Anacostia Watershed Restoration Using a Low Impact Development Approach

The Anacostia River watershed has been severely impaired by urbanization and covers three political jurisdictions in the Washington metropolitan areas: District of Columbia, Montgomery County and Prince George's County. Over the last several decades, massive efforts have been made to improve the quality of the Anacostia River with limited success. More recently, a Low impact Development (LID) approach to manage water has been implemented through grants from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demonstrating how LID can be applied on a watershed scale. To accomplish this, a multi-jurisdictional Steering Committee was formed to oversee and coordinate the LID restoration activities. LID techniques can be used to control stormwater impacts from new development, redevelopment and watershed restoration. From a watershed restoration perspective, LID uses a holistic, terrestrial-based approach to retrofit urban areas within the Anacostia River Watershed rather then the more traditional approach of stream bank stabilization and streamside buffers. With the EPA's support, the restoration has moved to the third year. It is expected that additional grant funding will be available to continue restoration efforts. The elements of the restoration effort include: LID demonstration projects within the three jurisdictions, comprehensive monitoring programs, detailed Best Management Practices (BMP) modeling efforts, LID-BMP Demonstration Park, LID design competition, and a National LID Conference. This paper will provide an overview of these elements and demonstrate the restoration results. The outcome will show how several political jurisdictions within a watershed can work cooperatively to restore an impaired watershed and how LID techniques differ from traditional approaches.