Water Is Life

Uniting a City by Revitalizing a River
For thousands of years, rivers have been the engines that fueled the world's greatest cities. But for decades, Washington's Anacostia River had been a symbol of pollution and division. Then in 2000, an unprecedented coalition of civic leaders and residents conceived the Anacostia Watershed Initiative (AWI), a comprehensive efforts to bring the river—and the waterfront—back to life.

[Image caption:]
Artist's rendering of the Anacostia River

One top priority is to restore the Anacostia to the full environmental health— eliminating pollution, bringing back streams and wetlands, and even making the river swimmable by 2025. Another is to connect DC residents to the waterfront and to each other through a series of transit-related initiatives, from making it possible to walk and bike along the entire waterfront to reconnecting the city's street grid to waterfront parks.

Can a Nickel Save a River?
Plastic bags people threw away were trapping and killing fish and birds in the river, so a DC law was implemented in January of 2010 making people pay a nickel from every bag they got from a store. Since then there are a lot fewer bags in the river, and a lot more fish and birds.

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Show me all markers in:  Washington, DC  |  20003  |  District Of Columbia  |  United States of America

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Clean Rivers Project
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