One of my regular walking routes takes me by the Broad Branch daylighted stream along Linnean Avenue (map). For weeks, I watched as the grasses alongside the sidewalk and the street grew taller and taller. They would need to be mowed. But this would not be an easy fix.
One day I happened to be walking by as the DC Department of General Services responded to a neighbor complaint about the tall grass. Two men were surveying the territory and preparing to mow. However, it is not as simple as that, because of the land’s other neighbors.
Beyond the DC-owned public space (the white areas adjacent to the gray streets in the image below) is land that belongs to the National Park Service and the Republic of Peru.
Broad Branch and Linnean Streams run through land owned by the District, the U.S. government, and the government of Peru.
I asked the workers if they knew the boundaries, and whether they knew they could not mow on NPS land. They did not. They even put me on the phone with their supervisor, who also had no idea. They decided to leave.
I contacted Steve Saari, the DC Department of Energy and Environment staffer who oversaw the restoration of this section of Broad Branch stream in 2014. He then talked to DGS. Still, the grass kept getting higher.
Finally, I reached out to a Ward 3 rep from the Mayor’s Office of Community Relations and Services. That’s quite a mouthful, so these community liaisons are referred to as MOCRs (pronounced “mokers”). At the June ANC 3F meeting, Ward 3 MOCR Emir Gur-Ravantab asked that people get in touch if there were issues of public space needing to be mowed. So I did.
I sent him photos of the tall grass, and of a fire hydrant obscured by the overgrowth. He responded in a June 27th email copying the National Park Service and the DC Department of Public Works, which is the agency that typically mows DC’s public space. And when I walked by the area a few days later, it had been mowed.
“We MOCRS are here to get stuff done,” Gur-Ravantab told me.
After a time, MOCRs tend to move to other jobs in the DC government or in public service. Gur-Ravantab’s former Ward 3 colleague Tony Donaldson Jr. recently did so. As a MOCR, he also helped “get stuff done” at Broad Branch stream. Volunteers whacking away at invasive weeds in late 2020-early 2021 needed someone to pick up a massive pile of brush. Donaldson took care of it.
So, we extend a big “thank you” to the MOCRs through the years who have come to the aid of the community in matters big and small.
Green Eyeshades says
Thank you for recognizing good work by DC public employees. I wish DC Water and DOEE would “get stuff done” to stop chronic low-frequency noise pollution and carcinogenic chemical pollution in Soapstone Ravine.
The DC Water presentation to ANC3F’s monthly meeting on Tuesday (July 19) revealed that DC Water or its contractors must have known well in advance that construction of the new stream bed would create chronic low-frequency noise pollution from two pumps that are running day and night, weekdays, weekends and holidays, on the west end of the Ravine (near 32nd and Albemarle) (aka “Site One”). At the one hour and 54 minute and 53 second mark (01:54:53) on the YouTube video, the presentation shows a slide labeled “SITE 1 NOISE UPDATE” followed at 01:56:00 by a slide labeled “NOISE ABATEMENT.”
The “Site One Noise Update” slide (01:54:53) reveals that “two pumps” have been running at site one, and the “second pump will be removed” “around the end of the month” (presumably around the end of July). But that slide also reveals “Remaining work to complete the stream work at Site 1 … will require the continued use of one pump.” This is followed by this word salad: “The exact timing of this work is to be determined [TBD] based on ongoing construction coordination. This detail, along with a more accurate projection of continuous stream pump operation during working hours at the western end of the park can be provided in the weekly updates as it becomes available.”
What weekly updates? Nobody in our community has received any “weekly” updates about Soapstone Ravine, so who or what will be issuing weekly updates, and who will get those updates?
Meanwhile, it is plain from the photo on the “Noise Abatement” slide that efforts to “reduce” or “buffer” the chronic low-frequency noise are flimsy and useless.
Why were the contractors allowed to pollute our neighborhood with this stupid amount of damaging low-frequency noise without installing thorough noise buffers FIRST or requiring less noisy pumps?
Nobody disclosed that the stream bed construction would require the use of pumps. The only mention of pumps by DC Water before the project began was that the sewer line repair would involve temporary pumping of the sewer around the portion of sewer to be repaired with the CIPP process.
But now, after it’s too late to ask for more and better mitigation of the horrendous night time noise, we are told on the “Schedule Update Current Status” slide (01:52:40) that TWO pumps have been operating and will CONTINUE operating at the west end of the Ravine 24 hours a day seven days a week until the end of July, then one pump will remain until all work is complete at the west end of the Ravine, in the unknown future.
The next slide (01:53:30), labeled “SCHEDULE UPDATE NEXT MONTH (August 2022),” reveals that work at the west end (Site One) will be a “continuation of stream work” which means the single pump will continue operating 24 hours a day seven days a week for the entire month of August, as far as DC Water knows.
An interesting photo of a small portion of reconstructed stream bed is on the cover slide at 01:52:20, followed by the two slides with the construction schedule at 01:52:40 – 01:54:01, followed by a description of the “boiler” that the contractors want to use for the CIPP tasks (not yet approved by DOEE) at 01:54:07.
(link to ANC3F YouTube video to follow)
Green Eyeshades says
This is the YouTube video of the ANC3F meeting held July 19, 2022:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMmQNy2JPNA
In addition to the slides itemized in my first comment on this blogpost, there are photographs of Soapstone Ravine work sites one, two and three in the video on slides shown at time stamps 01:56:40 (Site 1), 01:57:03 (Site 2, first view), 01:57:22 (Site 2 second view) and 01:57:31 (Site 3). On each of the slides, there is a small-scale map showing the location of the respective worksite on a yellow circle.
Sites 4 and 5 are not shown in photos. The slides labeled “Schedule Updates” for July and August showed that no work was scheduled to start at sites 4 and 5, but at least one DC Water speaker in the video contradicted that slide as it applied to site 4. That same speaker claimed the level of noise created by the two pumps is “below” the level that DC Water is allowed to create, but there was no slide and no text on any slide that made that claim and no slide showed what level of noise is “permitted” or allowed.
I have not attempted to transcribe the verbal narration of the slides, so it will be helpful if ANC3F or the Connection is able to provide either a transcript or a summary of what DC Water personnel actually said during the July 19 meeting. It would also help to have an Internet link to full-size versions of all of the presentation slides as well as to the “newsletter” dated July 22 that is pictured at time stamp 01:58:42, which the presenter said was the “first newsletter.”
Green Eyeshades says
After the slide presentation, during questions and answers, DC Water’s representative (William Elledge) admitted that DC Water DOES NOT KNOW WHAT CHEMICALS HAVE BEEN RELEASED FROM PREVIOUS PROJECTS IN DC USING CURED-IN-PLACE-PIPE (CIPP), OR WHAT AMOUNTS OF THOSE CHEMICALS HAVE BEEN RELEASED.
At first, DC Water’s spokesperson said “a range of VOCs” (volatile organic compounds) would be released and “it will be those VOCs that we will be testing for.”
But when asked again whether DC Water knows what chemicals have been released from CIPP projects in the past and in what amounts, Mr. Elledge said “No.”
(Please watch the YouTube video from time stamp 2:06:49 to 2:09:15 (questions from David Bardin, answers from William Elledge).
There was additional important discussion of that revelation by at least one ANC3F commissioner after the two hour and nine minute mark.