WASHINGTON — Bruce Holmes, 65, grew up fishing on the Anacostia River, a 9-mile (14-kilometer) urban waterway that flows through Washington, D.C. and parts of Maryland, and has long been defined by pollution and neglect.
Washington, D.C
In Washington, D.C., the city’s ‘forgotten river’ cleans up, slowly
“There wasn’t no throwing it back in,” Holmes said, “Whatever we caught we ate. Or we sold.”
Now, decades later, Holmes no longer eats what he catches from the Anacostia as he’s learned more about the river, but teaches adults and children in the capital how to fish as the river undergoes something of a comeback. He hopes the fishing lessons double as a clarion call to help clean up and maintain the river he grew up around.
Sometimes called D.C.’s “forgotten river,” the Anacostia River is shorter, shallower and harder to navigate than the more famous Potomac, which cuts through the city’s storied landmarks and is steeped in Revolutionary and American Civil War history. For decades, the Anacostia was treated as a municipal dumping ground for industrial waste, storm sewers and trash. That contamination largely affected the communities of color that the river intersects.
In recent years, things have started to improve, but change has come slowly.
It’s still illegal to swim in the Anacostia because of E. coli levels that test above the threshold deemed safe for human exposure, but in recent years, a $3.29 billion sewer upgrade in D.C. has reduced sewage overflows into the river, keeping large amounts of waste out.
A series of tunnels drilled under the city capture storm and sewage water that previously flowed into the Anacostia. Since 2018, when the first segment went online, the upgrades have reduced outflows of sewage and wastewater by 91%, according to DC Water, the city’s water utility.
Last fall, the final section of the Anacostia Tunnel System went online. The overall system is expected to reduce overflows into the river by 98%.
Still, the Anacostia received a failing grade for the third time in six years last year from a nonprofit that grades the river’s health based on its fecal bacteria content and the state of its aquatic vegetation.
The Anacostia River Watershed tested the river for fecal bacteria, dissolved oxygen — needed by all aquatic animals — and algae levels, as well as the health of its aquatic vegetation and clarity of its water.
“The trend line is moving up,” said Chris Williams, director of the Anacostia River Watershed. “Twenty-five years ago, it was one of the most polluted rivers in the country,” he said, contrasting that to the past few years “where the water quality is pretty steadily improving.”
For many involved in the Anacostia’s clean-up, the history of the river, its neglect and industrial pollution are inextricable from the city’s racial history.
The river and the surrounding 1,200-acre (4.85-square kilometer) Anacostia River Park that reaches into parts of Maryland across the D.C. boundary were where communities of color swam, fished and recreated.
“Because there are low-income communities around the river, it can seem like they’re responsible for the pollution,” said Akiima Price, executive director of Friends of Anacostia Park, an organization that works in the communities surrounding the river.
“But it comes from everywhere, all over the watershed,” she said.
That was acknowledged last year when Pepco, the city’s utility, reached an agreement with the District of Columbia to pay more than $57 million for discharging hazardous chemicals from their power plants into soil, groundwater and storm sewers for decades that polluted the Anacostia and other areas. The settlement was believed to be the largest in the utility’s history.
The payments will be used in part to clean up the river, including addressing contamination from its former power plants. Other measures the city government instituted like a fee on plastic bags since 2009 have also helped keep trash out, experts say.
To Price, the work is ongoing. “There are still challenges,” she said, “but people feel more connected to the river.”
To help change long-held perceptions that the water is still as polluted as it once was, Anacostia Riverkeeper, another environmental nonprofit, has organized a swim event along a small stretch of the river designated safe for swimming.
This year’s event will take place at the end of June near Kingman Island, a patch of land in the middle of the river. If the event goes as planned, it would mark the first time in more than a half-century that D.C. residents could legally swim in the river, after the city prohibited doing so in any of its waterways in 1971. Last year, the same event was canceled after a storm raised bacteria levels in the river because of sewage overflows.
“It’s not lost on me that we’re overturning over 50 years of discourse about the river,” said Quinn Molner, operations director at Anacostia Riverkeeper. Around 200 people are expected to participate in the swim, Molner said, despite the skepticism her organization encountered when they first announced the event. “A lot of people that have lived in this area for a long time knew this river when it was not so great.”
Holmes is one of them. A lifelong resident of Southeast D.C., still a predominantly Black and less affluent part of the city, Holmes said he’s doubtful that in just a few years, the river in its entirety will be swimmable and fishable.
“That’s a little bit of a stretch,” he said, “but I can actually say, because I’ve been fishing out here for years, I’ve seen some big changes.”
The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Seventy-two veterans took a trip Saturday to our nation’s capital to visit memorials honoring their service in the armed forces.
This year marks the 12th trip to Washington, D.C. for Honor Flight Tallahassee.
Early Saturday morning, veterans and their guardians met to take a charter flight up to D.C.
Throughout the day, veterans were taken to the World War II memorial, as well as the Korean and Vietnam War memorials. The veterans also visited Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
More Tallahassee news:
The day ended with a wonderful welcome home celebration.
Our Jacob Murphey, Julia Miller, Taylor Viles, and Grace Temple accompanied the veterans, capturing moments from throughout the day.
The team will have live coverage from Washington, D.C. on Monday to share more from the day’s events.
We will continue to have coverage throughout the month of May, leading up to our Honor Flight special on Memorial Day.
To keep up with the latest news as it develops, follow WCTV on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Nextdoor and X (Twitter).
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4 things to know about the weather:
- Chances of rain in the morning
- Gusty Sunday
- Chilly Monday
- Temps will rise again through the work week
Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.
After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.
The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.
Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.
However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.
QuickCast
SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s
MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s
Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.
Washington, D.C
‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington
The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.
In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.
“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”
Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.
Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.
“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.
“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”
Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”
A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.
Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.
Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.
But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.
“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”
At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.
The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.
Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.
For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.
“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.
“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”
For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.
In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.
Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.
“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”
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