>> As you can see in this photo submitted to the DCist Photo Pool, the building that houses Ruff N’ Ready Furnishings, 1908 14th Street NW, has been condemned by city inspectors. The building was old and certainly not in great shape, though we’ve also heard rumors that the 911 call which prompted police and fire trucks to show up was reportedly made by a man well-known to the building’s residents as a habitual drug…

Hey D.C., how ya doin’? We’ve got some good news and some bad news for mother nature this morning, but it’s all good news for you. Just nine days away from the official start of winter, Washington will enjoy another day of temperatures near 60. Remember these days when you’re stomping through January snow. Potomac to Get Slightly Less Gross: Looks like the Army Corps of Engineers is finally getting around to meeting a 2003…

It’s shaping up to be a beautiful day here in Washington, with a high around 70 degrees and mostly sunny skies. Here’s hoping the great weather can brighten the days of Montgomery County election officials, who are reporting that they won’t have a final count of all provisional ballots in the county until sometime next week, thanks to mistakes which forced many early morning voters to cast the paper ballots. We know the idea that…

Good morning, Washington. It looks like the dreary weather of the last few days has cleared out – today will be partly cloudy with temperatures in the mid 50s with no rain expected through the weekend. Unfortunately the dry weather came just a bit too late for this year’s high heel race which nonetheless went forward last night in wet conditions. There are a few photos of the event already posted to DCist photos. Hearing…

The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority has some good news to report. After months of recovering from the lead-in-the-water scare, it appears that lead levels have fallen below acceptable levels for the first time in four years, the Post reports. A new chemical to help prevent antiquated lead service lines from leaching into the water system seems to be working. From the Post: The city’s water treatment plants, operated by the Army Corps of Engineers,…

We picked up this little tidbit via Laura Rozen’s blog, War and Piece. It seems that folks in a diplomat-heavy neighborhood in Upper Northwest are less than pleased that one of the chief architects — one Paul Wolfowitz — of the Iraq war is staging a very different sort of “invasion and occupation” in their neck o’ the woods, as the Post mentioned this past week. The reason? A not-so-secret romance with Arab feminist and…

There are two water-related stories of note: First, the Los Angeles Times reports of an authoritative study released by the National Research Council that has concluded that perchlorate (a chemical most often associated with the military, NASA and related contractors) poses “a health threat because it can interfere with the human thyroid gland, which controls how the brain develops in infancy.” That’s pretty straightforward. But the story gets a bit more complicated, when you consider…

We know there is lead in the water system. But it appears that fears over perchlorate leaking into the Dalecarlia Reservoir may intensify now that “a more refined test” showed that water in the Washington Aqueduct has the presence of the toxic chemical in it, the Post reports. But water officials say there is no cause for alarm as the level of the poison is not significant to pose a health risk. But this discovery…

More Water Woes: Perchlorate doesn’t sound like something you want in your drinking water. But the Post brings us an alert saying that the chemical “known to disrupt the thyroid gland and linked to hormonal dysfunction, developmental delays and infertility” has been found in groundwater near the Dalecarlia Reservoir in Upper Northwest. The Northwest Current newspaper has been all over the issue of World War I-era chemical armaments in the Spring Valley neighborhood and first…

The quiet, wooded Spring Valley neighborhood of Upper Northwest could be turning back to nature to battle an decades-old problem: chemical weapons poisoning. During World War II, Spring Valley and parts of the American University campus were used as testing ground for chemical weapons and munitions. The Post reports that the Army Corps of Engineers is using ferns — yes plain old ferns — to battle arsenic contamination that remains in the neighborhood. The Corps…