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Bringing the Anacostia Back

Anacostia: River of Contrasts

Anacostia Watershed Restoration Agreement

Environmental Information on the Web

By Merrill Leffler

It has been called Washington's "forgotten river." It has also been called a national disgrace. Mention of the Anacostia River brings up images of blight - floating trash, buried tires, chemical contamination, health advisories that warn against eating fish caught there. Those images hardly tell the whole story - while human abuse has plagued the river for nearly 200 years, human efforts have been underway recently to return the Anacostia to some measure of health.

The evidence of those efforts can be seen throughout the Anacostia system, a system which includes not only the eight-mile tidal river but its important tributaries - dozens of feeder streams and creeks that run through Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland. Kenilworth Marsh, a few miles south of the river's headwaters in Bladensburg, Maryland, is one proud example of reclamation. In the early '90s, the Army Corps of Engineers, working with the District of Columbia, the Metropolitan Council of Governments and the National Park Service, converted 32 acres of nearly-dead mudflats into verdant wetlands that are "humming with life," says Robert Boone, head of the Anacostia Watershed Society, an environmental organization that has helped catalyze citizen action and cleanup of the river.

There are scores of other examples, from shoreside tree plantings and stormwater projects that help minimize runoff to the removal of weirs and dams, which for decades have blocked spawning grounds for river herring, perch and other migratory fish. A recent project by the Army Corps and Prince George's County opened five miles of fish passages along sections of three tributary streams, helping fish past impediments constructed in the 1950s to control flooding in newly developed areas. According to Ira Palmer, Chief of Fisheries and Wildlife for the District of Columbia, "there have been significant improvements in the diversity and abundance of fish, waterfowl and turtles." Today, eight species of fish can be found in the tidal river, he says, compared with only three a decade ago.

Help for a Troubled River

Any hope for reclaiming the health of the tidal river depends on improving the water quality of its tributary waters - two-thirds of the Anacostia watershed lies within Montgomery and Prince George's counties. Both of these counties have been making significant efforts to improve the quality of water and habitat in the streams that feed the Anacostia. In fact, support for restoration of the Anacostia River started in 1987 when Prince George's and Montgomery Counties joined the District of Columbia, the State of Maryland and the Army Corps of Engineers in signing the Anacostia Watershed Restoration Agreement. This commitment is being reaffirmed by the same signatories in May 1999. In 1990, a Corps study identified two major causes of the river's degradation over the last century: the lack of environmental controls during the region's extensive urbanization, and what are now seen to be the harmful flood control methods of the Corps itself. It was this and subsequent reports, together with citizen activism, especially Boone's Anacostia Watershed Society, that drew increasing federal attention.

Based on a 1992 report by the Environmental Protection Agency that highlighted the extent of the Anacostia's pollution, President Clinton designated the river as one of seven ecosystems nationwide that required priority attention. Two years later, the Chesapeake Bay Program targeted the Anacostia, Baltimore Harbor and the Elizabeth River in Norfolk as the three most highly toxic regions in the Bay watershed and therefore requiring special treatment.

"If you flush a toilet in D.C. while it's raining, chances are it will end up in the Anacostia or the Potomac or Rock Creek."

While the Anacostia may seem unimportant compared with Baltimore Harbor and the Elizabeth River, two of the east coast's major ports, high levels of toxic compounds and the proximity of a dense human population make it a key cause for concern. Why now? Why was the Anacostia ignored for so long? Many believe the river's neglect derives from its course through low-income minority neighbohoods. Times are changing. An embarrassing public health hazard, the Anacostia has been designated as one of the most polluted rivers in the country and a stain on the image of the nation's capital.

The Burden of Rain

While rainfall feeds the Anacostia, it can also bring a poisonous diet. In a recent study to determine the effect that chemical contaminants and nutrients in stormwater runoff have on the Anacostia's water quality, David Velinsky and colleagues found that after "rainfalls of some six-tenths of an inch there is a significant effect." A researcher at the Patrick Center for Environmenal Research, part of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Velinsky reports that "total PCBs increased at many of the sampling stations, as did trace metals such as lead." Though it is difficult to pinpoint specific locations, Velinsky says, "the data indicate that the non-tidal watershed [the tributaries] provides a large input to the upper tidal waters within 24 hours of the rain, while runoff from the urban core of the District of Columbia is the source of contaminants to the lower river." This slug of pollutants occurs because stormwater drains go directly to the river and into "dual-use" pipes that also carry sewage to the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant.

In rainfalls of only a half-inch, says Ted Graham of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MCOG), the increased volume of stormwater entering the dual-use pipes can easily overwhelm delivery to the treatment plant. When such rainfalls occur - and they do on average 30 to 40 times a year - the system is designed to shunt raw sewage and stormwater from Blue Plains so that it can go to overflow pipes that discharge directly into the river.

As Robert Boone says caustically, "if you flush a toilet in D.C. while it's raining, chances are it will end up in the Anacostia or the Potomac or Rock Creek."

Dealing with problems from combined sewer overflows (or CSOs as they are commonly known) and stormwater drainage is a major challenge for Washington, D.C. as it is for all cities with antiquated sewers. Some 30 stormwater drains and six CSOs discharge into the lower Anacostia. The high density of the city's impervious surfaces fails to absorb rainwater or slow it down - quite the contrary: buildings, streets and parking lots act like sluiceways where fast-running water scours pollutants from land and streets, ferrying them into storm drains and into the river.

While there is no easy fix to the problem of combined sewer overflows in the District - projections for controlling them through new construction are estimated at more than $2 billion - a recent report from the Chesapeake Bay Program outlines a series of recommendations for short-term actions that could help improve the current system. They range from repairing malfunctioning equipment to ensuring that Federal agencies in the watershed are implementing pollution prevention requirements. Rebecca Hamner of EPA believes that 50 percent of the CSO flow could be controlled just by making needed repairs and upgrades to existing equipment.

Even if such short-term actions would reduce bacterial loads to the river, it is questionable whether those reductions could be nearly enough. Moreover, says Ted Graham, these technical "fixes" don't come to grips with the problem of stormwater runoff into the Anacostia and its tributaries. When engineers designed many of these waterways at the turn of the century, treatment wasn't an issue, says Graham. "They just moved the rain water into the river." It was assumed then that "dilution was the solution to pollution." We have known for some time now that this is hardly so. Contaminants eventually end up in the sediments and are passed through the food web, from bottom-dwelling organisms to fish such as perch, carp and catfish, which concentrate them. Frequent advisories warn against eating those fish because toxic concentrations can become too high.

Tributaries Critical to the Anacostia

Like all troubled coastal systems, many of the Anacostia's problems originate on the land, in the erosion of soils from farms and suburban areas, in the runoff of contaminants in stormwater and in the airborne pollutants that fall onto the watershed.

"One of the most continuing intractable problems is the legacy of land runoff from farming and urbanization," says MCOG's Graham. There has been major damage to riverine habitats which have been buried in contaminated sediments. And contaminants are continuing to accumulate, he says. This accumulation is a chronic condition of runoff, which picks up the lingering presence of PCBs, hydrocarbons and pesticides such as chlorodane (used to kill termites) from the streets.

There are estimates that 85 percent of the sediments from the Anacostia's tributaries are trapped in the tidal river - that is why controlling runoff from Montgomery and Prince George's counties, as well as the District, is so critical. Soils and contaminants that run into Indian Creek or Northwest Branch end up in the tidal Anacostia - the problem remains how to curtail this runoff, especially when so much land was developed with inadequate stormwater controls.

Land clearance, agriculture, housing and road development, flood control projects, all have changed hydrology - the way water flows off the land - and mostly for the worse. Trees and pastures slow runoff and filter pollutants before they enter tributary streams or the river. With the elimination of forests, first by agriculture in the eighteenth century and then by rapid urbanization, water has been running unimpeded directly into streams and carrying along whatever lies in its path.

"Our main emphasis is stream habitat restoration because the biggest problem in the Anacostia tributaries is the sheer volume and force of runoff."

How do you counter the problem of erosion and runoff, especially in highly developed areas? Cameron Wiegand in Montgomery County and Larry Coffman in Prince George's have become national leaders in developing innovative approaches to reversing the effects of stormwater runoff.

In Montgomery County, says Wiegand, "our main emphasis is stream habitat restoration because we feel that the biggest problem in the Anacostia tributaries is the sheer volume and force of runoff." To counteract this impact, he says, "we've been putting in wetlands, we've been cutting off storm drains and intercepting runoff by manmade wetlands and bleeding the water into the creeks more slowly. Our goal," he says, "is to make adjustments by recreating habitat that was lost, if it is possible to do that."

In Prince George's, says Coffman, our aim is to "mimic predevelopment characteristics of the watershed. We need to replicate those hydrological regimes throughout the watershed." While new developers must now meet stormwater regulations, he points out, those requirements don't exist for older development. "We have a huge watershed that is heavily developed, much of which was done without stormwater controls. We're dealing with a huge problem of retrofitting." What we need to do, says Coffman, is to slow water down enough to get more absorption and evaporation before it is discharged to the stream.

New developments can create ponds and dams to do this, he says, but developed areas have no room for such containment. We need to design site-specific approaches, he adds, approaches that are referred to as "low impact development."

"The traditional thought among sanitary engineers," says Allen Davis, a Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Maryland, "was to get water off the property as fast as possible. In low impact development, a key is to keep the water on the property as long as possible."

In one project, Davis worked with Coffman to construct a "bioretention system" in a parking lot at Beltway Plaza in Greenbelt, Maryland. While unknowing passerbys would see only lush growing plants and high grasses, this site-specific system is designed to slow water and filter pollutants. In such a system, says Davis, "if you can retain the water, organics such as gasoline, oil and petroleum will be broken down by bacteria and eventually metabolized into carbon dioxide, water and byproducts." If nitrogen and phosphorus coming off the soil flowed directly into the streams, they would promote algal growth and eventually deplete dissolved oxygen. In terrestrial plants, though, the more these nutrients are absorbed the more they can lead to better plant growth.

"When you embark on this kind of restoration effort, you have to be in it for the long haul."

The bioretention system in the Greenbelt parking lot creates an intermediate "treatment" before the remaining unabsorbed water drains into a sewer pipe. By the time the water does filter through, it has shed many of its pollutants, pollutants that would otherwise end up in a stream and eventually in the Anacostia. This parking lot project represents only one example, and a small one, of trying to "mimic predevelopment characteristics of the watershed," says Coffman.

Coffman believes that low impact technology can also be developed for cities like Washington. We have to think innovatively, he says. At a recent meeting of urban planners, he says, "people were saying there is nothing we can do in urban areas and we should just write them off." Coffman reacts strongly. There are numbers of innovative tacks you can take, he argues. Rooftop storage and rain gardens - using plants that grow well in slowly draining rainwater - are only a couple that can have a positive impact. "The combined sewer overflow problem itself can be solved by using low impact development approaches," he says, "to reduce the frequency of discharges to storm drains."

How successful are these projects in reducing the sediment load to the Anacostia? It is extremely difficult to get a firm measure, says Wiegand. "Our streams have been impacted by more than two centuries of agriculture and, more recently, by intense urban development." In effect, he says, "there is a bedload of sediment and contaminants from the last two hundred years." During a rainstorm, it has proven difficult to measure what's coming from new runoff - and what is resuspended. "How do you isolate the bedloads and what's coming from a runoff surface today?" he asks rhetorically.

To gauge the impact of all of this sediment and runoff, "we can look at the benthic invertebrates, the habitat and fish," Wiegand says. "They give us quantitative measures that can be used as an index of biotic integrity of fish and aquatic insects. We can measure our progress against that index" and, he adds, "we're seeing progress." The difficult question that remains: How is this progress upstream affecting the tidal Anacostia?

Looking Ahead

By nearly all accounts, restoring the Anacostia system so that fish are healthy to eat, its waters swimmable, its sediments are free of contamination, its bottom waters flush with oxygen will take years of sustained funding. "When you embark on this kind of restoration effort," says one manager, "you have to be in it for the long haul." But it will also take more than funding - it will take a more informed basis for establishing priorities and making management decisions based on such priorities. It will take a capability for assessing the results of management actions in the tidal river and the tributaries. Currently, it is not possible to ask, "If I control X amount upstream, how much will be transported downstream?" There is a need then for sophisticated modeling that could enable decision makers to compare the potential outcomes of different management strategies.

The same goes for understanding chemical contaminants. "We need to have a better measure of toxics," says Ted Graham. "The Council of Government is working with the Navy to get funding to do a toxic assessment - where they're coming from, what the concentrations are." Such an assessment could set the stage for coming up with better plans. "We don't have a good handle on the dimension of the problem," says Graham, for instance, "of PCBs from old transformers that are still degrading, from pesticides, or from hydrocarbons."

Environmental Information on the Web Anacostia Watershed Society www.anacostiaws.org Montgomery County http://www.co.mo.md.us/services/dep/ DEP/Contents/contents.html Prince George's County www.gmu.edu/bios/anacosti/eopb/index.htm Metropolitan Council of Governments www.mwcog.org/dep.html Chesapeake Bay Program www.chesapeakebay.net

Put another way, while there is a reasonably good understanding of what the major problems are, there is a need for predictive models that would enable researchers to consider sediment loading, for example, and to determine whether 25 stormwater retrofit systems will be enough to make certain reductions or whether another 20 are needed. Decisions today are generally based on a "gut" estimate and the amount of available funding.

While the prospects for reclaiming the Anacostia are promising, they are not assured - nor may it be possible to restore the Anacostia in ways that will satisfy everyone. The city, county, state and federal partnerships that have grown over these last ten years, together with increasing citizen interests, may have to forge not only new agreements about priorities, but a new vision of what restoration means. Such a vision may have to delineate just what will constitute success. As one resource manager observed, we may have to make difficult decisions about just what levels of success will satisfy us.

Kate Folk contributed to this article.

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