Anacostia River Health Improves

For the first time in the almost 20 years that the Anacostia Watershed Society has been grading the health of the River, the Anacostia River received a passing grade in overall health. The grade a 63, or D- for levels of toxins, trash and other environmental issues is a noteworthy improvement.

In truth there are limits when creating water quality scores because many of the variables that impact water quality are impacted by the intensity and frequency of rain. More heavy rain storms result in more sewer overflows and an increase in polluted runoff from streets and parking lots. So the comparison of indicators for wet and dry years can mask the underlying conditions and trends. Long term trends are generally more helpful and reliable for understanding the river.

The grade for the overall health of the Anacostia River has gone from 44 in 2014 to 63 in 2018. Despite the various weather patterns we’ve seen in the past 5 years, dry weather or wet, the trend of water clarity have been improving gradually and steadily. The long­ term improving trend toward clearer water was also seen in the return of submerged aquatic vegetation or underwater grasses seen in the 2015 Report Card for the first time since they disappeared from the Anacostia River in 2003.

Next year, the Anacostia Watershed Society expects even greater improvement in the River’s health. That’s because DC Water opened the new 7-mile-long, 23-foot-wide tunnel that runs between RFK Stadium and the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant on March 20th this year, too late to be counted in the river assessment. According to John Cassidy, program for the Clean River Project at DC Water, since opening, the Anacostia sewage tunnels have prevented about a billion gallons of combined-sewer overflow from being dumped into the Anacostia River. This is amazing progress on reducing fecal bacteria in the river. The tunnels should also help reduce stormwater runoff in coming years.

Due to the age of the Washington DC sewer system, parts of those systems are what is called combined systems where sewer and stormwater are carried through the same pipes. In the past, when it rains, untreated sewage and stormwater (combined sewage) was discharged into Washington DC’s rivers and creeks. The storage tunnel system are "diversion facilities" at strategic locations to capture this untreated sewage and divert it to the tunnel system where it can be stored and conveyed to the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant for treatment when the capacity is available.

Progress on trash reduction has been slow. Efforts have included installing trash traps in Washington DC and charging fees on plastic bags in Washington DC and Montgomery County. Now, the local jurisdictions have new laws that prohibit the use of Styrofoam as food and beverage containers. The proliferation of beverage containers in river trash is a major problem. Non-floatable trash is also a significant problem; trash monitoring shows 70% of trash by count is non-­floatable.

Year after year at the annual Earth Day cleanup volunteers remove tons of trash from the river. More work needs to be done to address this and it seems we need to change our behavior. Our food packaging and trashing habits need to change so that food wrappers (chip bags, etc.) cup, bottles and cans will not be dropped on the ground, tossed out car windows, or carelessly discarded.

The Anacostia Watershed Society was founded in 1989