Tuesday, April 07, 2015

a week from today -- DC Water 1st Street Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) Naming Ceremony -- Tuesday, 04-14-2015

Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2015 09:44:55 -0500
From: events@dcwater.com
Subject: SAVE THE DATE: First Street Tunnel Project-Tunnel Boring Machine Naming Ceremony April 14, 2015

                                               
A giant tunnel boring machine has been dispatched to the Bloomingdale neighborhood to help DC Water mine the First Street Tunnel, a key component in the local flood relief program. Please join DC Water April 14 at 11 a.m. as we name this massive earth mover. The 23 foot-diameter, 1,582 ton machine will mine and construct the tunnel simultaneously at elevations 160 to 90 feet below the ground. This tunnel will eventually connect to the Northeast Boundary Tunnel, serving the west side of the Anacostia River. Once complete, this portion of the $2.6 billion system will eliminate 98% of the combined sewer overflows into the Anacostia by holding and conveying stormwater during intense rain events. We hope you can join us as we celebrate this exciting environmental milestone for DC and the even more exciting benefits to reduce localized flooding in Bloomingdale and LeDroit Park.
    
Please enter the site from First Street NW at Michigan Avenue NW. From there, you will be directed to available parking areas.

All visitors are required to wear appropriate footwear and clothing while visiting the site. Guests of the event are not permitted to wear open toed shoes of any form, sandals or high heeled dress shoes. Short pants or skirts are also not permitted. Please adhere to these precautionary measures to prevent injury while on this active construction site.

To confirm your attendance, please RSVP to event@dcwater.com by Friday, April 3. Please also tell us if you have any ADA needs or require other special assistance in attending the event.

1 comment:

Daniel in brookland said...

VMP tells us they have "thematic elements visioned" WOW!
VMP keeps saying, they will capture all storm water.
The adaptive re-use that would really capture and use the water, and keep the Sand Filtration facility available for clean water security. VMP is getting our tax millions of dollars to pay it's expenses for demolition of the Sand Filtration Site,,,our land, protected historic structures, and a life saving facility, as hemispheric drought emergency threatens our food supply, and water. We all need to join the lawsuit to stop the demolition.
VMP is already in the $300 million range, out of our pockets!
The 20 foot diameter, 5 mile mitigation tunnel, is another $157 million gift form taxpayers to VMP. They cannot do the development on the site without the tunnel. The combined storm water and sewage problem had reached crisis level. The tunnel is for VMP,, and is being promoted as "Neighborhood Protection", which is another scam. They let the neighborhood flood for 30 years,,,never cared when African Americans owned these homes being damaged. When yuppies bought,, and put in basement apartments and suddenly the DC govt. gave a damn. Had this flooding been in Kalorama, they would have re-built the entire sewer system and that is exactly what was deferred by WASA for 180 years. The separation of sewage and storm water is exactly what is needed, but they ignored it for so many decades,, it's now too expensive..Too expensive to do the right thing.

Jeff Soule of American Planning says that the amount of runoff from Washington Hospital Center parking lots is still going to overwhelm the tunnel, during heavy rains.
Why isn't Office of Miserable Planning addressing the WHC parking lot issue,,,why is Jemal building a parking garage at the Brookland Metro for Children's National Medical Center? There is some reason, one being Trammel Crow and EYA want the big fancy McMmillan site to make more money than actually addressing the problem across the street at WHC.

Notice DCwater is cancelling a tunnel project right in Rock Creek Park, they will get "green infrastructure",,nice trees, ponds, drainage, recharging curbs,,,BECAUSE, no big development is going to happen there, no Armed Forces Retirement home 80 acres, more development than the Pentagon, no McMillan VMP,,, also the people who live in this upper NW area are not going to go through the disruption as being experienced in Bloomingdale. All to avoid proper upgrading of the sewers!
The Mayor GrayTaskforce on Bloomingdale Flooding, wrote that the problem goes back to the 1830's, what BS,,The problem is WASA not doing proper work for 180 years,,,get real, you gonna blame people in 1830!
The real problem with storm water runoff , is that it never goes into the ground, like nature intended
The Office of Miserable Planning and DC Zoning allow any amount of paving, parking lots, impervious surfaces( like the recent unnecessary parking lot at Franciscan Monastery, right over similar flooding at Brookland Metro). The near total paving over of the land, keeps the storm water from percolating into the ground and recharging, and maintaining the "ground water table". so that is why when we have even slight drought, like in not so past years, the trees start to die, and small, newly planted trees need irrigation bags, their roots are not deep enough to get water from the ground. We all see how incompetent the City is in replanting, then maintaining trees.
All the storm water runoff going into the waste treatment plant is environmentally destructive and a failure of DC WASA to restrict urbanization like McMillan, 3000 parking spaces on that mediocre development is too much paving. The tree cover, and the natural cycle of streams, are what DCWater is destroying.....No streams either as they are also "ground water",as well.

McMillan Coalition for Sustainable Agricultureve