Purpose: Partnering to clean up and restore the Anacostia watershed.
Location: Maryland and Washington, D.C.
Overview: Located blocks from Capitol Hill, the Anacostia River is one of the Chesapeake Bay’s most heavily altered and toxic watersheds. PCBs, petroleum compounds, heavy metals, fecal material, and pesticides pollute the river. Only 6 percent of the area’s original forests remain, and more than 95 percent of the tidal wetlands have been lost. Historic fisheries are gone, the remaining fish are unsafe to eat, and swimming in the river is dangerous. Since 1999, NOAA has been working in partnership with local, state, and federal agencies and community interest groups to reverse these problems.
Since the late1990s, NOAA has worked in the Anacostia Watershed. NOAA
Office of Response and Restoration was a founding member of the
Anacostia Watershed Toxics Alliance, created to address contaminants in the
watershed with an emphasis on sediments.
NOAA’s Restoration Center has funded local wetland and riparian
plantings and restoration design. The NOAA
Chesapeake Bay Office's
Watershed Education & Training Program has funded local interest groups
who regularly engage students and at-risk youth for classroom learning and
fieldwork in the watershed.
In 2005, NOAA Office of Response and Restoration identified the Anacostia as a
local, highly visible watershed where our agency could apply a One-NOAA
approach to better coordinate internally and help clean up and restore an urban
estuary. Goals for the NOAA Anacostia Project are to
