Historic Anacostia River swimming event is postponed after pollution - The Washington Post

Historic Anacostia River swimming event is postponed after pollution - The Washington Post

Strong rainstorms this week have scuttled a Saturday swim in the Anacostia River, which would have been the first legally authorized dip into the waterway in more than half a century.

“We have had several intense short duration rain events, which caused two small CSO discharges to the Anacostia River,” Seltzer said, adding that the event had to be postponed “out of an abundance of caution.”

Organizers had prepared for the possibility of weather interrupting the planned swim. Swimming has been illegal in D.C. rivers since 1971 because of high levels of pollution, mainly E. coli from sewage leakage. Decades of work — including Clean Water Act lawsuits and new engineering projects — have gone into making the Anacostia and other local bodies of water safer for residents.

Saturday’s swim — which would have allowed preregistered swimmers to splash in the Anacostia, in 20-minute windows, at the Kingman Island Dock near the Benning Road Bridge — was organized to celebrate how far the cleanup efforts had come.

Most parts of the District have one set of sewers to drain storm water from streets and another for the human waste flushed down in toilets, sinks and showers. But about one-third of the city relies on what’s known as a “combined” sewer system, a 19th-century installation that includes just one set of pipes.

When heavy rain strikes, this combined system is filled beyond capacity and overflows into nearby waterways, including the Anacostia.

D.C. itself is close to finishing work on a massive set of underground tunnels— a $2.6 billion project — that will capture the overflows and redirect them to a wastewater treatment plan. The liquid will be treated before being released into the river.

Part of that work included the Anacostia River Tunnel, which opened in 2018 and now captures up to 90 percent of sewage overflow. Strong rainfall, however, can still upset the system.

“The common rule of thumb is you do not want to touch an urban waterway within 72 hours of storm events,” Trey Sherard, the lead advocate at the Anacostia Riverkeeper, the nonprofit behind community engagement with the river, told The Washington Post last month. “Storms are what drive leaks.”

Later this summer, construction will be complete on a new section of the tunnel system as part of the Clean Rivers Project. Once in place, the system will control 98 percent of overflow sewage, according to the Anacostia Riverkeeper and DOEE.

“Water quality has significantly improved over the past few decades,” Anacostia Riverkeeper president Suzy Kelly said in a release announcing the postponement. “We are as close as we have ever been to the possibility of bringing back a swimmable Anacostia.”

Organizers have yet to announce a new date for the September swim.