning? Well, look no further that the hijinks of Virginia's legislators. We thought that Virgil Goode's silly attacks on Rep. Keith Ellison were all the entertainment that the commonwealth was likely to offer in the short term. But, as NBC4 reports, state representative Frank Hargrove has come to the rescue, committing two enormous......

>> Soon-to-be Mayor Fenty has named Brian K. Lee as interim fire chief and attorney Matthew Cutts to chair the Sports and Entertainment Commission, as well as three mayoral appointments to the D.C. Board of Education: Laura McGiffert Slover, Tonya Vidal Kinlow, and Herb Scott. [WaPo] >> The Yellow Line extension is Coming! The Yellow Line is extension is coming! On Sunday. [AP via WTOP] >> Eric Schaeffer of Signature Theater reveals the wild partying......

Many residents in eastern Capitol Hill have been kept awake the last couple nights. A pulsating collision noise, followed by a loud metallic echo, has been ringing throughout the neighborhood at all hours of the day and night. We heard the sound going strong on Saturday night; others reported it stopped in the wee hours of the morning, only to start again at around 4:30 a.m., continuing more or less uninterrupted until 11 p.m. Bright......

Mayor-Elect Adrian Fenty’s most celebrated quality is his rigor for getting the small things done. Ward 4 supporters tell tales of the Councilman as Blackberry-brandishing musketeer, sweeping in to remedy urgent street repairs and the like. By contrast, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams’ supporters have always heralded his ability to dream big. Details be damned, he’s the guy with the grand vision: a growing, vibrant city; attractive to businesses and middle class residents, and with enough......

We've all seen the signs around the District -- by city law, pedestrians in crosswalks without crossing signals have the right of way. But will we ever get caught zooming through intersections while pedestrians try to cross? According to the Post, we just might. Provoked by the 10 pedestrian deaths so far this year, police have started going undercover to enforce the District's pedestrian laws, often to the chagrin of city drivers oblivious to......

Pinpointing development patterns in a growing urban area is not an exact science. If it were, no one would ever go belly up after betting on a hip neighborhood for their new restaurant or investment property, and we wouldn't have to argue about what value a baseball stadium might or might not bring to the city. We can identify a couple of general rules, however. For instance, in a rapidly growing, quickly congesting city, a......

For all the talk of how valuable the land along the Potomac River in Georgetown is, little has been done with it. That's now changing. The Georgetown Current is reporting today that the long-awaited nine acre Georgetown Waterfront Park is finally becoming a reality, with bulldozers starting to tear apart the parking lot that has to date blocked access to what could otherwise be spectacular river views. The park, which over its 25 years on......

D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams seems to have been taken aback by "An Inconvenient Truth," the new movie detailing Al Gore's tireless fight against global warming. In a press release dated June 2, Williams mentions the movie alongside a plea for residents to do whatever they can to prevent global warming. Reads the release: “The best time to act is now,” said Mayor Williams. “Global warming is one of the most dire threats we face. Everyone......

The D.C. Jail -- officially known as the Central Detention Facility -- stands sandwiched into a corner on the easternmost edge of Capitol Hill. Located on Reservation 13 alongside the old D.C. General Hospital, it is bordered on one side by the Anacostia River waterfront, on another side by the historic Congressional Cemetery, on a third side by 19th Street, standing directly across from a quiet and picturesque residential neighborhood. Neighborhood residents -- this DCist......