Four Quadrants,
Four Solutions
When it rains hard enough in parts of northwest Washington, the rainwater can combine with sewage water and pollute rivers, according to DC Water’s webpage on Washington’s combined sewer systems.
Parts of southwest Washington are susceptible to flooding, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood hazards map.
Residents of northeast Washington’s Brentwood and Ivy City neighborhoods say a chemical plant and bus terminal are polluting their air.
And some Barry Farm residents in southeast Washington were kicked out of their homes to make way for new apartment complexes and townhouses.
But that new housing in southeast Washington will replace a fossil fuel-driven heating and cooling system with a geothermal system — the first of its kind in the district, according to a 2023 Public Service Commission press release.
And a nonprofit group has advocated for residents to use the northeast bus terminal for meeting spaces and has pushed the D.C. Council to require the chemical plant to get a permit so it can monitor its odors.
As for flooding in the southwest, architects built The Wharf’s buildings and boardwalks to resist at least some of that flooding.
Meanwhile, Washington’s water utility is laying down special pavement that’s designed to prevent excess water from entering the sewers and is planning on adding more infrastructure until 2030 to solve the problem.
Each initiative has advocates, government employees or contractors who say they’re excited for it. The projects are also possible blueprints for how Washingtonians can address additional climate and environment issues in the district.
After adding greenery to northwest Washington, DC Water has turned to pavement to stop floods
Askshat Chaturvedi has spent 20 years developing climate change solutions to communities around the world. Currently a consultant with the World Bank, he said he has helped people in countries like Suriname, Botswana and Mozambique prepare for disasters, including floods.
But on a recent November morning, as he was taking his child to a playdate near his home in northeast Washington, he said he didn’t know he was walking past alleyways designed to make his own neighborhood resilient to flooding.
Once Chaturvedi learned that DC Water, Washington's water utility, was renovating alleyways around him to reduce flooding, though, he said he liked the plan.
“It’s actually a great idea if it is done properly,” he said. “Because this requires maintenance and ensuring that whatever site they’re creating — the different locations within the street — they are well maintained.”
Water has designated, and in some cases already renovated, 43 strips of pavement east of Rock Creek Park to prevent flooding in the area, according to DC Water’s map of the project. The goal is to prevent rainwater from running off streets and into the sewage system, according to DC Water’s webpage for the project. It’s part of a larger initiative to renovate 92 acres throughout Washington to resist flooding.
Seth Charde, DC Water’s senior manager, said he and his colleagues are currently trying to prevent flooding by using permeable pavers, which are like bricks for alleyways and sidewalks.
Water flows through the gaps between the pavers and absorbs into the ground underneath, according to the Washington Department of Energy and Environment’s webpage on permeable pavers.
DC Water can also collect the water in holding tanks, Charde said.
“When it rains, it soaks into the ground or it is held in an underground storage area below these facilities,” he said. “And then we can infiltrate it into the ground or slowly release it back off into the combined sewer pipe in the street after the storm is passed, and then there’s sufficient volume in that pipe that we’re not going to contribute to the overflow stream.”
If rainwater didn’t go into holding or sink into the soil, it would flow into the sewer system too quickly, Charde said. When that happens, the rainwater, mixed with the sewage water, overflows the pipes and is discharged into the Anacostia River, Rock Creek and Potomac River, according to DC Water’s webpage on combined sewer systems.
Excess rainfall doesn’t just lead to overflowing pipes, though. It also causes flooding in and of itself, said David Ramos, a graphic designer who helped research, write and design a mapping project of Washington’s waterways.
Adding infrastructure that lets rainwater soak into the ground can help prevent flooding, he said.
“You care about getting water off of a parking lot or a street or a sidewalk, even, and putting it somewhere where it can first soak into the ground or just stay a while so it can drain away more slowly,” he said. “Or you can root it into a big storm sewer.”
DC Water employees have already monitored the areas they’re renovating, so they know how much rainwater to account for, Charde said. That way, the added storage capacity matches the amount of rain that hits the ground. After the infrastructure projects are built, DC Water employees will observe some of them over a year to ensure reality matches their predictions.
“Over that course of a year, you can see the storm come in, you can see the facility fill up and you can see it draw down over time,” Charde said. “And so, we’re looking for certain time frames to make sure that it doesn’t drain too fast because if it drains too fast, it’s not effective.”
Charde and others at DC Water have previously added more soil, parks and curb-side planting to reduce the amount of water going into the sewers, according to DC Water’s webpages for phases one and two of the initiative.
Since April, they’ve only been using permeable pavement because it makes the installation process faster, Charde said. The process of installing permeable pavement doesn’t change that much from one location to the next, he said, so they’re able to use the same template no matter where they are.
“That approach really streamlines our planning, design, permitting and approval process, and it allows us to implement these projects a little faster,” Charde said.
The current, pavement-only phase started in April and will finish in December 2027, according to DC Water’s webpage for the phase.
In the next and final phase, DC Water hopes to return to adding parks and greenery around northeast Washington, Charde said. That phase will be complete by September 30, 2029 and the overall green infrastructure project will be completed by March 23, 2030, according to page 714 of the decree that mandates the project.
After DC Water adds permeable pavement and greenery across all of its projects, workers will continue to maintain the sites, Charde said. That includes landscaping, picking up trash and ensuring water-holding tanks are draining properly, he said.
“So, it’s funded, it’s required and we’ll be doing this maintenance for the lifetime of these facilities,” Charde said.
When Chaturvedi saw the permeable pavers after dropping his child off, he said he worried about weeds and soils filling the gaps that water’s supposed to channel through.
“I wonder if they will maintain just the grass?” he said. “I don’t know. This will require maintenance.”
Still, Chaturvedi said he looks forward to seeing how the permeable pavement holds up against the rain and is glad to know DC Water is combatting flooding throughout his neighborhood.
“It is very essential,” he said. “I definitely see that there’s a need right now.”
Fearing air pollution, advocates have tried to shut down a chemical plant and bus terminal in northeast Washington
Every few weeks, Kelo Saheed needs to make a run to the Giant’s grocery store or the only Home Depot in Washington, located in Brentwood, just north of the National Arboretum.
When he does, he walks up W street next to a black tarp draped over a chain fence. Beyond the fence, rubble and construction equipment mark the site of a future school bus terminal.
Saheed, who recently moved to Brentwood, said he noticed the construction site when it first popped up but didn’t know what it was.
“When I see it, I just kind of take a look,” he said. “I was wondering when it would get to the point when it’s all finished.”
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education is constructing the bus terminal and will finish it in the spring, according to Washington’s Department of General Services webpage for the construction project. However, advocates with Empower DC have said it will pollute the air and harm the environment. They have appealed a permit required to build the terminal and have petitioned lawmakers to stop the construction.
The advocacy organization published a video in February 2024 explaining that the busses may pollute the air and increase traffic in the area. In 2024, the intersection near the planned bus terminal already had the highest levels of black carbon, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and microscopic particles in Brentwood’s air, according to a study of the district’s air pollution published in August.
An OSSE bus terminal will add to that pollution, said Anthony David Jr., Empower DC’s environmental justice coordinator.
“The air quality has already been reported really bad,” he said. “It can only get worse when you are bringing in 250 diesel power busses.”
Theola DeBose, OSSE's director of communications and outreach, did not respond to a request for interview or comment.
OSSE needs the bus terminal because it needs the transportation space, infrastructure and offices, according to the Department of General Services webpage for the construction.
David said he’s also concerned about the terminal because the Department of Energy and Environment approved its fueling station before conducting an environmental impact assessment. DOEE only conducted the assessment when Brentwood residents sued the department, according to the February 2024 video.
“Within that environmental impact assessment, they found, evidently, a perennial stream and a wetland on the site,” said David, referring to a stream that flows year-round. “So, they had to address that [with] their permit application.”
Someone using the DOEE communications email acknowledged a request for interview but did not make anyone available and did not provide a comment.
After DOEE finished the assessment, Empower DC advocates voiced their concerns about the fueling station permit at an October 2024 public hearing for the terminal, David said. They argued that the DOEE should apply for a new permit because the scope of the bus terminal had changed, he said.
A March 14 DOEE memo lists 32 comments on the fueling station permit that range from arguing the facility will pollute the air to arguing the DOEE did not properly consult the Brentwood community. DOEE refuted 31 of them, agreeing with part of the last comment: arguing the number of spills at the fueling station should be recorded.
The appeal is still awaiting a court hearing, David said. While the appeal plays out in court, Empower DC advocates are also preparing for the possibility of the bus terminal staying in Brentwood permanently, David said.
“What we definitely want is just to lower the impacts because we’re definitely not at a point where we could completely stop it,” he said. “They’ve already invested so much money into, and whatnot, you know?”
So, advocates are focusing on how to make the space usable for Brentwood residents. He said Empower DC has developed a community plan for how the residents can use the terminal. That community plan is not public, David said.
“We feel like the residents should be able to use some of the building space to have a safe place to meet because that’s an issue within the community,” he said.
The bus terminal isn’t the only environmental hazard in the area, David said. A chemical plant in Ivy City, which neighbors Brentwood, uses copaltite, which may cause cancer, genetic defects, infertility, organ damage, breathing damage, eye damage, drowsiness and burns, according to the plant’s safety data sheet for the material. The plant also uses nepseal 30, which may cause eye and skin irritation, according to the plant’s safety data sheet for the material.
An Ivy City resident and two former residents filed a lawsuit against the chemical plant, which National Engineering Products operates, on June 16. The plaintiffs claim that NEP’s fumes and odors caused them difficulty breathing, learning disabilities, headaches, nosebleeds and swelling.
NEP did not respond to a request for interview or comment.
Volunteers with Empower DC helped residents submit 311 requests about the facility, which led to the D.C. council enacting emergency legislation requiring facilities submit odor control plans to receive an air quality permit, David said.
That solution had two gaps, however, he said. First, controlling for odors doesn’t necessarily control for pollutants.
“I guess it’s good because the odors, you know, are being addressed,” David said. “But also, just because there’s an odor or if there’s not an odor — that doesn’t mean that the emissions are there, you know? Because there are odorless emissions.”
Plus, the requirement doesn’t apply to NEP yet because the facility doesn’t have an air quality permit, David said.
He said NEP is in the process of getting an air quality permit but added that he did not know more details.
The Environmental Protection Agency studied the air around the neighborhood between June 2023 and February 2025, according to the Agency’s webpage for the study. The webpage does not include a final report of the study, so it’s unclear what EPA scientists concluded.
However, EPA air quality analyst Alice Chow said in a July 11, 2024 video conference with Ivy City residents that she and her colleagues found low amounts of harmful compounds in the area.
“We don’t expect those to pose a concern for human health,” she said, according to the video conference recording.
David said the EPA study is inconclusive, though, because it didn’t monitor the chemical plant specifically.
“Even if they did find something that was harmful, the next narrative would have been, ‘Oh, we can’t pinpoint it to this facility,’ because the types of studies that they were doing was catching the neighborhood as a whole,” he said.
Tetra Tech, an environmental consulting firm, conducted a study focused on NEP’s exhaust ports in August 2022 and found the amount of airborne chemicals from the facility were below the maximum levels, according to the results of the survey published in February 2023. Tetra Tech scientists conducted those studies for DOEE, according to the results document.
But David said that study didn’t test for cresol or formaldehyde. Those are ingredients in copalite, the chemical that has possible side effects like cancer and genetic defects.
Advocates with Empower DC believe the government won’t save them, David said.
“When it’s Black or brown folks advocating for themselves, they always, at every single step, give us the run-around,” he said. “They’re gonna push the needle further back literally at every step when engaging with the government at all levels.”
Organizers are still trying to figure out how to work around that so they can live in a better environment, David said.
“There's no enforcement or accountability at play, and that's what we're still trying to figure out,” he said. “Like, what is that enforcement and accountability mechanism with the government?”
For the past four months, Augustine Francis has walked on the sidewalk next to the NEP facility about twice a week to catch the bus, he said. He has never known what he has been walking next to.
“I don’t know anything about this building,” he said.
However, when he learned that Brentwood residents alleged the building caused them breathing difficulties, learning disabilities, headaches, nosebleeds and swelling, Francis said NEP shouldn’t be releasing chemicals into his neighborhood.
“They need to change this building to something else,” he said.
In flood-prone southwest Washington, architects raised The Wharf up to protect it
Jada Harrison, a Maryland resident, said she spends time around The Wharf in southwest Washington when she visits her friend. That’s about once a month.
On a recent visit, she looked out on the Washington Channel and noticed something about the water.
“It’s very low,” she said.
The water wasn’t low. The Wharf is high, as architects built it 14 feet above the water level to prevent flooding.
“I guess that was a really good idea,” Harrison said. “You wouldn’t think, or at least I didn’t think, we were that high up or it was any lower than this at some point, but that seems better for the area, though. That’s a good choice.”
Much of southwest Washington, including the National Mall, has a 1% chance of flooding each year, according to the district’s flood risk website. But The Wharf only has a 0.2% chance of flooding in part thanks to its elevation.
Architects designed the neighborhood to be resilient to flooding, said Stan Eckstut, the architect who coordinated the neighborhood’s development. Eckstut said he and his colleagues put plants on the roofs and drains in the sidewalks to prevent flooding and runoff.
They engineered a water treatment system underneath the neighborhood to collect and clean that water, added a park to absorb rainwater and raised the neighborhood by 12 feet to protect the buildings from when the nearby Washington Channel comes onto land.
“We really imagined [that] all of our public infrastructure in the streets, squares would last forever,” Eckstut said.
The first part of making a waterfront like The Wharf last is to raise it above the flood level, Eckstut said. That meant raising the buildings to 14 feet above where the water normally is; an addition 12 feet from where they were.
The raised elevation protects the buildings, the people and even the street behind The Wharf when storms raise the Washington Channel’s water level, Eckstut said.
That’s called surge flooding, said Ramos, the graphic designer who worked on the waterway-mapping project.
Building high above the water helps protect against that flooding, Ramos said.
“It functions like a sea wall,” he said. “It’s a very clever design.”
In addition to surge flooding from the Washington Channel, southwest Washington is also subject to flooding from rain and rivers overflowing, Ramos said.
“So, all three types of flooding are present,” he said.
When designing The Wharf, Eckstut said he and other architects utilized three pieces of infrastructure to handle types of flooding.
They constructed underground tanks, called cisterns, to hold water on-site for three hours before releasing it into the river.
“The big thing with a storm is it happens so quickly, so you have to capture it and you can’t let it go off site,” Eckstut said. “You have to keep it and let it evaporate or you let it off slowly after the storm. So you have these big storage tanks.”
They also added greenery to buildings’ roofs and built parks like Southwest Waterfront Park and Seventh Street Park to collect water.
They then paved the sidewalks with permeable pavement.
Gravity helps take everything to one place: a grate that runs down the middle of The Wharf’s main walkway. The grate then takes the water to the cisterns.
The architects also added about 40 feet of space between The Wharf’s buildings and The Wharf’s waterfront for additional permeable pavement and soil, Eckstut said.
“I think, before, they might have had 20 feet or something,” he said. “We have 60 feet, so we have a lot more room for trees and soil and pavers and soil.”
That also makes for sidewalks and public spaces, which encourages people to walk, Eckstut said. He considers that to be part of what makes The Wharf sustainable.
“For me, sustainability is a much bigger story and it’s a lot about social equality and access, and it’s a lot about walking most of all,” he said. “It’s the most important thing.”
Despite the increased elevation, nature and methods of capturing water, The Wharf isn’t flood-proof.
The Municipal Fish Market at The Wharf is not raised to the elevation the rest of The Wharf is, Eckstut said, and is therefore more susceptible to flooding.
“I pretty much feel that it’s already way below the floodplain, and there’s nothing you can do about that,” he said. “I don’t know of anything in the water that’s going to prevent the water from rising.”
Eckstut and his colleagues wanted to keep the fish market the way it was because of its history, Eckstut said. It has been continuously running since 1805, according to The Wharf’s webpage for the market.
Even for the buildings that are raised 14 feet above sea level, there’s still a 0.2% chance each year that they flood, according to the district’s flood risk website. That equates to aone-in-500 chance of a flood and the area being a 500-year floodplain, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ webpage on flood risks.
Eckstut said he wasn’t in conversations where people discussed that one-in-500 chance. He said most of the buildings’ lobbies would be strong enough to be undamaged, but people would need to protect the entrances.
“They would have to put up temporary flood walls in front of their glass and their doors, which people are doing more and more, but only where they’re really threatened on a seasonal basis,” Eckstut said.
Ramos said hurricanes can raise water to that 500-year level.
“Everything’s getting worse with climate change,” he said.
That makes preparing for the 0.2% chance important.
“It’s a critical question,” Ramos said. “It’s a case where inches matter.”
Southeast residents will be the first in Washington to heat and cool their apartments with air from underground
Greg Mason has been visiting Washington’s Barry Farm neighborhood in southeast Washington since the summer to volunteer at the local recreation center and watch basketball games. He said his family has been part of the Barry Farm community for his entire life.
His family members had to move out of townhouses in Barry Farm, though, when the district government and the Preservation of Affordable Housing leveled townhouses and apartment buildings to build new ones.
Mason, a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning technician, didn’t know that two of those new buildings will use a geothermal heating and cooling system. He said he’s familiar with geothermal heating and cooling and is excited Barry Farm residents will be using it.
“That’s a big plus,” Mason said.
Barry Farm will be the first Washington community with a geothermal heat pump system, according to a 2023 Public Service Commission press release. Heating and cooling buildings with that type of system is more energy-efficient than non-geothermal systems, according to the company engineering the geothermal system and an energy professor.
Washington’s Public Service Commission gave $2.5 million to the Preservation of Affordable Housing, an organization that builds and advocates for affordable residential buildings, to develop the geothermal system, according to the press release.
Brightcore Energy is helping build that system, said Dave Hermantin, the organization’s senior vice president of geothermal engineering and innovation.
He said the geothermal system will efficiently heat homes in the winter by taking air from underground and pumping it into the buildings. In the summer, the system will pump warm air from the homes into cold pipes below ground, making for efficient cooling.
“The ground is the source of energy,” Hermantin said. “It’s the source of the energy that’s being extracted for heating and it’s also where the energy is being rejected for cooling.”
Underground air can be a heating and cooling source because it's is about 55 degrees year-round, said Peter LaPuma, an environmental and occupational health professor at George Washington University.
Geothermal systems take the 55-degree underground air and heat it up or cool it down to the ideal indoor temperature, LaPuma said. That takes less energy than heating up above-ground air in the winter, when the outside temperature is less than 55 degrees, or cooling down above-ground air in the summer, when the outside temperature is above 55 degrees, he said.
Geothermal systems do use electricity to heat and cool buildings, but the systems don’t produce carbon emissions themselves, LaPuma said.
“If you were heating with natural gas in the area and you’ve converted to electric [by using geothermal heating and cooling], that’s going to reduce the air pollution in the area, so I see it as a net benefit,” LaPuma said.
The buildings previously on the land used fossil fuel-based heating and cooling systems, according to the 2023 press release.
LaPuma said it’s unusual for residential buildings to have geothermal heating and cooling because it requires digging up large areas of the ground to install piping for the air, which is expensive. He said he couldn’t afford a geothermal system when he was constructing his own home, for example.
But building one geothermal system for many households may help with the cost, LaPuma said.
“I think that the math works out better when you have a larger system serving multiple homes,” he said. “And in this case, it sounds like it may have.”
Hermantin, the Brightcore vice president, said the Public Service Commission awarding $2.5 million for the system makes the project feasible.
Maria Plati, the senior communications director for the Preservation of Affordable Housing, which the Public Service Commission granted the same $2.5 million to, did not make a staff member available for an interview and did not provide a comment.
Hermantin also said the project is financially feasible because the federal government is still offering tax incentives for geothermal heating and cooling.
“They did not take away the geothermal tax credit, and there are political reasons behind that, but we’re one of the few renewable technologies that, I guess, is still well-supported by federal tax credit,” Hermantin said. “For us, it’s up to 50% of the cost of the ground heat exchanger and all the building mechanicals under certain conditions.”
Standing down the street from the apartment building that a geothermal system will soon heat and cool, Mason said he’s excited for Barry Farm residents to use the technology.
“They went from window units, if you know what that is, to geotherms,” he said. “It actually provides more adequate cooling. So, it’s a big plus from where they were to where they’re going.”