Better air at the C&O Canal?

[PotomacCyclist]

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Bringing-Clean-Air-Back-to-CO-Canal-210168751.html

…

‘Beneath pleasant scenes at Fletcher’s Boathouse and elsewhere, a massive 1960s sewer carries 50 million gallons of raw sewage per day from as far away as Dulles International Airport. Old sewer vents allowed an unpleasant smell to escape.

“I’d be hit with this massive odor, and then it would go away and a quarter of a mile later it would come up again,” said Mac Thornton, of Potomac Conservancy.

Tuesday, the U.S. Park Service, D.C. Water and relieved citizens formally opened the first of six new high-tech odor scrubbers. They replace sewer vents to clean more than 90 percent of the odors, D.C. Water’s George Hawkins said.

Citizens breathed freely Tuesday after fighting the odors for almost 15 years.’

Topic

[Bilsko]

I had been wondering what that structure at Fletchers was going to be used for – now I know. I’ve been riding that stretch of the CCT and/or C&O either daily or at least 2 or 3 times a week for about 5 or 6 years now and I’ve never had that much of an issue with the ‘aroma’…still, good to see this work being done.

[creadinger]

@Bilsko 54145 wrote:

I had been wondering what that structure at Fletchers was going to be used for – now I know. I’ve been riding that stretch of the CCT and/or C&O either daily or at least 2 or 3 times a week for about 5 or 6 years now and I’ve never had that much of an issue with the ‘aroma’…still, good to see this work being done.

Is the bad smell in the area of the Georgetown tunnel? That area always has a raunchy odor to me, but I thought that was mostly rotting stuff in the storm drains. Maybe I’m wrong though. I can’t say I ever smelled any sewage up by Fletcher’s.

[Bilsko]

@creadinger 54182 wrote:

Is the bad smell in the area of the Georgetown tunnel? That area always has a raunchy odor to me, but I thought that was mostly rotting stuff in the storm drains. Maybe I’m wrong though. I can’t say I ever smelled any sewage up by Fletcher’s.

Kind of my experience too (not so bad at Fletchers…awful down by the Foundry Branch Valley Park Tunnel -AKA Georgetown tunnel). I think part of the problem there is the combined sewer overflow (where that waterfall is right uptrail from the tunnel, where frequently the CCT homeless set up camp).

A couple of years ago, there was a dead deer that spent a few weeks rotting right beside the entrance to the tunnel (on the trail side). I put in several requests to NPS and 311 before they came and took it away. I never did figure out how it came to die there…kind of like it fell off the C&O overpass above the tunnel entrance, broke something, and just died right there. Or it just died of more natural causes right there. Either way morbid. and stinky.

[JorgeGortex]

Amusing that they are worried about the smell and less about the overflow run off from that sewer line during heavy periods of rain. When storm water mixes into the system (which happens regularly in the DC sanitary system) it can overflow into the Potomac. Not sure what they’d done in recent years, if anything to prevent this, but it used to be if you visited Thompson Boat Center and stood near the shore under the trees you could watch the much (including paper) bubble up through the grate and into the river. Ugh, to say the least. Another large vault where the system mixes is in the empty space next to the old Aqueduct Bridge pier. Sure there are others along the CCT, along the river.

JG

[PotomacCyclist]

Actually there is a multi-billion dollar project to remedy the problem of combined sewer outflows (storm sewer and sanitary sewer systems) during heavy rainfalls. The Blue Plains Tunnel is being built along the Potomac River at a depth of 100 feet. This will be part of DC Water’s large-scale plan to store the extra water from heavy storms in tunnels, until storms pass. Then the water can be treated properly.

The new Tunnel Boring Machine (named “Lady Bird”) is set to dig a four-mile tunnel, as part of an eventual 12.8-mile tunnel under D.C. The project will be completed in stages. When the entire project is finished, it should reduce the instances of combined sewer outflow by 96 percent, to perhaps just a few times a year.

http://www.dcwater.com/news/listings/press_release589.cfm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/dc-water-unveils-giant-tunneling-machine-to-help-cut-sewage-spills-during-rainstorms/2013/04/09/a9c163aa-a14c-11e2-9c03-6952ff305f35_story.html

The TBM has its own Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/LadyBirdTBM

[dasgeh]

@PotomacCyclist 54213 wrote:

The new Tunnel Boring Machine (named “Lady Bird”) is set to dig a four-mile tunnel, as part of an eventual 12.8-mile tunnel under D.C. The project will be completed in stages. When the entire project is finished, it should reduce the instances of combined sewer outflow by 96 percent, to perhaps just a few times a year.

Can it dig a tunnel for bikes under Lee & Lynn? Or a new Metro tunnel, while it’s at it…

[PotomacCyclist]

There are so many additional uses for a machine like that. They could underground roads like the SE-SW Freeway, the mess of roads next to the Kennedy Center, the Whitehurst Freeway in Georgetown, I-66 in Arlington, 395 in Arlington, and new Metro tunnels at Rosslyn (to separate the Orange/Silver Lines from the Blue Line). They could also add pedestrian connectors between Farragut West and Farragut North, a walkway between Metro Center and Gallery Place and…

Too bad it would be prohibitively difficult to move it around. But it would be nice if they could just pick it up with a crane and re-position it the way they do with CaBi stations.

[Author]

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