Photo by Justin Shuck.
A report from the conservancy that advocates for a clean and safe Potomac River shows that, while improvements are being made, the waterway is being threatened by aging sewer infrastructure, a loss of healthy forests, sprawl and Donald Trump’s golf course.
The Potomac Conservancy’s State of the Nation’s River report breaks down the threat by rural, urban and suburban. In rural areas of Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia — where streams are in overall good health — a “loss of healthy forests and stream buffer” and farm runoff (fertilizer, animal waste) threatens D.C.’s drinking water.
Encroaching sprawl threatens to destroy the forests that produce the cleanest waters in our region. Forests capture and filter water, stabilize stream banks, control flooding, and provide habitat for wildlife. Development pressure propels forest loss at 100 acres per day in the Chesapeake Bay region, and models confirm forests in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia are highly vulnerable to development.
Sprawl in Maryland and Virginia’s suburban areas, where streams are in moderate condition, is leading to a “rapid loss” of farmland and forests and a huge increase in impervious surface cover like asphalt and concrete.
New office buildings, subdivisions, streets, and parking lots eat away forest and cropland, weakening the capacity of the land to absorb rainwater and purify local waters. In turn, streams and rivers are increasingly overwhelmed by polluted runoff — excess rainwater that carries toxins, chemicals, and sediment into waterways.
This, according to the report, is most acutely seen in Loudon and Frederick Counties. More than 400 trees were cleared along the Potomac River to make way for the Trump National Golf Course in Sterling, as Washingtonian highlighted, leaving the area without trees to filter groundwater.
Again sewer infrastructure in D.C., where the streams are in poor health, leads to leaks and overflows that “dump 600 million gallons of diluted raw sewage into the Potomac and 1.5 billion gallons into the Anacostia” every year.
The report highlights successes in all three types of areas, including D.C.’s participation in the Clean Rivers Project.
