Coalition Works to Restore Local Rivers' Beauty

By: Emilie Udell
WTOP Radio Network

AUDIO - WTOP's Veronica Robinson takes a boat tour of the Anacostia River

WASHINGTON - Fifty tons of trash were removed from the Anacostia and Potomac rivers in 2004, but nearly a year later, the areas are drowning in trash again.

The 2005 Capital River Relief Project kicked off its annual "Team Up to Clean Up" Thursday, and will continue its efforts for the next three weeks.

More than 800 volunteers from local businesses, government organizations and universities are expected to gather to help with the project, and return the area to its natural beauty.

"What should be beauty is marred by trash," says Doug Siglin, director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Anacostia River Initiative Office.

D.C. Mayor Tony Williams says an estimated two billion gallons of untreated sewage flows into the Anacostia River annually. He says a "financial coalition" is needed to fix the sewer system. Fixing the problem, he estimates, will cost more than $1 billion.

The Capital River Relief project is a coalition of Living Lands and Waters, The Alice Ferguson Foundation and the Anacostia Watershed Society.

After the trash is collected, it will be sorted, and portions will be recycled. In the past, volunteers have cleaned up a wide variety of trash, from bathtubs to prosthetic legs to even messages in bottles.

Click here for volunteer locations.

Reprinted with permission from the 04-01-05 edition of WTOP Radio Network.