But the ducks don’t mind the noise or the debris in the muddy tide. They have other things on their minds, like the possibilities of rest and food in shallow water, and they wobble in on cupped wings by the dozens behind Robert F. Kennedy Stadium.
An ambitious planting program to restore wild rice and other wetland plants to the Anacostia has succeeded. And it could not have done so without another little-noticed effort by the Army Corps of Engineers, installing thousands of yards of plastic bulkhead to hold muddy soil in place so marshland plants could take root.
The Army engineers (with matching funds from the D.C. Health Department) effected a planting of aquatic plants from the Bladensburg Road Bridge N.E. downstream to about Barney Circle. Others chimed in. The Environmental Protection Agency, teamed with the Anacostia Watershed Society, planted $100,000 worth of wild rice plants, a magnet for ducks.
That effort by the engineers and subcontractors has been the biggest change on the Anacostia in years. Preceded by a dredging of the navigable channel, it may restore the natural filtering system that once stabilized the river.
Of course, it’s ironic that the engineers give, and they take away. For the engineers, before World War II, also built the stone walls that line much of the river, essentially destroying the marsh area that they are now working to restore.
There are other ironies as well. Planting of the rice and the wetland species has been severely hampered, not by vandals, traffic or pollution, but by geese. Obstinate Canada geese, which over the past 50 years and perhaps aided by global warming, have been wintering farther and farther north.
Strong and able, the geese love the roots and sprouts of aquatic plants, and, as a result, expensive net barriers and other devices have driven costs up. Nevertheless, the plantings have taken hold. If the city and Congress can ever get their act together and stop the city sewers from dumping trash into the Anacostia with every summer downpour, those mudflats near Robert F. Kennedy Stadium could become a wildlife paradise indeed.
Parkland bureaucracy
If it’s a park service, whom does it serve?
The National Park Service (NPS), and of most concern to Capitol Hill dwellers, National Capital Parks-East, got a mauling recently in a long Washington Post Outlook piece by Peter Harnik, an urban parks expert whose focus is the city’s great Rock Creek Park.
Harnik argues that the local Park Service management’s chief concern is not the citizens of Washington but the commuters who use Rock Creek Park as a rush-hour route to get into and out of town. He also makes the point that the Park Service, in action if not in words, is profoundly unfriendly to people.
It’s something that Hill dwellers have known for years — a kind of tyranny of neglect plus homage to the motorist, which can build a slow burn. Not only Rock Creek but the Potomac shore is devoted to the suburban motorist. Many NPS “parks,” if they can be so termed, are hardly more than grass-covered parkway verges. And Hill parks reflect the same institutional attitude.
Take Anacostia Park, for instance — 1,200 acres of riverfront land “managed” by National Capital Parks-East. Note first, that Parks-East had nothing to do with the wetland restoration on the Anacostia mentioned in today’s HillScape, though it owns the land.
People love Anacostia Park, at least the east side of it, where thousands gather of a summer evening. The west side is basically closed. There Parks-East has allowed the Anacostia shore to become a dangerous jungle of falling, rotting trees and runaway vegetation, an illegal dumping ground and a haven for homeless men.
And the east side? Because Parks-East prefers not to patrol the park, it is shut down on summer evenings at dusk. In fact, Parks-East seems to want to shut down all city parks at dusk — and local citizens here on the Hill have to fight hard to keep them open later and avoid the absurd situation of citizens being arrested for using their own neighborhood parks.
Another insight into Parks-East “management” is Anacostia Marina, the 170-slip, modern facility that was the only full-service marina in the city. Past tense. Parks-East shut it down on Sept. 30, 2000, and it’s been idle ever since. “We still have a lot of testing to do,” said Parks-East concession specialist Steve LeBel. “We have an ardent desire to reopen at least part of it.”
The marina has been rotting slowly away for four summer seasons. It cost millions to build, and was meant to pay its way. Now no one can use it but the seagulls.
The problem is political at its base. Because the National Park Service is a federal institution, it has no constituency here. D.C. citizens cannot apply pressure.
Meanwhile, we will continue to suffer under the non-management of a bureaucracy that is insulated from the people who pay a portion of its salaries.
south hall atmosphere
Market air conditioning or swamp cooling?
Air-conditioning the Eastern Market’s vast South Hall has long been a dream of merchants and shoppers alike. And a new air system for the market is one of the items on the “Capital Improvements” list put out by the Office of Property Management (OPM), the market’s official landlord.
The 2005 OPM budget included an item, “Installing a new HVAC system,” and announced that a total of nearly $2.2 million is available for this and other improvements.
But sudden worries about air conditioning have blown aside the former cynical cracks that such a thing would never occur. It’s been pointed out that the cost of running the AC could become a monster, and it will almost certainly be borne by the merchants.
To reduce costs, the ceiling would have to be lowered, the doors kept sealed and plastic air blockers installed on some doors. Other unthinkable things might also be called for.
But one of Congress’s top Eastern Market lovers, Arizona Democrat Ed Pastor, a member of the key House Appropriations Subcommittee on D.C., is pushing a better idea — so-called “swamp” cooling.
This is a method of using water evaporation to chill air, and it has worked in some very large installations, notably Disney World at Orlando, Fla.
Evaporative water cooling, as it is known, is said to be far cheaper than normal air conditioning, though it will not achieve the same lowering of temperature.
It will instead lower the temperature from 90 degrees to 80 — but not to 72, some experts say. But because of the lower expense of running the system, the drastic measures to seal off the cooled space and the drastic cost of conventional air avoided, the big hall could be cooler without losing its funky famous charm.
METRO
• Barry Watch. As yet unelected but a shoo-in in November, Ward 8 Councilman-to-be Marion Barry (D) has already found the cudgel with which to belabor Mayor Anthony Williams (D). It’s baseball, and he’s dead against it, though in past lives, he loved all development equally and never lifted a finger to install housing on the proposed stadium site. ...
• Totally British and no doubt totally expensive, a new “pub concept” dubbed Elephant & Castle is coming (bet on February 2005) to near-Hill Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. at 12th Street. Canadian owners plan steak-and-kidney pie, flat warm beer and 220 seats for lunch. And next door: the totally French Les Halles brasserie. ...
• Why are new cars so hard to repair? Because manufacturers and dealers want it that way. But ordinary repair shops are fighting back with a bill sponsored by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) to force dealers to reveal repair secrets and computer codes. It’s dubbed the Motor Vehicle Owners’ Right to Repair Act. ...
• New park planned. Below the Southeast/Southwest Freeway, the city’s only big new park in decades is planned for 2nd Street S.E. between M and I streets S.E. Now named Canal Park, it exists only on paper and will become reality as large-scale development continues on either side of M Street. Ironically, points out Washington Business Journal’s Tim Mazzucca, the park will rest on the bed of a filled-in canal designed by Washington’s architect, Pierre L’Enfant. ...
• Remember Boys Town? The Omaha charity folded its tents and quietly sold its 1.6 acre, $8 million property at Potomac and Pennsylvania avenues S.E. to a Texas apartment developer, JPI. Now the big news is that a full-service grocery store is planned for the site — if parking problems can be solved. ...
• An ode to October and to the Hill’s only German restaurant, Cafe Berlin at 322 Massachusetts Ave. N.E. It’s Oktoberfest, another word for plenty of beer, sausage, red cabbage and pig knuckles etc., and a special menu. ...
• Beloved Hill builder the late Bob Herrema (first to convert a school into condo apartments) will be honored at an awards reception Nov. 17 at the Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Ave. N.E. Urban landscape awards to local builders and architects in his name are the evening’s main event. |
