One and a half billion gallons of sewage and storm water flow into the Anacostia River every year. Many environmental groups are working with the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority to clean up the mess and as residents of the city, Georgetown students should get involved.
The sewage outflows occur approximately 75 times annually, usually after a rainstorm, because one third of D.C.’s sewers route runoff and man-made sewage through the same system.
The pollution level in the Anacostia is so high that it is illegal to swim in its waters. Some Southeast D.C. residents say the river carries a pungent odor after it rains. WASA’s two skimmer boats collect around 500 gallons of trash off the surface of the area’s rivers every year.
The root of the problem is the District’s antiquated sewer system, built by the federal government in the early 1800s and in the years after the First World War. The combined sewer, as it is called, constitutes only one third of the sewer system, but services the core of the city.
When it rains, the system cannot handle the volume of liquid surging through the system, and the excess is discharged into the local waterways. Because of how the early sewer lines were laid, the majority of the discharge points for this diluted waste flow into the Anacostia.
WASA has instituted a Long-Term Control Plan to reduce the pollution of the area’s rivers, but the sewer authority was only formed in 1996 and cannot be expected to immediately fix a centuries-old sewer system, especially the troubled lines buried deep under dense urban areas.
By 2008, the sewer authority promises to cut sewer outflows by 40 percent. When the Long-Term Control Plan is fully implemented, they expect a 98 percent reduction of spills into the Anacostia. But that will not occur for 20 years, and local authorities have had to grapple with the government for the little federal funding the project has received.
Of the $1.9 billion they need over the next two decades, WASA has only received $85 million from the Feds. The rest of the burden will fall upon District residents, who will see their monthly water bills rise sharply.
Since WASA’s plan is the most significant component to the solution, D.C. residents must demand more federal funding for the sewer authority’s project. This is the only way to speed up the project.
Students and residents should join groups, like the Earth Conservation Corps, to educate our city’s population about the problem and to help remove garbage from the river. This is the only immediate solution to the problem.
The federal government, in turn, must recognize the crisis that runs beneath all of its buildings here. This is not just a city problem, it is a national embarrassment.
Everyone in the district must unify to clean up the Anacostia River. Otherwise, it will continue to be the capitol city’s most noxious eyesore.
