Cars decaying in Ward 8’s urban forests, without a visible license plate or VIN, probably stolen and stripped for parts in the Ward 8 Woods.
Harrington gets grants to remove trash and invasive species from public land in the ward. With the help of volunteers, the group recently hauled away thousands of tires dumped in another ravine about 100 yards from the Golf. In January, it also discovered under Interstate 295 in Anacostia Park a “mountain of tires,”.
“Little if any effort is made to actually use this land in a way beneficial to residents,” Harrington said. “It’s deliberate inaction on the part of the agencies that control that land.”
D.C. Department of Transportation’s forestry division manages property along its roadways. But the responsibility for dealing with illegal dumping falls to the Department of Public Works or D.C. police’s environmental crimes unit — unless the dumped-upon green space is on private land where no city agency has jurisdiction.
Then there is land owned by the National Park Service, such as Anacostia’s Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, which are monitored by the U.S. Park Police.
A spokesperson for D.C. police said any vehicles abandoned on city land can be removed by the Department of Public Works, while vehicles on federal land are handled by federal authorities. The city’s transportation department referred questions to its public works department, which declined to comment.
Because no agency is willing to step up and get the job done.
“Nobody really has eyes on these woods,” Harrington said. “I started Ward 8 Woods because I saw a void of stuff that needed to be done that wasn’t getting done.”
In a statement, NPS spokesman Sean P. McGinty said the Park Service “is aware of issues of illegal dumping in the national parks located in Ward 8 and have been in touch with several members of the community.”
The agency was not aware of any cars abandoned in Ward 8’s national parks, the statement said, but any there can be reported to U.S. Park Police for removal.
“Our staff … are constantly working to address illegal dumping throughout Ward 8 as quickly as we can,” the statement said. (Obviously not)
Harrington puzzled over one such artifact: what appeared to be most of a Camaro Z28 (top photo on this article) upended in a meager stand of trees between the Suitland Parkway and Pomeroy Road SE. What was left of the muscle car seemed too far from the Parkway to be accident debris. Harrington speculated that an access road here was abandoned as nearby condos were built in recent decades — and the Camaro was abandoned with the road.
Half of an upside-down car doesn’t fit into Harrington’s vision of bicycle paths and hiking trails through Ward 8. The ward currently has 1.4 miles of these trails, according to Harrington — compared with Rock Creek Park’s dozens of miles of trail.
“They don’t have cars in the woods of Rock Creek Park,” he said. “I don’t see why we should.”
LOL
ReplyDeleteit isnt enviromental racism.
its the locals who live near the parks, dumping their trash there,
i grew up in rural Appalachia and everyone knew where the cliff was, that all the stolen and stripped cars got pushed off of.
the cars got shoved off there because it was impossible to retrieve them. you could climb down to the bottom, but there was no way to haul an engine or any parts back to the top.