Flash Flooding and Tons of Trash: The Anacostia River After Thursday's Storm

Residents across the DC area awoke to a fierce thunderstorm early Thursday morning that, despite its short duration, left nearly 60,000 Pepco customers without power, caused some flash flooding and brought massive amounts of trash and storm debris down the Anacostia River.

AWS's Director of Advocacy Brent Bolin and Director of Education Programs Lee Cain went out to the Bladensburg Waterfront Park to document the storm's effect on the river.  Lots of trash had washed up all along the shoreline.  While they were standing there, they watched a giant tree float by followed by an enormous mass of trash and storm debris.  They tracked it upstream and believe a hiker/biker bridge over the Northwest Branch was preventing the trash from passing through when the water level rose.  Once the level dropped back down, the trash was released and made its way downstream to Bladensburg where they spotted it.

Below are some photos they took and a map to illustrate:

View August 12, 2010 Flash Flood in a larger map

AWS's Water Quality Specialist Masaya Maeda was also out on the river yesterday and captured these shots:

To see additional photos, please visit our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/anacostiaws

If you have some great shots of the storm's effects on the river or watershed, e-mail them to info@anacostiaws.org and we'll include them in our Facebook album.