It’s been seven months since the last substantial (and at times contradictory) updates on DDOT’s Connecticut Avenue Multimodal Safety Improvement Project. The project’s website says simply that the project is in a “reevaluation phase.”
We could get a better sense of where the planning stands during ANC 3F’s final meeting of 2023, on Tuesday, November 28th at 7 p.m. The full draft agenda and the link to the Zoom meeting are below.
A DDOT representative is to provide updates on the Connecticut Avenue safety project as well as traffic safety investigations currently under way within ANC 3F’s boundaries.
Also on the agenda: The Office of the Attorney General on its lawsuits against certain DC landlords, and Howard University’s work with the community. (The Howard School of Law is at 2900 Van Ness Street.)
The newest face on the commission is Marilyn Slatnick, who was elected by ANC 3F01 voters in an October 14th special election. This will be her second meeting as a commissioner.
ANC 3F – Regular Meeting Agenda
November 28, 2023; 7:00 pm to 9:05 pm
ANC 3F is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting at bit.ly/anc3fmeet
Welcome (7:00pm)
Call to Order (7:01pm)
Roll Call (7:02 pm)
I. Adoption of the November 28, 2023 ANC 3F meeting agenda (7:03pm)
II. Approval of ANC 3F meeting minutes for October 17, 2023 (7:04pm)
III. Approval of ANC 3F 2024 budget (7:05pm)
IV. Regular Agenda – Commissioner Updates and Announcements (7:07pm- 7:17pm)
V. Regular Agenda – Committee Reports (7:18pm – 7:28pm)
● Streets & Sidewalks
● Parks & Watersheds
● Schools & Universities
● Housing & Neighborhoods
VI. Regular Agenda – Community Forum (community leaders and agencies give brief updates) (7:29 – 7:39pm)
● University of the District of Columbia
● Van Ness Main Street
● Ward 3 Councilmember Matt Frumin’s Office
● Howard University
● Mom’s Organic
● Other updates
VII. Regular Agenda – Information Items (ANC 3F will not take a vote on these items) (7:40pm – 9:24pm)
● MPD Update with Lt. Williams (7:40pm – 8:00pm)
● DC Water Update with Emmanuel Briggs (8:01pm – 8:21pm)
● Office of the Attorney General update on recent lawsuits against property managers (8:22pm – 8:42pm)
● DDOT Update with Christian Pineiro (8:43pm – 8:53pm)
● Special Exception for 3615 Cumberland Street, NW (8:54pm – 9:04pm)
VIII. Adjournment (9:05pm)
Thank you for joining us this evening. The next ANC 3F meeting will be held on Tuesday, January 16, 2024. There will be no ANC 3F public meeting in December 2023.
Green Eyeshades says
In preparation for this final ANC3F monthly meeting of the year, DC Water sent an “update” about the Soapstone sewer repair project on November 22, the morning before the long holiday weekend. DC Water unspooled new mysteries in its latest update.
Then DC Water dumped a giant digital file on the neighborhood and on our Ward 3 Councilmember and his staff. The giant digital file will bury readers in five megabytes of field reports while continuing the seven-month long coverup of actual laboratory test Results reports on the air samples collected during each “Shot” of the Cured-in-Place-Pipe (CIPP).
But DC Water stubbornly insisted to Councilmember Matt Frumin and his staff, and to the Mayor’s Office of Community Relations, and to all of our ANC3F Commissioners that “we wanted to provide you all with a copy of the daily and lab report data for Shots 1-9 directly, so here you are!”
DC Water is demonstrating most of the classic methods for how NOT to communicate with the public about potential environmental disasters.
There are no laboratory test Results reports for the air samples collected during Shots #1-9 in the giant file sent out by DC Water to government personnel on November 22, which is the same giant file DC Water posted on its Soapstone project website. So now DC Water has lied in writing to the government.
Here are the new mysteries introduced in the November 22 update:
“We understand there have been some community concerns regarding a lack of updates on our work activities in recent weeks, and for this, we apologize. The main reason for this, is because we have encountered some unforeseen site conditions during this phase of our project. More specifically, there are some existing pipe conditions on Lenore Lane and existing lateral conditions on Audubon Terrace that need to be addressed before we may move forward with any further updates or site meetings with area residents, and we are working to find a way to address these conditions in a manner that will not cause increased impacts to the community.”
DC Water will need more than 20 minutes at a monthly ANC meeting to explain what those “unforeseen site conditions” are and what the “existing pipe conditions on Lenore Lane and existing lateral conditions on Audubon Terrace that need to be addressed” are. Are the unforeseen site conditions located only on Lenore Lane and Audubon Terrace? Shot Ten has not been done yet, is the alleged fifty foot drop at Shot Ten one of the unforeseen site conditions?
How did DC Water end up with a contractor that doesn’t know how to repair sewer pipe with CIPP when the pipe is under two streets surrounded by houses? The contractor never claimed it was unprepared for the “site conditions” under the stream bed in Soapstone valley? What suddenly is different about Lenore Lane and Audubon Terrace other than the proximity of occupied homes?
And we probably don’t want to know what “increased impacts to the community” might be, given DC Water’s stubborn cover-up and lies about the dangerous toxic and carcinogenic chemicals being released in the CIPP process.
The update then continued, “In the interim, we are happy to let you know that we have now received both the re-packaged and latest daily and lab report data for Shots 1-9! We will get these data uploaded to our project webpage within the hour! The link to the page is https://www.dcwater.com/projects/soapstone_sewer, and the data have all been conveniently compiled into one PDF document that can be found in the drop-down menu under ‘Project Documents’. Separately, the data will be sent via email directly to Councilmember Frumin and his team, ANC 3F Commissioners, and Ward 3 MOCRS [Mayor’s Office of Community Relations].”
However, despite DC Water’s claim that “these data” include the “lab report data” for Shots #1-9, there are no laboratory test Results reports for the air samples collected during Shots #1-9 posted on the website for the Soapstone project. Instead, the giant PDF file includes only the “Daily Field Reports” for Shots #1-9. In addition to the inconvenience of that gigantic file, DC Water added the insult of removing the three laboratory test Results reports that were previously posted on the Soapstone project website, which is here:
https://www.dcwater.com/projects/soapstone_sewer
Anyone who wants to browse the giant PDF file (five megabytes, 54 pages) can click on this link, which is a copy of the link posted on the Soapstone project website:
https://www.dcwater.com/sites/default/files/project/documents/Soapstone%20Air%20Monitoring%20Report%20Shot%201%20through%209%2011202023_0.pdf
Green Eyeshades says
This is What Happened at the ANC3F Meeting November 28
As context for last night’s (Nov. 28) ANC3F meeting, please recall that Emanuel Briggs sent an email “update” on the Soapstone project the morning of November 22, 2023. The long first paragraph of that update is quoted in my first comment above on November 25 at 4:34 pm.
Last night, when the ANC3F meeting turned to DC Water, one of the first slides from DC Water copied and pasted parts of that paragraph from Briggs’s update, but deleted the apology, deleted the mention of “community concerns,” and brazenly deleted the reference to “unforeseen” site conditions, calling them merely “some site condition issues.” On November 22 the “site conditions” were “unforeseen,” but on November 28 they were merely “site condition issues,” not “unforeseen.” Last night’s slide does repeat the phrase “we are working to find a way to address these conditions in a manner that will not cause increased impacts to the community,” as a separate full sentence.
See the YouTube video of last night’s meeting, which is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4jTCC5DbkU
See the slide displayed at time stamp 00:38:46. The slide included the references to “site condition issues,””existing pipe conditions” on Lenore Lane and “existing lateral conditions” on Audubon Terrace. Jerrell Johnson from DC Water said “we are working with the contractor to come up with a work plan” to deal with those issues. Time stamp 00:39:10 to 00:39:17.
Commissioner Baer then asked this question (time stamp 00:40:40 to 00:40:59): “Jerrell or Emanuel [Briggs], can you tell us what specifically are those issues that are causing a delay in the project?” But Commissioner Baer got nothing but the usual mumbling from Peter Tinubu, the “construction manager” for the Soapstone project. (The mumbling is slightly more comprehensible in the recorded video on YouTube.)
Tinubu had a few answers. He said the contractor is revising their plan at the site of Shot #10 (close behind the Park Connecticut apartment building) and waiting for approval by the National Park Service. As for Audubon Terrace, Tinubu claimed that DOEE has required DC Water to install real-time air monitoring devices (PIDs). Tinubu then said that DC Water also needs to “install ten or eleven” of something that sounded like “cleanouts” in the laterals, but he may have been referring to “ten or eleven” PIDs. It was garbled. Tinubu then said that “the laterals are in bad shape” so DC Water needs to clean the laterals. On Lenore Lane, he said, “the pipes, they are in bad shape.” He said “we reached a solution … we just need to finalize it,” but he didn’t say what the “solution” was. Then he seemed to repeat what he said about the Shot behind the Park Connecticut. Then he concluded by saying that DC Water will know what the schedule is “by the end of this week or the end of next week.” YouTube video, time stamp 00:41:00 through 00:43:40.
I put Peter Tinubu’s job title in scare quotes because he is not managing any aspect of the contractors’ behavior and he is not managing DC Water’s personnel to prevent them from lying about and covering up the laboratory test Results reports for Shots #3-9.
The contractors seem to be dragging their feet about doing the CIPP jobs on Audubon Terrace and Lenore Lane. When contractors start stalling, it usually means they want more money. But Tinubu admitted the laterals under Audubon Terrace are in “bad shape” and the pipes under Lenore Lane are in “bad shape.” So DC Water may be accepting some of that cost, I don’t know.
It seems obvious that it is the contractors — and not DC Water — who are claiming they found “unforeseen site conditions” somewhere (not identified or mapped) because now DC Water won’t admit they were “unforeseen.” Both DC Water and the contractors seem to be claiming that “existing pipe conditions” on Lenore Lane and “existing lateral conditions” on Audubon Terrace “need to be addressed.”
DC Water certainly knew all there was to know about “existing pipe conditions” under Lenore Lane and “existing lateral conditions” under Audubon Terrace. Since the “conditions” of that “pipe” and those “laterals” were “existing,” DC Water knew those conditions but may have concealed them from the contractors.
If the contractors are claiming they need more money “to address these conditions,” the delay may be caused by DC Water’s refusal to cough up more money.
On the other hand, what if DC’s Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) suddenly woke up and realized that Styrene releases were getting worse and worse with most of the Shots after Shot #1 and Shot #2? If DOEE suddenly engaged in correct oversight of this dangerous project, perhaps DOEE is attempting to force the contractors to use expensive new mitigation technology to prevent releases of Styrene close to human habitation. But the contractors may be stalling until they get paid more money.
The following questions and comments concern the giant new file posted by DC Water on its Soapstone project website, which is the last link in my comment above. That new PDF file is 54 pages long and fills five megabytes when downloaded.
What if DOEE saw the huge detections of Styrene in Shot #3, Shot #5, Shot #7 and Shot #8? (The term “ppm” means parts per million; “ppbv” means parts per billion by volume).
Shot #3 was installed out of chronological order, after Shot #4 and Shot #5.
During Shot #5, Styrene was detected at 0.4300 ppm of Styrene during curing at termination manhole which equals 430 ppbv. See p.22 of new giant file.
How did DOEE react when it saw that Shot #5 released nearly 14 times the amount of Styrene detected in the highest sample during Shot #1 and more than eight times the amount of Styrene detected in the highest sample in Shot #2?
During Shot #3, Styrene was detected at 0.4030 ppm during curing at the termination manhole which equals 403 ppbv of Styrene. See p.28 of new giant file.
How did DOEE react when it saw that Shot #3 released 13 times the amount of Styrene detected in the highest sample in Shot #1, and more than eight times the amount of Styrene detected in the highest sample in Shot #2?
Readers may recall that during the August 17, 2023 community meeting, one of the engineers for the CIPP contractor (IPR) said that IPR switched to entirely new equipment to do the next scheduled Shots, which at that time would have been Shots #6-9 scheduled for September 2023. Will Elledge, a DC Water engineer, tried to contradict the IPR engineer at that meeting or a later meeting, claiming that IPR did not switch to new equipment.
In any case, Shot #7 and Shot #8, conducted in September 2023, also released stubbornly high amounts of Styrene, roughly 100 ppbv lower than detected in Shot #5 and Shot #3.
Styrene was detected at 0.3340 ppm during Shot #7 during curing at termination manhole. That is equivalent to 334 ppbv, nearly eleven times the amount of Styrene detected in the highest sample during Shot #1 and more than six times the amount of Styrene detected in the highest sample in Shot #2. See p.41 of giant file.
Styrene was detected at 0.3350 ppm during Shot #8 during curing at termination manhole which is equivalent to 335 ppbv (almost identical to the 334 ppbv during Shot #7). Like Shot #7, Shot #8 released nearly eleven times the amount of Styrene detected in the highest sample during Shot #1 and more than six times the amount of Styrene detected in the highest sample in Shot #2. See p.47 of giant file.
How did DOEE react when it found out that Shot #7 and Shot #8 BOTH released nearly eleven times the amount of Styrene detected in the highest sample during Shot #1 and more than six times the amount of Styrene detected in the highest sample in Shot #2?
Green Eyeshades says
Residents at the Park Connecticut and the Park Van Ness, as well as residents on Lenore Lane and Audubon Terrace, may also think it is suspicious that DC Water’s contractor installing Cured-in-Place Pipe liner (CIPP) has released combinations of various Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), not just high levels of Styrene. All three valid air samples from Shot #2 (March 16, 2023) detected Styrene, but only one of the three samples detected high Styrene (49.2 ppbv).
However, two of the three air samples from Shot #2 had suspicious combinations, literally a soup of TVOCs. These are the details in the laboratory test Results report for Shot #2 previously posted on DC Water’s website for the Soapstone project. That Results report and the two Results reports for Shot #1 were removed from that project website on November 22 when DC Water posted its 5 MB PDF to replace the certified laboratory test Results reports.
Lab Sample ID GD23-068-3 (March 16, Shot Two) at Terminal Manhole (page numbers are each page of GD23-068 Results at which each detection appears):
p.5 Benzene 107 ppbv;
p.5 1,3-Butadiene 4.03 ppbv;
p.5 Chlorobenzene 1.76 ppbv;
p.5 Cyclohexane 122 ppbv;
p.5 Ethylbenzene 115 ppbv;
p.6 4-Ethyltoluene 40.3 ppbv;
p.6 Heptane 168 ppbv;
p.6 Hexane 301 ppbv;
p.6 2-Butanone 1.31 ppbv;
p.6 2-Butanone 1.31 ppbv;
p.6 Propene 31.9 ppbv;
p.6 Styrene 3.65 ppbv;
p.6 Toluene 545 ppbv;
p.6 1,3,5-Trimethylbenzene 43.7 ppbv;
p.6 1,2,4-Trimethylbenzene 169 ppbv;
p.6 2,2,4-Trimethylpentane 126 ppbv;
p.6 m&p-Xylenes 396 ppbv;
p.6 o-Xylene 161 ppbv; and
p.7 Cumene 26.2 (units not stated)
Lab Sample ID GD23-068-5 (March 16, Shot Two) at Terminal Manhole Curing:
p.8 Acetone 27.1 ppbv;
p.8 Bromodichloromethane 1.02 ppbv;
p.8 Chloroform 1.02 ppbv;
p.8 Methylene chloride 38.2 ppbv;
p.8 Ethylbenzene 1.68 ppbv;
p.9 Hexane 1.28 ppbv;
p.9 2-Butanone 2.88 ppbv;
p.9 Propene 0.89 ppbv;
p.9 Styrene 49.2 ppbv;
p.9 Tetrahydrofuran 4.25 ppbv;
p.9 Toluene 4.47 ppbv;
p.9 m&p-Xylenes 5.16 ppbv; and
p.9 o-Xylene 1.87 ppbv.
What did that report reveal? What was going on during Shot #2? Did DOEE show any interest in that witches’ brew of dangerous VOCs?
Shot #1 on March 14, 2023 released similar VOC soups, but the ingredients lists were shorter.
For example, Lab Sample ID GD23-066-7 at Insertion Manhole D1 (March 14th Shot
1) detected the following soup of VOCs (page numbers from GD23-066 Results):
p.11 Acetone 6.79 ppbv;
p.11 Ethylbenzene 1.61 ppbv;
p.12 Heptane 1.64 ppbv;
p.12 Isopropanol 3.56 ppbv;
p.12 Propene 4.94 ppbv;
p.12 Styrene 2.95 ppbv;
p.12 m&p-Xylenes 3.51 ppbv; and
p.12 o-Xylene 1.37 ppbv.
Also during Shot #1 (March 14, 2023), Lab Sample ID GD23-067-2 at Upwind Baseline Manhole D1 released this soup of VOCs (page numbers from GD23-067 Results):
p.5 Acetone 16.9 ppbv;
p.6 Isopropanol 21.5 ppbv;
p.6 2-Butanone 1.77 ppbv;
p.6 Propene 1.18 ppbv;
p.6 Styrene 30.8 ppbv;
p.6 Tetrahydrofuran 5.88 ppbv; and
p.6 m&p-xylenes 1.57 ppbv.