while the waters may look idyllic, a century-old sewage system and dangerously high levels of bacteria have made the urban national park unswimmable for decades. now, a team of volunteers is working to change that, one water sample at a time.

no-swim zone

d.c. residents know that swimming in the city’s waterways is not the best idea — in fact, it’s been illegal since 1971. lorde shocked concert goers and made national news last year when she claimed to float in the potomac before her show. there’s a stigma around the cleanliness of these rivers from decades of pollution, but in recent years, the waterways have been slowly improving.

the environmental protection agency has been trying to make the city’s waterways swimmable and fishable since the clean water act of 1972. while the original ten-year timeline for that goal passed forty years ago, the act set in motion a clean water agenda the city is hoping to reach in the next few years.

in 2019, city officials began floating the idea of relaxing or lifting the swim ban. but even after decades of cleaning up the waterways, environmentalists question whether the water is safe enough to open to public swimming. data from the d.c. volunteer water quality monitoring project is helping shed light on the state of the city’s rivers and streams.

watching the waterways

on a cool day in early may, the ground is damp and the water is high in rock creek park. it’s the first day of the 2023 water monitoring season, an overcast morning after several days of on-and-off rain.

landrum beard, community engagement coordinator at rock creek conservancy, sits under a picnic pavilion at a table lined with small red coolers for volunteers to pick up with their water testing kits. they’ll head out toward their assigned sites, marked with ribbons, along the creek and return with the coolers filled with water samples, which are taken to anacostia riverkeeper’s lab for testing.

anacostia riverkeeper launched the d.c. volunteer water quality monitoring project in 2018 to measure and track contamination levels in d.c.’s main waterways: the anacostia river, the potomac river, and rock creek.

with a $140,000 grant from the d.c. department of energy and environment, the project has grown into a collaboration between anacostia riverkeeper, alliance for the chesapeake bay, rock creek conservancy, and nature forward. the groups have trained almost 400 volunteers from all eight wards of the city, collecting more than 2,000 water samples from 2019 to 2022.

each wednesday morning from may to september — considered the outdoor recreational season — teams of volunteers take water samples at two dozen sites across the city and test for ph balance, e. coli levels, water temperature, air temperature, and turbidity, a measure of water clarity. they also note if they see anyone in the water, as many people and their pets still wade in the creek despite park signs warning against it. the results are posted each friday and updated in the swim guide app, which lets users check the water quality of nearby beaches.

most of the volunteers are consistent, beard says. there are some newcomers on this first day of the new season, but others have been a part of the program for years.

benita veskimets is one of those veteran volunteers. veskimets, who used to work in fundraising for rock creek conservancy, is in her fourth year of water sampling. “i’m really curious to see what happens this year,” she says. “last year, i feel like it was worse than the year before.”

only a few of the rock creek sites passed with safe bacteria levels last year, beard confirms. those were mostly on dry weeks, when there was little or no rainfall impacting the stormwater sewage overflow. this morning is not one of those times. after a rainy week, the creek is likely swimming with bacteria from runoff. not the best way to kick off the season, he admits.

rock creek park’s sewage problem

the root of this problem lies with infrastructure, and if you’ve ever walked through rock creek park after a rainstorm, you can smell why. 

after just half an inch of rainfall, hazardous waste and sewage flood into the creek from the city’s old combined sewer infrastructure. in this system, stormwater and sewage flow through the same pipes — and when it rains, they quickly fill up and overflow into the rivers. rock creek is considered dangerously contaminated when that happens, and recreators are advised to avoid the waterway for up to three days afterward.

volunteers have tracked that trend at the sampling areas. “all these sites, for the most part, have a storm drain a few hundred feet or so upstream from where the sampling site is,” beard said. “so after big rain events, we always see that the sites have extremely high bacteria.”

d.c. water is now working on a $2.6 billion overhaul to the city’s sewage system with the goal of redirecting some of these sewage lines away from the city’s waterways and back toward treatment plants. this plan, the clean river project, is set to be completed in 2030. 

in the current phase of the project, the national park service is teaming up with d.c. water to take on piney branch creek, one of rock creek’s main tributaries and victims of contamination. an estimated 39 million gallons of sewage and stormwater pour into the creek each year.

“the way to do it is to build bigger pipes under the ground that can handle all the sewage and the stormwater and keep it in the pipes and get it down to the treatment plant,” said steve dryden, a local conservationist who has worked in the piney branch area for years.

the city is expanding these pipes, aiming to reduce the amount of sewage flowing into the three waterways by 96 percent. it’s part of a hybrid plan for rock creek that includes both traditional “grey infrastructure” — like basins, drains, and pipes — and new “green infrastructure,” such as rain gardens and permeable pavers in 365 acres of the surrounding urban areas. a pilot program for this green infrastructure plan reduced runoff into the creek by nearly one fifth, surpassing d.c. water’s goals.

but sewage overflow and runoff after rainfall is not the only contamination source in rock creek. the water quality monitoring project reports that some sites have had persistently high levels of bacteria even during dry weather, which may be caused by “outdated infrastructure, leaking sewer pipes, or uninvestigated point-source pollution.”

jeanne braha, executive director of rock creek conservancy, said this may also come from pet waste and houses or businesses with sewer pipes that are accidentally hooked up to storm drain pipes that flow into the creek. construction in the urban area is another contributor, veskimets adds. while the potomac and anacostia bacteria levels are a direct result of combined sewer overflows, rock creek’s contamination comes from several sources — making solutions harder to find.

one sample at a time

while solving rock creek’s water contamination problem is a long process, participants in the d.c. volunteer water quality monitoring project are ensuring that city officials and environmentalists have the data to help. 

the potomac and anacostia rivers have been slowly improving in water quality since the anacostia was once dubbed “one of the most polluted waterways in the nation.” people debate whether the rivers have recovered enough to be swimmable.

“i think we’re getting there,” said louis eby, a longtime water quality volunteer and former attorney advisor in the epa’s office of water. he’s seen a lot of progress in the two rivers, but remains cautious about rock creek.

“i wouldn’t swim in rock creek,” he said. “we’ll get there some day for rock creek, but not soon.”

sure enough, the rain in early may was a forecast of remaining challenges. both upper and lower rock creek sites reported unsafe e. coli and ph levels in the first week of monitoring.

still, citizen scientists will continue to keep tabs on the water quality each week. as soon as rock creek is finally swimmable, they’ll be the first to know. 

as the summer recreation season kicks off, people flock to d.c.’s waterways for kayaking, paddleboarding, and sightseeing — and one day soon, they might be able to safely swim in them.

this was the situation when i visited the park on the morning of january 4, 2022. during a brief conversation, a park attendant explained the absence of the animals. the weather was warm and the manatees only gathered in the park’s waters when they needed the artificial warmth generated by a nearby power plant. 

the warm conditions of that morning meant the only manatees i saw on that trip were plastic statues. it was disappointing for me as a wildlife photographer on a family vacation to florida –– but i do not begrudge the animals for not making an appearance. they were better off foraging for food while the weather was warm than huddling together in the aquatic equivalent of a climate refugee camp. these animals have suffered through a lot in the last few years and need every day of warm water they can get. 

florida’s starving manatees

the manatee population living along florida’s east coast has been suffering from an “unusual mortality event” or ume since december 2020. the florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (fwc) reported that 1101 manatees died across florida in 2021. for comparison, the fwc reported just 637 manatee fatalities in 2020. the number of manatee fatalities in 2021 jumped 476 deaths over the 5-year average of 625 fatalities a year. according to florida director of the center for biological diversity jaclyn lopez, the manatee deaths witnessed in florida between the beginning of the ume and february 2022 are equivalent to 12-13% of the state’s total manatee population. 

according to lopez and the fwc, the cause of the recent manatee death crisis is the collapse of the seagrass population in warm water areas that manatees in eastern florida use to survive the winter. high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus caused by human water pollution (such as agricultural and suburban waste water runoff) allow naturally occurring algae to grow into harmful algae blooms. these algae blooms block sunlight from passing through the water to the seagrass beds below, devastating the manatee’s main food source. the manatees are then forced to choose between congregating in warm water areas that no longer have enough seagrass to support them or venturing out into areas where the winter water is too cold for them to survive. 

both lopez and the fwc point to indian river lagoon as the epicenter of this crisis. according to lopez, the lagoon is kept at a toasty 68 degrees because of artificial warming created by discharge from a nearby nuclear power plant. it has traditionally been an indispensable wintering area for manatees, but now it no longer has enough seagrass to support the animals who gather there, causing mass starvation and numerous fatalities. 

emergency lettuce for manatees

the united states fish and wildlife service (usfws) and the fwc have responded to the ume with the formation of a joint incident management team with a joint unified command (uc) to coordinate the government’s response. under the framework of this taskforce, federal and state conservation officials have worked together to monitor the situation, keep the public informed, and minimize manatee casualties. the most drastic effort undertaken by the taskforce was a pilot feeding program in which officials would provide manatees with lettuce. according to the fwc, before the feeding program manatees would “completely fast or consume elements with no or little nutritional value, including sand or other debris.” the supplemental feeding trial was implemented in order to “reduce the negative health impacts of prolonged starvation and possibly reduce the numbers of deaths and manatees needing rescue.”

the manatees began to eat the lettuce wildlife officials placed into the water on january 20, 2022. the fwc does not currently have an estimate on the total number of manatees fed by the program. the number of animals visiting the temporary field response station (tfrs) in indian river lagoon, where the feeding was being carried out, varied, with a single-day high of 800 individuals. the feeding program was discontinued on march 31, since most of the manatees dispersed to better feeding grounds as the waters warmed. a scaled down uc is continuing to monitor the area for distressed manatees over the summer.

when asked about the feeding program, lopez called it a “necessary stopgap” and “an essential emergency measure” but argued it was not a viable long term solution. patrick rose, executive director of the save the manatee club, agreed with lopez, saying the program “cannot possibly be relied on for the long term future.” he also called the program “tragically necessary” and said that the need for it was “predictable” given the government’s failure to adequately deal with water quality issues. 

the lawsuits

three conservation groups, the center for biological diversity, defenders of wildlife, and the save the manatee club, have responded to the ume with lawsuits against the usfws and the environmental protection agency (epa).

according to lopez and rose, the conservation groups hope the lawsuit against the usfws will force the agency to update the “critical habitat designation” of florida manatees. critical habitat is defined as the air, land, food, and water essential for the survival of a species. rose explained that the current critical habitat designation for florida manatees was included in the original 1973 endangered species act and that it has not been expanded to keep pace with new science and regulations in the years since that law’s passage. the endangered species act requires federal agencies take into account how their policies impact the critical habitat of endangered and threatened species when crafting policy.

according to lopez and rose, the usfws actually agreed with environmental groups that the critical habitat designation for florida manatees needed to be updated back in 2008. however, the agency has so far not dedicated the needed resources to update the designation. the agency currently has until june 24 to answer the complaint of the conservation groups in court. lopez put the purpose of the lawsuit succinctly, saying, “if we protect manatee habitat, they won’t starve to death.”

according to the save the manatee club, the lawsuit against the epa over its failure to consult with the usfws on water quality standards and its inadequate enforcement of those standards was filed on may 10. 

when asked about the lawsuits, a representative of the usfws said: “the u.s. fish and wildlife service is aware of the litigation, but we do not comment on litigation as a matter of policy.” the agency also said that: “the existing florida manatee critical habitat designation includes the indian river lagoon at the epicenter of the ongoing ume.”

the uncertain future of a florida icon

in the long term, efforts will need to be made to restore water quality and manatee habitats so that these herbivorous marine mammals can thrive without human feeding programs. hopefully these changes are made so that tourists and florida residents alike will be able to enjoy the spectacle of seeing these wonderful creatures in the wild for generations to come.

welcome back to sciencecast: climate change series! twice a month, we will explore various facets of climate change through interviews with uw experts. in our second episode, we talk with dr. jim hurley, director of the uw aquatic science center and a uw-madison professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering, about the relationship between climate change and water quality in the great lakes. produced by katie piel and julie spitzer.

the mississippi river green team is a youth employment and conservation program run by the mississippi watershed management organization, the minneapolis park and recreation board, and with support from minneapolis step up, with hopes of creating a pipeline to strong green jobs in the future.