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District
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To continue progress on the Potomac, activists take aim at litterers potomac from 16
kick their Trash-Free Potomac Watershed by 2013 campaign into high gear at the group’s fifth annual Trash Summit on Wednesday. The nearly $300,000 campaign, paid for by contributions from watershed jurisdictions, will include sample legislation, law enforcement suggestions, public education and market-based approaches, such as the District’s 5-cent tax on plastic bags. “We are building the appetite for a distaste for litter. We are building a social norm,” like wearing a seat belt or not smoking indoors, said Ashley Smith, the foundation’s Trash- Free Potomac Watershed coordinator. The challenge was to find the
trigger points that would make people change their habits, Bowen said. To do that, Steve Raabe, president of the research firm OpinionWorks, conducted a telephone survey, spent hours with focus groups and held psychological examinations of known litterers. The study, which also will be released at the summit, attempts to get to the heart of why people litter. “It is not confined to a certain
group,” Raabe said. Littering “crosses a lot of demographic lines. It crosses educational lines. We have had 10th-grade- educated people and graduate- level-educated people, all of whom are actively doing this.” About 94 percent of people
surveyed within the watershed said they are skeptical that they will be caught. About 77 percent said they didn’t realize that the trash they toss to the curb on K Street will eventually flow into the rivers and to the ocean, according to the data. That is one area on which the
Alice Ferguson Foundation, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, the District and other area partners are working. They lobbied the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to rule the Anacostia River as impaired in 2008, requiring a TMDL, or Total Maximum Daily Load program, for the river. The TMDL plan, which could be approved by the end of the month, is the first multi-jurisdictional plan of its kind in the country. “The idea of having trash being written into a regulatory tool . . . is radical,” Bowen said. The TMDL identifies hot spots
for trash, monitors those locations and holds people accountable, said Jon Capacasa,
LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST
The Potomac River was studied from Great Falls National Park in McLean, above, through Charles County and found to be getting cleaner. The Alice Ferguson
director of the EPA’s water protection division in the mid-Atlantic region. Each jurisdiction will be responsible for removing hundreds of thousands of pounds of refuse from the Anacostia watershed per year, totaling about 600 tons, or 1.2 million pounds, he said. “I think folks will benefit tremendously [from] taking stock where trash is being generated and targeting strategies to reduce trash at the source,” Capacasa said. “Folks are tired of cleaning it up at the banks and once it is in the water. We need to stop it at its source.” The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority will soon be on board with a $2.6 billion project, the largest the authority has built. It will construct tunnels throughout the city that will hold wastewater and storm water, which contains trash that in the current system flows into area waterways. The tunnels will provide a waiting area for the waste- and storm water until there is enough for it to go to the Blue Plains plant for treatment.
“It looks like a litter re-educa-
tion is in order.” — Christophe Tulou, acting director of the D.C. Department of the Environment.
The long-term plan aims to remove 98 percent of the overflow into the Anacostia, said Alan Heymann, a spokesman for D.C. Water, formerly known as WASA. The Anacostia, however, is just
18 percent of the watershed in the District, said Christophe Tulou, acting director of the D.C. Department of the Environment. He said the strategies can be used in Rock Creek and along the Potomac River. “This is an old story. When I was growing up, we went through some aggressive anti-littering campaigns that were at the forefront of the movement,” Tulou said. “It looks like a litter re-education is in order.”
Foundation regularly works with area jurisdictions and agencies to share ideas and improve operations and trash management. The group has guidebooks for businesses interested in working toward becoming trash-free. Enforcement is part of Prince
George’s County’s plans for a cleaner environment, said Susan Hubbard, a spokeswoman for the county’s Public Works and Transportation Department. In addition to putting up cameras in trouble spots, county police, the state’s attorney’s office and community members work together to report, arrest and prosecute those who dump illegally. Alexandria focuses more on
education and isn’t an “iron- glove regulator,” said Rich Baier, the city’s director of transporta- tion and environmental services. The city has curbside pickups for holiday trees, lawn refuse and single-stream recycling. It also offers hazardous material recycling to give residents an
easy outlet to avoid dumping, he said. Alexandria is working with
Arlington County to redefine the Four Mile Run area as a park. “You tend to have less trash in a park where there is a public use, as opposed to an area that is in back of buildings, where people are not invited,” Baier said. Arlington is piloting a food- composting program and an adopt-a-street residential cleanup program. The county is moving toward single-stream recycling, which has boosted the amount of trash that is recycled in Arlington to 40 percent, said Aileen Winquist, a county environmental planner. “Frankly, whether we will be
trash-free by 2013, it is a great aspiration,” said J. Walter Tejada (D), an Arlington County Board member and regular volunteer for the foundation’s cleanups. “I’m not sure we can be completely trash-free, but I think we have to do our part to attempt to be trash-free. It adds up.”
goodmanc@washpost.com
THE WASHINGTON POST • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2010
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