Fishing the Forgotten River in the Nation’s Capital
Thousands of people consume fish from Washington, D.C.’s highly polluted Anacostia River, despite safety warnings.
But this was no Norman Rockwell painting. These fishermen were casting their lines into the urban waters of Washington, D.C., into a river notorious as one of the dirtiest in the nation. What's more, according to a recent study, they represented a small fraction of the 17,000 or more residents of this metropolitan area who are consuming fish from a river that has all the markings of a Superfund site.
Flanked by tackle boxes and coolers awaiting their catch, the fishermen sat on picnic benches and beach chairs alongside this murky river on its journey to the Potomac, recently named America's most endangered river. An overnight storm had dislodged garbage and petrochemicals from city streets and flushed them into the
