ABOUT THE RIVER

The Anacostia River, flowing out of Maryland and into the Potomac River near the southern tip of the District of Columbia, geographically divides the nation's capital into two separate but unequal parts. The larger, western section boasts the US Capitol, the White House, the National Mall, the Central Business District and several neighborhoods of million-dollar homes; the eastern section quietly contains the city's highest rates of poverty, blight, unemployment and urban despair.

To make the division worse, the Anacostia is filthy. The District's of Columbia's ancient combined sewer system, built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, regularly spews hundreds of thousands of gallons of untreated human waste into the river that flows only 2000 yards from the Capitol Dome. Partly as a result, the Anacostia was recently found by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to have the highest rate of cancer among bottom-feeding brown bullheads of any river ever studied in America. Fecal coliform bacteria counts in the Anacostia during and immediately after rainfalls climb to hundreds of times EPA's allowable limits, preventing safe canoeing, kayaking, rowing, or wading in the river water. Because of these are other effects of pollution, the Anacostia has the sorry distinction of having been named by American Rivers, Inc. as one of America's ten most endangered rivers, and by the official Chesapeake Bay Program has one of the three most toxic rivers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Despite the river's contamination, the District of Columbia government has recently spent millions of dollars designing an ambitious plan to revitalize old, rundown or unused areas along both the western and the eastern banks of the Anacostia with new homes, shops, restaurants and office buildings. With much of the 61 square mile District of Columbia "built out", hope for future economic growth and a sustainable future for the city lies along and to the east of the Anacostia. But the ambitious public investment plans for the redevelopment stop short of a commitment to a serious parallel investment in improving the water quality of the river. Unless something significant changes in the District, in Maryland, and with the federal government, the Anacostia will remain filthy.