Posts about Anacostia River

According to DC Water's most recent employment report, 85 employees on DC Water projects live in North Carolina, more than the 63 employees who live in Wards 7 and 8. It's time to seriously consider how we get the most bang for our collective buck: clean rivers and green jobs.

Reducing and ultimately eliminating sewage overflows into our rivers is the primary focus of the Clean Rivers Project, but it doesn't have to be the only return we see on this massive investment of ratepayer money. With political will and imagination, we could use these billions of dollars to create thousands of living wage green jobs and spur green neighborhood revitalization across the city as well.

Late last year, DC Water entered into a preliminary partnership agreement with the EPA to explore green infrastructure as an alternative to the current big-tunnel approach. Solutions could include rain gardens, green roofs, and pervious pavers, which unlike traditional pavement allows water to filter through to the ground below.

This could create thousands of living wage, career-track jobs digging rain gardens, planting trees and maintaining green roofs. Our initial research suggests that investing $40 million a year in green infrastructure could create more than 300 living wage jobs.

DC Water could divert hundreds of millions of dollars into green infrastructure over the next 12 years. These green jobs would go a long way to dealing with stubborn unemployment numbers in wards 5, 7, and 8 and create new tax revenue for the city.

However, these green jobs won't reach unemployed DC residents unless the leaders at DC Water make it a priority. We need an organized base of ratepayers, job-seekers, businesses and environmentalists holding city leaders accountable for training and preparing unemployed DC workers for these green jobs and holding contractors and DC Water and its contractors accountable for hiring them.

Focusing on green job creation in the Clean Rivers Project will also broaden public support for green infrastructure—public support that can make sure green infrastructure projects get done. DC Water will inevitably face hurdles navigating DC's maze of local, federal and private land to install hundreds of acres of green infrastructure. They will need long-term city-wide resident buy-in to hold local and federal government and agencies accountable for working together to fund, build, and maintain these projects.

With political will, green infrastructure can be a viable solution to our stormwater problems. Our organization, the Washington Interfaith Network, a local citizen power organization made up of faith, labor and community based organizations, is building a citywide coalition supporting green infrastructure in the Clean Rivers Project. We would like it to include a clear comprehensive plan for green job creation and neighborhood revitalization along with river restoration.

On Earth Day 2013, we will gather 800 neighborhood leaders at Temple Sinai, next to Rock Creek Park, with officials from DC Water and City Council to make public commitments for creating such a plan in the next six months. With $2.6 billion in debt to pay back, we can't afford to do otherwise.

The meeting is tonight, Thursday, April 11 (or last night for those reading the daily email), 6-8 pm at the Carnegie Library in Mount Vernon Square, L'Enfant Map Room.

Learn about forts: BF Cooling and Gary Thompson, founders of an effort to preserve DC's civil war circle of forts, will give a talk about the forts and their history on Monday, April 15, 7-8:45 pm at the Tenley-Friendship Library.

Get parking right: Next Wednesday, the Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG) is hosting national parking expert Jeff Tumlin to talk about ways cities are fix parking policy to match supply and demand and build a system that works better for everyone. Sam Zimbabwe, DDOT planning head, will talk about how DC might use Tumlin's ideas.

The forum is April 17 at the Center for American Progress, 1333 H St. NW. There are refreshments at 6 and then the program from 6:30-8:30. RSVP here before it fills up!

Be green around Earth Day: Saturday, April 20 is Earth Day, and there are a lot of great events to celebrate and learn more about how to help the environment. The Anacostia Watershed Society is having a cleanup and celebration, first helping clean up the river at 20 sites from 9 am to noon, followed by a celebration at Bladensburg Waterfront Park.

The Town of Vienna is having a Green Expo on Thursday, April 18, 6:30-9 pm to show off ways to make your own home and life more sustainable, while Loudoun is having a festival on Sunday, April 28th.

Be happy in Arlington: CSG and the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization are cosponsoring a happy hour in Arlington on Monday, April 22 from 6:30-8:30 pm at William Jeffrey's Tavern, 2301 Columbia Pike. Ask questions about what's going on down the Pike or just meet people and have fun!

Improve the public realm: That same day, NCPC is hosting a speaker from London, Helen Marriage, to discuss ways that city is making its public spaces better. A panel afterward will talk about how some of the ideas could come to DC. That's also 6:30-8:30 pm on Monday, April 22 at NCPC, 401 9th Street NW, Suite 500 North.

The RAC is listening: The WMATA Riders' Advisory Council wants to hear from more riders, especially about how upcoming Silver Line service and changes to buses and trains will affect riders. To that end, they're holding listening sessions outside WMATA HQ, starting with one on April 24, 6:30 pm in the Charles Houston Rec Center, 901 Wythe Street in Alexandria near Braddock Road Metro.

Walk and tour: CSG's spring walking tour series kicks off April 27 with a tour of White Flint, followed by 14th Street, Fairfax's Route 1, Wheaton, and Fort Totten in May and June. Space is limited, so RSVP for your favorite tour now!

How do you refuse an elderly neighbor on food stamps, when she asks you to bring back a fish? Or if you've been unemployed for a while, but need to feed your family, how do you resist a free, local meal? If you're hungry today, is it worth the risk that the chemicals in the fish might cause cancer in 20 years?

Many fishermen are in fact aware that the river is polluted and that the fish reflect that. They have informal methods for screening the fish, and many will throw back a fish with lesions, cloudy eyes, or other outward signs of sickness. But those methods are further evidence that the fishermen think the fish are only contaminated on the outside, and don't address the PCBs hiding in the fatty tissue within.

Even if they don't plan to eat the fish themselves, the pleas of a neighbor in need or a passing child are irresistible. The fishermen feel like they have helped in their generosity.

Obviously the long-term solution is to clean up the river. We should be able to paddle, fish, and even swim in the river without worrying about damaging our health. Cleaning up the six legacy toxic sites and reducing polluted stormwater runoff (which carries toxins from roads, parking lots, and other hard surfaces) will go a long way.

In the meantime, we need to do more to educate everyone, and particularly at-risk groups like women of childbearing age, about the condition of the river and the risks of consuming its fish. It is also incumbent on leaders in DC and Maryland to improve access to other healthy food. Generally speaking, fish is a very healthy protein. Could the DC area support aquaculture, perhaps in a community-supported model?

AWS and its partners will be holding a community meeting in Ward 7 in early December to answer questions about the research and begin the discussion of how we solve the problem. We hope councilmembers and community leaders will come and pledge to be part of the solution.

Inside, the boats have a double row of seats and a crew of 2 or 3. There are no bathrooms, and no vending.

Shortly after casting off from Washington Harbor there are great views of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom.

Thanks to calm water and shoreline trails, the river and its banks are multi-modal.

The Roosevelt Bridge is the first of many that the ferry passes under.

Between Roosevelt and Memorial bridges, the monuments of the National Mall are visible.

Memorial Bridge is the most ornate of Washington's Potomac bridges.

Monuments continue to be visible as the ferry passes West Potomac Park.

The 14th Street Bridge looks very plain.

Metrorail's Yellow Line bridge is even plainer.

Last and oldest of the 14th Street Bridge cluster, the Long Bridge looks ancient compared to any other on the river.

After crossing below Long Bridge, East Potomac Park becomes visible on the east bank, while Crystal City and National Airport dominate the west bank.

Looking back upstream, Rosslyn, the National Cathedral, and the Washington Monument are prominent.

At Hains Point the ferry turns to go up the Anacostia River.

Looking up the Anacostia, the Frederick Douglass Bridge rises, and the baseball stadium comes into view.

Yards Park becomes visible beneath Douglass Bridge.

The stadium looms large above the river.

Finally, the ferry docks at Diamond Teague Park, just downstream from Navy Yard.

For even more photos of the ride, view the complete Flickr set.

Completing this trail network is exciting for a lot of different reasons.

It connects DC and Maryland, uniting our communities. Once complete, the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail will connect 16 different waterfront communities in DC and Maryland.

Not only will the continuous trail create recreation opportunities, but it creates a potential bike commuter route. For example, if a cyclist wants to bike from the Sousa Bridge (at Pennsylvania Ave SE) to the Bladensburg Waterfront today it would require a daunting excursion through local roads, including biking on Bladensburg Road.

It advances local and regional transportation goals. In anticipation of the transportation challenges that come with the DC region's expected population and job growth, local and regional governments have developed aggressive goals to facilitate alternative modes of transportation. For example, the Region Forward Plan seeks to create a "transportation system that maximizes community connectivity and walkability, and minimizes ecological harm to the Region and world beyond." Completing the ART system creates a safe environment for pedestrians and cyclists, which moves the Region Forward Plan closer to fruition.

It gives some Ward 7 neighborhoods access to parkland. As exciting as it is to think that people from all over the metro area will rediscover the Anacostia River, one of the best outcomes of this new trail segment is the access it will provide for the Ward 7 communities east of the river, but west of DC-295, to park lands and the river. (Note: the Kingman Park neighborhood of Ward 7 is west of the river).

Ironically, the National Park Service ownership along the Anacostia effectively "walls off" the river for communities like Mayfair Mansions and Kenilworth-Parkside. The new trail will provide new access routes into the park lands from the communities that surround them. Residents who have suffered living along a polluted Anacostia should certainly be among the first to reap the rewards of a clean river.

One challenge that still remains is connecting the remaining local communities east of 295 to the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail. Even once completed, 295 still cuts of access to the majority of residents living in Ward 7 and Ward 8.

It provides access to a beautiful section of the Anacostia River that is currently reachable only from the water. The biggest challenge facing the Anacostia River restoration is countering widely held beliefs that the river is a dirty place to avoid.

Make no mistake, there's a lot of work left to be done before we have an Anacostia River that is safe for swimming and fishing. But even now it is a place of surprising beauty where people can walk, see wildlife, and seek solace in the heart of the city. This final trail segment will make these recreational uses possible in the most natural and hardest to access portion of the river.

Right now, at most a few hundred people enjoy this section of the river in any given year—rowers, kayakers, and others who can access the river by water. The new trail segment will take the number of people exposed to the beauty of the Anacostia River to tens of thousands yearly. More people that see and know the river means more people who care about its restoration.

The last several years have been unprecedented in terms of restoration progress, and we can consolidate and build on that momentum. We'll need to if we are to reach DDOE's goal of a swimmable and fishable river by 2032.

No neighborhood on either side of the Anacostia will have anywhere near the population density of Vancouver's Yaletown, whose towers exceed 30 stories tall (except in the unlikely event that a consensus builds to create La Défense on the Anacostia and allow tall towers at Poplar Point). But the Capitol Riverfront will still be a dense neighborhood by DC standards. The Navy Yard is a major employment center, and more jobs are coming to JBAB.

A lot of the riders of False Creek Ferries are tourists. We don't have one of the city's largest tourist attractions right on the river, at least not yet. Hop on-hop off tour buses do not come down to Near Southeast right now. However, Washington draws huge numbers of tourists. If we can draw tourists to the river, they could fill the ferries.

The National Capital Planning Commission often talks about where to put all of the memorials and museums that groups constantly want to build, but which can't possibly all fit on the Mall.

The Southwest Ecodistrict plan seeks to remake the L'Enfant Promenade into a pleasant place to walk with a significant museum at its end. Tour buses, like the Open Tops, do go to the end of the promenade. What if, instead of the Banneker Overlook being a dead-end excursion off the Mall, it becomes a jumping-off point to another Mall... the Water Mall?

The ferries would have to stretch a little farther than Vancouver's, but even the trip end-to-end shown here is only about 4½ route miles versus 3 for False Creek. The Park Service could place new museums and memorials in many spots in Anacostia Park and have plenty of room left over for recreation and nature.

The future Mall Circulators could have a stop at Banneker, and ultimately the streetcar could go to the Buzzard Point dock and the 11th Street Recreation Bridge, connecting directly to the ferries. The stops would be a short walk from L'Enfant Plaza, Navy Yard and Anacostia Metro stations.

Tour itineraries could suggest that families spend one day walking on the Land Mall and then one day cruising the Water Mall.

The ferries might not be able to run completely at a profit, given the lower population density along the Anacostia and the longer distance. But if the Water Mall becomes enough of a tourist attraction, who knows?

An operator stands on a platform in the center and drives the boat with a few joysticks and handles, while passengers sit around the edges. It operates a lot like a bus; in fact, the drivers even cruise past some of the docks and won't stop if nobody's waiting to get on or off.

The False Creek ferries only ply a route about 2 miles from end to end as the crow flies, or 3 route miles, zigzagging back and forth across the waterway.

Besides Granville Island and the science museum, they stop at a maritime museum, science museum, and a space museum with a planetarium and observatory. A stop in Stamps Landing takes you to a neighborhood with a lot of restaurants, and another, Yaletown, is a district with many new condo towers.

Each stop is only about 2-5 minutes apart, and costs $3.25 to $6.50 CAD depending on how far you go. The most popular route, the aquatic center to Granville Island, runs every 5 minutes from 7 am to 9 pm, or 10:30 pm in the summer. The other routes run every 15 minutes from about 9 am to 5-6 pm (depending on destination) in the winter and 7-9 pm during summer.

Best of all, the ferries actually operate completely self-sufficiently. In fact, there are 2 ferry companies that compete with one another!

Is this relevant to DC? It turns out that False Creek is about the size of the Anacostia:

While not very wide, the Anacostia is a mighty gulf separating two sides of the river. For a long time, there was little on the banks of the Anacostia, on either side. But that is changing. We already have the ballpark, and Yards Park. Buzzard Point could get a soccer stadium.

On the east, Poplar Point is slated for development, possibly including a boulevard from Anacostia Metro to the water's edge. Historic Anacostia is not far from the river. Plus, if DC builds the 11th Street Recreation Bridge, we could have a significant attraction right on the river.

A ferry bouncing back and forth across the river, with stops at all of these attractions, could bring the two sides closer together than ever before and make the water a public space. These 7 stops cover a route about 2 miles long, or about the same length as the part of the the False Creek Ferries route network east of Granville Island.

The Buzzard Point stop would be near a future soccer stadium and the Poplar Point stop at the end of a retail-lined avenue leading to Anacostia Metro. A stop at the 11th Street recreation bridge would connect directly to the streetcar and to all of the activities on the bridge, as well as being a short walk to Historic Anacostia.

A set of office buildings is going in the triangle east of the 11th Street Bridge and south of the freeway, and once the freeway segment to Barney Circle gets turned into a boulevard, there could be a pedestrian connection from the water up to Capitol Hill and Potomac Avenue Metro. Sadly, the CSX railroad bridge is too low for boats to travel under, so the ferries couldn't reach Hill East.

None of this precludes other types of ferries, like the longer-distance water taxis from places like Alexandria or Georgetown, or even farther south in Virginia, if those make sense. Those would use larger boats, running much less often.

Could this ferry system work here? I'll give my take in Part 2. Meanwhile, what do you think?

Hutchinson writes that a "desire for country living, fresh water, and relief from the heat" was the leading attraction of life across the riverbed. "Economic conditions beyond the control of the developers plagued the enterprise. In the early 1850s the Navy curtailed ship building at the Washington Navy Yard, and many skilled workers were unemployed." As a result, Hutchinson explains, the lots of old Uniontown gained houses at a rate of only 4 per year.

A Navy lieutenant brings the round-shot and prosperity

But in January 1847, Navy Lieutenant John Dahlgren arrived at the Washington Navy Yard, to lead the manufacturing of rockets recently developed by British inventor William Hale, according to Round-shot to Rockets; A history of the Washington Navy Yard and U.S. Naval Gun Factory. By April Dalhgren was leading the Bureau or Ordnance and had received the Navy's approval for a "new and larger workshop."

Round-Shot says:

Because there was not sufficient level ground available for ranging the guns, [Dahlgren] proposed to use the river. No such experiment for accurate results had been previously tried over the water, and it became necessary to develop a method by which the splash made by the fall of the shot might be precisely located. [Dahlgren] quickly devised by a system of triangulation. The Dahlgren test battery at the Navy Yard came thereby into existence.

In May 1854 the Navy Yard erected a new ordnance building 250 feet long and on October 25, 1854 "the furnace in the new foundry was lighted off for the first time." Soon thereafter cannon balls began landing in the Eastern Branch. With a splash in the old man river, Uniontown got its start.

According to news stories and official reports of the Secretary of the Navy, by 1855 the Washington Navy Yard's workforce was upwards of 1,100. The most preeminent positions were filled by 300 ship-carpenters, 200 machinists, 150 blacksmiths, 50 joiners, 60 plumbers and camboose makers, more than 100 iron and brass foundry workers, 85 civil engineers, and 85 laborers.

In April 1860, before Abraham Lincoln's election, the Baltimore Sun took notice of the city's first suburban development that sprung up to house the new workers that Dahlgren's innovations required.

Some time since The Sun noticed that within the last few years a new and flourishing neighborhood had sprung up on the margin of the Eastern Branch, immediately opposite the Navy Yard. For reasons that place is known and recognised [sic] as "Uniontown."

The story also describes the laying of a corner-stone for a new Methodist Episcopal Church on land described as being on "three of the most eligible lots" donated by developers John Fox and John Van Hook.

A little more than a year later, as troops flooded into the city on the verge of Civil War, the Seventy-first New York gave a matinee concert before a sizable and distinguished crowd, according to Margaret Leech's Pulitzer Prize-winning Reveille in Washington. "One of the great cast-iron Dahlgren guns was fired at targets in the river, and the Seventy-first New York marched in dress parade."

Removing tolls brings east of the river closer

The other dynamic that made Uniontown's development possible was removing tolls from the Navy Yard Bridge.

According to journalist-researcher Steve Ackerman, writing for the Surratt House Museum, "Over time, Maryland's legislature stridently prodded Congress to remove the tolls on the Eastern Branch bridges, to benefit 'persons who frequent the markets of Washington and Georgetown, for the sale of their productions' by removing the 'heavy tax in the form of bridge tolls on their produce'" as an 1844 resolution in the Maryland legislature stated. In 1852 Congress bought the bridge and removed the tolls, freeing up back and forth movement for both merchants and residents.

As the area awaits residential and commercial revitalization, smart money reportedly has their eyes on Anacostia, invoking the area's history as a key selling point.

This article is adapted from the forthcoming Frederick Douglass' Washington: The Lion of Anacostia, to be published by The History Press on October 9th.

DC struggles with the causes and costs of stormwater runoff

Every time we get a torrential downpour in DC, the first thing I think about (other than why haven't I bought good rain boots yet?) is the incredible amount of pollution that will be flowing into our rivers and stream. This happens because of the amount of impervious surfaces in the District.

Impervious surfaces, or surfaces such as concrete, brick, and asphalt that are non-porous and do not allow rain to seep through them into the ground, make up 42% of the District's land area. This is typical in urban settings, but it means that rather than rainwater being absorbed by a grassy yard, field, or forest floor, it flows downhill, washing all of the filth accumulated on the ground into storm drains.

To make matters worse, about one-third of DC is served by a sewer system that combines both stormwater and sewage. This system also serves customers in parts of Maryland and Virginia. The sheer volume of stormwater runoff from this large, urbanized are is much greater than our system can handle.

As a result, when heavy storms happen the system must release overflow into our waterways before it has been treated, polluting Rock Creek, the Anacostia, and Potomac Rivers and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.

There is a plan in progress to add 3 sets of massive storage tunnels to our system. The first set, to serve the Anacostia River, is now under construction. The second two will serve the Potomac River and the Rock Creek system.

This program, called the Clean Rivers project, will cost DC Water $2.6 billion and is funded in part by the fastest growing component of your water bill: the Clean Rivers Impervious Area Charge (IAC). The IACs go up each year, most recently by 92%. Another 47$ increase is proposed for October 1.

District residents foot disproportionate share of the bill

The current fee structure put in place to address this issue disproportionately puts 93% of the burden on DC customers, with the customers in Maryland and Virginia paying only 7%.

Some might argue that these suburban jurisdictions should not have to pay into the Clean Rivers project to assist DC with the management of its own stormwater. However, there have been, and continue to be, major savings for these jurisdictions by virtue of being a part of our system, and it's completely appropriate to re-examine this arrangement under our current circumstances.

Furthermore, IACs apply only inside squares and lots, and not to impervious areas in DC's transportation rights of way. Yet the fact is that 47% of the impervious surfaces in DC are roads, streets, sidewalks, and alleys. While DC residents benefit heavily from them, suburban residents, businesses, commuters, and visitors get big benefits from them as well.

Additionally, there is currently no difference in the fee structure for residential customers and commercial customers. Commercial properties, such as office buildings, benefit disproportionately from the roads and sidewalks that employees, customers, and suppliers use to get there, and they additionally have the opportunity to disperse costs to their customers. It makes sense to have a slightly higher fee structure for them than, say, a single-family home.

Although DC Water has established a Customer Assistance Program (CAP) for low-income residential customers, that CAP does not apply to the IAC portion of the bill. Before the IACs started to increase so dramatically, bills under the CAP averaged about one-half of other residential bills.

Many of our residents in DC live on fixed incomes and would be deeply impacted by this type of increase in their water bills. In a recent letter, I urged DC Water to set a 50% discount for the IAC component of bills to CAP customers.

Reduce runoff instead of storing it

DC Water has been required by the EPA to build this new system of storage tunnels to manage stormwater runoff, and as it stands, DC customers will pay the bulk of the cost it takes to implement this new system. The desperately needed storage tunnel for the Anacostia runoff is being built and needs to be paid for.

Before construction begins on the remaining two storage tunnels, however, DC Water is hoping to persuade the EPA to re-examine the current requirements and instead allow for a plan involving the aggressive implementation of green infrastructure to reduce runoff altogether instead of storing it.

This would involve green roofs, permeable pavement and roads, and new trees and gardens. It would have the added benefit of creating jobs, improving air quality, adding green space to our communities, and creating subsidies for property owners to take individual action. That sounds a lot better to me than a couple of underground tunnels.

We can encourage the EPA to support DC Water's proposal by writing to EPA Regional Administrator Shawn Garvin. We also don't have to wait to make green improvements to our properties. The District Department of the Environment offers incentives to homeowners for green property enhancements through its Riversmart Program.

Runoff reduction strategies can be implemented incrementally, improve our streets and neighborhoods, and may even be more cost effective than stormwater storage infrastructure. Check it out. I'm looking into rain barrels for my home this week. Maybe after that I'll finally get those rain boots.