Photo by mosley.brian.A report released today by advocacy group DC Appleseed calls the Anacostia River “one of the most polluted waterways in the nation,” and suggests, among several other things, that cleaning it up will require the work of pretty much every jurisdiction you can imagine.
“A New Day for the Anacostia: A National Model for Urban Revitalization” isn’t shy about spreading around the blame — everyone, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the District government to private developers get a mouthful. (The feds, unsurprisingly, decided to take their whoopin’ quietly.) But it’s hard to really blame DC Appleseed for the tongue-lashing when you read about the current condition of the river:
The Anacostia is one of the most polluted waterways in the nation. It is laden with trash, debris, oil and grease, sediment, bacteria, nutrients, and toxic chemicals. It is not safe for swimming or fishing. In some places, the Anacostia River is unattractive and foul-smelling. … Stormwater falls on impervious surfaces like roofs, roads, driveways, sidewalks, and parking lots, picking up trash, oil, bacteria,and other pollutants. Polluted stormwater then runs directly into the Anacostia and its streams or into sewers thatdischarge directly into waterways. … [M]oderate and heavy rainfalls exceed the capacity of combined sewers, causing them to overfow and dump a mixture of polluted stormwater and raw sewage into the Anacostia. Combined sewer overflows contribute to the Anacostia’s high bacteria levels, which prevent the River from being safe for swimming.
Yuck. (And to think, I didn’t even excerpt the section on “Legacy toxics from historic sources.”) The entire report can be read below.
