A new report has named the Potomac River the nation’s most endangered river as legislation pending in Congress threatens to loosen environmental protections to the waterway in the heart of the nation’s capital.
According to conservationists, several pieces of legislation are pending in Congress that could lessen the impact of the Clean Water Act on its 40th anniversary after it was enacted, partly in response to the poor state of the Potomac River. The report by American Rivers called the Potomac “emblematic” of the problems several major rivers in the United States face if federal lawmakers limit protections for the tributaries to these rivers.
“It’s those small tributaries that are endangered if the protections are removed,” said Hedrick Belin, president of the Potomac Conservancy. “Once the federal protections are gone, then it becomes really difficult [to protect shorelines] because you’re relying on a patchwork of regulations [between jurisdictions].”
While the river’s health has improved since President Johnson in 1966 called it a national disgrace, it still received a D last year from the University of Maryland’s water quality report card. Meanwhile, scientists have been researching for years why so many male smallmouth bass in the Potomac basin have immature female egg cells in their testes, making them a kind of intersex fish.
In 2008, U.S. Geological Survey researchers found that fish from the sites with the highest human population density and the most farming had the highest incidences of intersex traits.
George Layton, the fishing manager at the Orvis Retail Store in Tysons Corner, said the Potomac’s poor health is often visible to the naked eye.
“There is always trash along the river — you can see it pretty much everywhere you go,” he said. “And last summer, [there] was a yellowish-green tint to it from an algae bloom from the Shenandoah [Valley tributaries]. It sucks the oxygen out of the water.”
Stacey Detwiler, a conservation associate with American Rivers’ clean water program, said the Potomac ranked at the top of 10 rivers because congressional decisions in the coming months could be critical to the waterway’s future health.
The Green River, which runs from Wyoming to Utah, was ranked the nation’s second-most endangered.
