Man hired to clean National Mall, polluted river at Hains Point

[PotomacCyclist]

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Man-Hired-to-Clean-National-Mall-Sentenced-for-Dumping-Waste-in-Potomac-River-276611791.html

Maybe this was the reason for any foul odors at East Potomac Park in recent years. His company dumped two-thirds of the waste illegally. They only took one-third to the proper disposal facility.

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[mstone]

it’s mildly amusing that the stuff that’s in the sewer, which was going to end up in the potomac, becomes a clean water act issue if you take it out of the sewer and then put it in the potomac

[PotomacCyclist]

He was dumping debris too. Plus there’s the issue of him being paid specifically to remove that waste.

As for the sewage, I don’t think the company was handling that. Maybe it was wastewater from construction sites. More generally, sewage is a Clean Water Act issue of concern. That’s why DC Water is spending billions on the new tunnels to store rainwater and prevent most future overflows into the Potomac.

[mstone]

@PotomacCyclist 95282 wrote:

He was dumping debris too. Plus there’s the issue of him being paid specifically to remove that waste.

As for the sewage, I don’t think the company was handling that. Maybe it was wastewater from construction sites. More generally, sewage is a Clean Water Act issue of concern. That’s why DC Water is spending billions on the new tunnels to store rainwater and prevent most future overflows into the Potomac.

I thought the article said storm sewers, which generally dump rainwater into waterways all the time. The big issue with DC Water is the fact that the combined system dumps poo into the river, not just rainwater. So it sounds like stuff that would have ended up in the river except that it didn’t make it there and had to be removed in a truck, changing it from stuff that goes in the river to toxic waste. Maybe there’s more to the story.

Completely agree that he should have been prosecuted for fraud either way, if he was being paid to do something specific and pocketed the difference instead.

[Justin Antos]

I just read the title of this thread and imagined that the NPS had just hired one poor sap whose only job is to clean up the National Mall.

[PotomacCyclist]

There’s a lot of garbage in the storm sewer system too, not just rainwater. On a rainy day last week, I looked at a storm sewer opening in downtown DC. Just beyond the opening, I saw about 20 plastic bottles jammed in there.

I expect that the entire storm sewer system picks up quite a bit of debris, from plastics to cardboard, metal and other materials. Similar to what you see on the side of some trails. I see the same thing at vacant lots, such as the large fields in Potomac Yard-Arlington and the old post office at 1720 S. Eads in Crystal City. Shocking just how much junk there is and how much of it is tossed in the grass, in woods and in storm sewers. A lot of people treat the storm sewers as a giant garbage pit. (They treat road medians, empty fields and bike/walking trails the same way too. Piles and piles of plastic bottles, food wrappers, boxes, etc.)

[Author]

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