The District of Columbia sits at the confluence of two rivers: The Potomac flows in from the northwest and creates the city’s western border, and the Anacostia snakes its way down from the northeast, bisecting Washington’s Southeast quadrant before joining the Potomac. But more than simply acting as borders, DC’s two rivers are critical to the city’s social geography.
Day-tripping kayakers and collegiate scullers dot the Potomac as it meanders between moneyed Georgetown and the well-heeled inner ring of Virginia’s suburbs, providing dramatic vistas of our nation’s marble monuments. The Anacostia, largely unreachable and wholly unswimmable, serves as both a real and an imagined barrier between DC’s city center and the largely poor, largely black, and largely ignored far Southeast. Instead of posh restaurants and classy condos, the Anacostia is, more often than not, bordered by abandoned fields, unused parks, train tracks, swaths of freeway, and miles of fences.
Quite aptly dubbed “the forgotten river,” this sow’s ear of a stream is on track to become the city’s latest silk purse. Planning began in 2000, and in 2004 a framework for the forward-thinking Anacostia Waterfront Initiative (AWI) was approved. At the center of the proposal is the Anacostia itself, including a complete cleansing of the river and its watersheds. At a time when so many urban development projects seem to have a shopping center as the centerpiece, it’s heartening to see the complete opposite. It will take roughly a generation to heal the river, and DC plans to spend the next 25 years and billions of dollars putting the AWI into action.
Beyond environmental cleanup, which figures to be the most critical element of the initiative, the city is angling to reconnect to its largely lost waterway. The plan encompasses 2,800 acres in DC, 1,400 of them to be touched directly by the planned improvements. Core elements of the AWI’s mission include a 20-mile river walk on both sides of the Anacostia; greater access to the river and more spots to cross it (including a dramatic new bridge on South Capitol Street); mixed-income residential space; desirable waterfront parks; a light rail east of the river; a new baseball stadium for the Washington Nationals; and a climate of ownership, recreation, and conservation among DC’s citizens. As outgoing mayor Anthony Williams puts it: “The Anacostia holds the key to the city’s future. We must act now to make this undervalued resource the centerpiece of growth in 21st-century Washington.”
The District is no stranger to epic urban plans. Pierre L’Enfant’s grand baroque plan of 1791 has made Washington one of the most successful planned cities in the country. In 1901, Michigan Senator James McMillan embellished L’Enfant’s vision with his own City Beautiful–inspired design (put forth by Frederick Law Olmsted and Daniel Burnham) for the National Mall. Uwe Brandes, vice president for Capital Projects and Planning at the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation (AWC), which was created to oversee the AWI, explains, “DC is a very conservation-minded city, one where laws dictate that each new addition and building must always bear in mind the L’Enfant design. But I see the vision of the L’Enfant Plan being carried out by the Anacostia project. We think we’re only taking the next step in realizing his plan. We’re not interested in abandoning Washington’s design principles; we’re interested in sustainable city-making.”
One of the most pressing problems facing the Anacostia is pollution. Washington currently has a sewer system from the 1880s that simply cannot accommodate both the sewage and the storm water. Brandes says that roughly 70 times a year the system overflows, spewing raw sewage into the Anacostia. The city plans to spend about $2 billion overhauling the system, but a number of buildings that are part of the AWI, including a progressive new park located just yards from the AWC headquarters, are slated to do some serious environmental heavy-lifting.
Washington Canal Park, by landscape architect Gustafson Guthrie Nichol of Seattle, is designed to retain and decontaminate the storm water that hits the park and surrounding streets. A meeting place for residents and workers, and a pedestrian link between Capitol Hill and the Anacostia waterfront, this industrious green space will collect excess rainwater, purify it, and then either use it to irrigate itself or let it evaporate. “This is a great example of low-impact development,” says Brandes. By reducing the burden on an already beleaguered sewer system, this park’s central cistern will outclass even the most hard-working duck ponds.
Not to be outdone by the new park sitting just across M Street SE, Michael Graves’s proposed headquarters for the Department of Transportation, the first Cabinet-level building to be erected in DC since the 1960s, will be home to the biggest green roof in the mid-Atlantic. With the roof, which will cover nearly four acres over two buildings, the DoT is racing to the forefront of eco-friendly government buildings.
In concert with the 1,200 acres of parkland to be affected by the AWI, a new Environmental Education Center has been planned to join the forests and wetlands of Kingman Island. Boasting a sleek design by Studios Architecture, the two-story glass box juts out into the water on stiltlike supports, evoking the herons that populate the native swamps. Wooden louvers will help shade the building, and its solar skin will provide power to its greenhouse, classrooms, environmental lab, and nursery. But perhaps most thrilling of all is the planned platinum status on the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) scale (it will be the only one in Washington). It’s fitting that the capital’s new Environmental Education Center should be the greenest building in the city.
Innovative design aside, the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative is mammoth in scope. As Herculean a task as cleaning the river and reconnecting it to the city is, perhaps equal to it is coordinating the process. The Anacostia Waterfront Corporation has the responsibility of handling just this logistical headache.
Because of Washington’s national capital status, the AWC must liaise between not only city agencies, but a number of federal agencies as well. The space to be touched by the AWI is owned by dozens of entities, including the federal government, the navy, the National Park Service, the DC government, and private landholders like Major League Baseball. Instead of spearheading the operation from a preexisting city agency, the AWC was formed to execute the operation. “The Anacostia Waterfront Corporation isn’t going to build it all,” Brandes says, “but we’re the ones who have to push the ball forward. We’re the taskmasters.” A worthier task is difficult to imagine.
