Clean Waterways and Healthy Oceans

I’m “Marching for the Ocean” Saturday June 9 in Washington DC alongside tens of thousands of other ocean advocates, “a growing chorus of supporters including environmentalists, scientists, surfers, divers, students, parents, teachers, celebrities, fishermen, social justice advocates, small businesses, major aquariums, deep sea explorers and citizen activists.” 

Last week I wrote about the difference between a march and a parade, and how the Trump administration is helping me stay in shape by inspiring me to go on all these marches (Women, Science, Our Lives, Ocean). 

Today, rivers and oceans and Washington’s “forgotten river.”

The Ocean March begins on a river.

The Ocean March organizers are clear that we march for all of Earth’s waters; all connected, all mutually dependent, all should be healthy and clean:

“Every community has the power to protect our local waterways, lakes and rivers that lead to the ocean.  We stand united to protect all the waters that give us life.  Contribute to building this blue wave.  Celebrate and protect all that our waters – salty, brackish and fresh – provide us.”

So June 9, the day of the March begins on water, at 7 AM with a flotilla of kayakers meeting on Washington DC’s Anacostia River and paddling to the Southwest Waterfront Park where they will leave their vessels and walk several blocks to the starting point of the March in front of the White House.

Actually, some members of this flotilla hit the water two weeks earlier, May 19, when they set out for DC from Atlantic City.  A brave group called “AC2DC Paddle/March to the Ocean,” vows, “What better way to get to the March to the Ocean than to paddle there?  As we paddle and navigate a section of our country's amazing coasts and waterways, we will meet up with various coastal organizations and fellow ocean loving individuals, pick up trash along the way, and participate in local events.”

They will set out that Saturday morning from the fabulous Jersey Shore beach at Avalon, after a ritual called “Hands Across the Sands.”  The next day they’ll cross the dangerous Delaware Bay from Cape May at the tip of New Jersey to Rehoboth, Maryland, and proceed along the ocean coast, south past Chincoteague, to Cape Charles.  Then they will turn northwest into Chesapeake Bay, camping on Tangier Island.  Last leg is up the Potomac River to the point where the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers meet, arriving the Friday night before the March.

I hope to meet these intrepid kayakers from my home state that Friday night in DC.  Their schedule says they will attend the Sign Making workshop that night at the Earth Conservation Center on the banks of the Anacostia River.  I had already planned to go as well, to make my sign, but now I look forward to meeting these brave seafarers as well.

When I think “DC river” I think Potomac River.  But DC is bordered on two sides by rivers, and the Anacostia is called DC’s “Forgotten River.”  Long polluted by coal and cement plants and a horribly outdated sewage system, the low-income neighborhoods alongside the river endured for decades raw sewage and dangerous chemicals within a few miles of the President’s mansion.

In 1992, a local effort to clean up the river began when “nine unemployed young men and women living at Ward Eight's Valley Green public housing community volunteered to change their lives by restoring the obscenely polluted Anacostia River. Motivated by the belief that their strong hearts, minds, and muscles could reclaim the Anacostia they pulled on waders, climbed into the polluted Lower Beaverdam Creek and started to prove that their river and their lives were worth saving. Their struggle launched a community youth movement to take back their Anacostia River. ​

Following their leadership, thousands of youth from troubled neighborhoods near the Anacostia River laid the cornerstone for a solution to the city's intertwined problems of pollution and poverty. Our vision is that every young person in the Corps and throughout the District not only survives, but also thrives. Our collective effort on behalf of disadvantaged youth is a down payment toward transforming our city's greatest assets: our young people and our natural resources.”

That’s the mission and history of the Earth Conservation Center and its Youth Conservation Corps on the banks of the Anacostia.  That’s where we’ll make our signs and I’ll meet my new kayak friends.

The river is no longer deadly, and no longer smells.   Saturday morning those same kayakers will show their support of river cleanups by launching from the “forgotten river,” paddling past the Conservation Center, with their new signs, and paddling around the point to the Potomac and the Ocean March.

Next week I will write more about the Ocean March’s different participants and partners, and maybe about some of the cool slogans and come-ons the organizers are using.  Here are a couple favorites:

• “Restore the blue in the red white and blue!”

• “Together we are as big as an ocean!”

Copyright © 2018 Deborah Streeter