Anacostia
The Anacostia was once a deep, crystalline river teeming with life. But in the 1700s, when the Mid-Atlantic region became one of the first major centers of European colonization in North America, Anacostia River ecology began to unravel. Over the course of centuries, deforestation, agricultural and urban runoff, and toxic industry caused the Anacostia to diminish until it became one of the nation's most denuded river ecosystems.
But we are not doomed to be the victims of historical ignorance. River advocates and local governments are working together to restore this river, bringing a promise of renewed health to the Anacostia and the many people and wild species that live along its shores.
Project Outcomes
The Anacostia Project began in 2010 in an effort to better understand my own home watershed. Since then I have worked with river advocates, city and county governments, local people and schools to help tell the story of this historic urban river. The project has included several exhibits, a story map, a book and much more. Find out more about project outcomes by expanding the titles below.
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River of Redemption: Almanac of Life on the Anacostia, published in 2018 with Texas A&M University Press, tells a story in images and words of a river community brought to the brink of environmental ruin. It is a story of a tragic dismantling of a watershed, but also of a community with a steadfast will to redeem itself in the eyes of a river. Buy the book. Read a review.
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This story map, created with the Esri Story Maps team and supported by the DC Department of Energy and Environment, takes viewers on a journey from headwaters to confluence in the Anacostia River Watershed.
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A decade or more of photography has yielded more than 10,000 images of the Anacostia River watershed. You can search and license some of those images on the International League of Conservation Photographers Photoshelter site. For inquiries about the photo archive. Please send me an email: kris_schly@yahoo.com.
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The project has included several exhibits including this outdoor exhibit near National’s Stadium created with the Anacostia Riverfront Business Improvement District.
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Soil scientists understand soil as a body--a living body. Within the body of the earth is written a memory of all that has ever happened. In Kenilworth Park, the body has many stories to tell. Learn More.
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With slideshow presentations, lectures, publications and media outreach, the project has worked to broaden understanding of Anacostia history and restoration.
Background
A watershed moment
The Anacostia River has the potential to be a natural gem supporting increased equity, improved quality of life, economic improvement and habitat for plants and animals of the region. But expanding development in the watershed threatens to undo progress that has been made, and to thwart significant restoration of watershed ecology. As progress is made toward river health, pressure mounts for development--which if not done with forethought and restraint will set river restoration back indefinitely. Washington DC is looking at the future of several key pieces of Anacostia watershed land, the decisions that are made about these lands could provide for greater biodiversity, improved public health and a more resilient river ecosystem, or they could sustain a status quo that is ecologically and socially unjust.
What happens here in the next five years will determine the future of this iconic river. Restoration and re-wilding, combined with respectful and regenerative development, public awareness, and incentives for protecting the Anacostia could help this watershed rebound, to become healthier than it has been since the founding of the nation’s capital.
The Anacostia Project aims to help stir public interest and understanding of the rivers past, present and future.
