Forest Hills Connection || News and Life in Our DC Neighborhood
Covering Forest Hills, Van Ness, North Cleveland Park and Wakefield
by Marlene Berlin We’ve been warned in the past that the Soapstone Valley Trail is endangered due to steady erosion of the stream banks. The erosion accelerates whenever we have a major storm event, and the storms have not decreased in frequency or impact since that warning in 2014. Take last Tuesday’s powerful deluge, so […]
by Marlene Berlin At the June 26th public meeting on a project that would address the century-old sewer system running through the Soapstone Valley, no one challenged the need for relining the pipes and repairing manholes. DC Water’s presentation made it clear that the pipes and manhole covers, now more than 110 years old, have […]
by Marlene Berlin If you’ve come across volunteers working on the Soapstone Valley Trail in the past year, you’ve run into JoAnn Shaner’s crew. Shaner has been the Soapstone Trail supervisor for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club since mid-2018. (PATC maintains many of our trails and is currently rebuilding a footbridge on the Melvin Hazen […]
by Marlene Berlin At the public meeting this Wednesday on the Soapstone Valley sewer rehabilitation project, at least one member of the community will be asking the National Park Service and DC Water if the work has to be so invasive. As described on page 6 of Appendix E, Statement of Findings: Approximately 6,100 [linear […]
by Marlene Berlin A deteriorating, 110-year-old sewer system runs through the Soapstone Valley. The National Park Service and DC Water have released the environmental assessment of DC Water’s preferred plan to rehabilitate the system. The federal and city agency will hold a public meeting on this subject June 26th at the Forest Hills of DC […]
The National Park Service has released the environmental assessment of DC Water’s plans for rehabilitating the century-old sewer system in Soapstone Valley. This sets in motion a 59-day public comment period on work that will keep Soapstone users out of the park for as many as four years. NPS has scheduled a public meeting on […]
by David Jonas Bardin DC Water came to Tuesday night’s ANC 3F meeting to let us know they’re getting closer to revealing the latest plan to address Soapstone Valley’s 110-year-old sanitary sewer system. The environmental assessment is to be issued in the next month or so for public comments. DC Water engineer Louis Arguello spoke […]
by Marlene Berlin Two lots are being developed by the owner Sassan Kimiavi, just south of the 4400 block of Linnean Avenue beyond the dead end. Locations are approximate. Tree stumps can be seen from the “social” trail that leads from the dead end Street to Soapstone Valley Trail. John Anderson of DDOT’s Urban Forestry […]
by Marlene Berlin It’s been almost a year since our last update on the century-old sewers running through Soapstone Valley, and almost six years since DC Water and the National Park Service revealed plans to do something about them. So first, a recap: Both the National Park Service and DC Water worry the aging sewer […]
by Marlene Berlin The spring and late summer rainstorms were relentless. So are the volunteers who repair storm-damaged hiking trails. The DC chapter of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) regularly brings volunteers to improve the Melvin C Hazen and Soapstone Valley Trails. They repaired this Melvin Hazen stream crossing in August: The Soapstone trail’s […]
