After dumping harmful chemicals into District waterways for decades, Pepco will pay $57 million to the city for pollution cleanup, Attorney General Brian Schwalb announced Tuesday at a press conference held right on the Anacostia River at Kingman Island Park.
The deal marks the biggest environmental protection settlement in D.C. history, according to the attorney general’s office.
“It’s a regrettably familiar story — corporate and commercial interests dumping dangerous, toxic chemicals into the earth, water and air, putting the health and safety of an entire community at risk,” Schwalb said in remarks at the announcement.
In a statement, Pepco emphasized that such practices had been discontinued over a decade ago and said that the settlement demonstrated the company’s commitment to fixing the problem.
“The agreement will help advance cleanup of the Anacostia River and District communities, especially those who have been disproportionately impacted,” Pepco’s statement read. “We understand the importance of this work for the future of our communities.”
In addition to the payment, the settlement requires Pepco to investigate and clean up the land around its old power plants on Benning Road and Buzzard Point. Both of those contaminated sites lie adjacent to or within majority-Black communities.
The Rev. André Greene, of Varick Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church, spoke at the announcement about decades of organizing by residents in his Ward 7 community, River Terrace, which sits right next to the old Benning Road power station.
“This investment into the river and into the community is a long time coming,” Greene said. “We hope that it will not end here.”
Of the settlement money, $47 million will go to the city’s efforts to clean up the river, and the other $10 million represent civil penalties. The District has already spent around $35 million on studying the toxics in D.C.’s rivers, Schwalb said. Remediation efforts, led by the Department of Energy and Environment, are slated to begin in 2025, according to DOEE general counsel Dave Dickman.
What’s In the Water?
The most prominent chemicals at issue in the settlement are polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Though PCBs were banned in 1979, the industrial products can still be found in the Anacostia’s river bed because they don’t readily break down in the environment. Researchers have linked them to a wide range of health problems, including cancer, neurological development disorders, immune system issues and birth defects.
An investigation revealed that Pepco’s researchers knew about the threat posed by PCBs, and the company ignored its own policies by dumping the chemicals directly into waterways and allowing them to seep into groundwater, Schwalb said.
DOEE’s research has identified 11 hot spots for PCB contamination in the Anacostia River, Washington Channel and Kingman Lake. Almost all of these toxins remain in the sediment at the river’s bottom, not on the surface of the water, the agency found. The biggest threat to human health from PCBs in the Anacostia would come from eating fish from the river, rather than from contact with the water.
More Work Left to Hold Polluters Accountable
Despite major progress in Anacostia cleanup in recent years, the river remains off-limits for swimming most of the time, and it remains dangerous to eat any fish caught there. The river received a failing grade on the Anacostia Watershed Society’s annual report released last month, though the organization says long-term trends over the last 30 years continue to show steady improvement.
PCBs and other chemicals can stick around for many decades. Pepco was illegally dumping contaminated waste into storm sewers that empty into the Anacostia until 2013, when DOEE “caught Pepco in the act,” according to one of the two suits the attorney general filed Tuesday.
Pepco was also far from the only corporation dumping industrial waste into the water. Schwalb said his office planned to hold other polluters liable as well, though he declined to name any names.
“Pepco deserves credit for being the first in the door to step up and accept responsibility for its actions, and for making a substantial down payment on the cleanup work that needs to get done,” Schwalb said.
The attorney general also mentioned that his office would oppose any requests from Pepco to raise rates in order to recover the settlement’s costs, which would violate the agreement. The company previously attempted to pass onto consumers the cost of a $2 million pollution study at its Benning Road station, but the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled last year that it was illegal.
Still, Anacostia Cleanup Efforts Are Paying Off
More than a dozen environmental and community advocates, many of whom have spent years fighting for environmental justice east of the Anacostia River, attended the press conference announcing the settlement.
Junel Jeffrey, president of the Eastland Gardens Civic Association, said in an interview that she was excited about the settlement because her neighborhood abuts Kenilworth Park, right on the east bank of the river. She said she appreciated that the attorney general’s office reached out to her about the announcement because she feels that her community is often “a little bit forgotten” in the city’s engagement efforts.
“Any type of opportunity to make the Anacostia River better, cleaner, safer makes our community, our residents, our neighbors, safer,” Jeffrey said. “A lot of times we’re the ones who are out there cleaning up [Kenilworth] Park, we’re the ones who call to let D.C. know when things need to get done in the park. … We do that on our own time because we consider this park that important to us. So when you have initiatives like this, or when you have things that are coming up, it’s important to us that we are part of that process — because we live here.”
Clean-water activist Dennis Chestnut, a lifetime Ward 7 resident, pointed out in remarks at the event that the river now looks far cleaner than it did when he first began fighting to get back the swimmable and fishable Anacostia River he grew up with.
He spoke about the Anacostia Splash! swim event, which Anacostia Riverkeeper had planned for Sept. 23 but had to cancel because it stormed that day. Still, tests showed the river was clean enough for the event to get a permit for the day, making it legal for swimmers to jump in for the first time in 50 years.
That change comes partly from the installation of massive stormwater tunnels under the city, which cut down on sewage overflows into the Anacostia by about 98%. The last segment of the tunnels serving the Anacostia River went online Sept. 15.
“Just look out at the river: I can remember not too long ago, when you would have seen all kinds of things just floating, that visible pollution,” Chestnut said. “Now that we’ve taken another step in removing the toxic pollutants and holding the polluters accountable — this is a great day.”