-Did the meeting allay your concerns?

No. I feel even more strongly that the City is proceeding with a generic plan without the factual evidence they need to show that the project will improve water quality in the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay. It won’t. They have completely overlooked the root problem of water quality in the watershed. Those problems are located upstream, where there is too much development. You can only do so much downstream to reduce the impact of too much water flowing into the system. The likelihood is that we will right back where we were in a few years, if they go ahead with the current design of the project. Their project will destroy an enormous amount of the existing ecosystem that also important to the health of the Bay.

-What needs to happen with this project?

ECA believes the City should work with our advisor John Field, who is a Fluvial Geomorphologist and stream restoration expert. He understands what happens to streams when you manipulate and try to restore them. His preliminary view is that the City doesn’t really know what it is doing. Many of its goals are inconsistent. 
 
-What is your plan of action between now and when the City will be receiving public comments on the project?

We have asked the City to hire John Field, or at least to let him review the plans as our representative and work with the City to revise the plan.  We have no intention of letting the City and its high-priced consultants dictate how we go about restoring this stream. The strongest evidence against their plan is that they don’t really know what’s there now. They belittle the nature that’s there in order to give credence to their highly destructive project. You shouldn’t need to destroy something in order to restore it.

Andrew Macdonald, Chair, ECA