By Alan Blinder, Staff Reporter, City Hall
August 21, 2012 | 8:00 pm
With
the permanent solution to repeated flooding in Bloomingdale and LeDroit Park
more than a decade away, District leaders on Tuesday moved to begin developing
stopgap measures to stem future disasters.
Although
a 13-mile tunnel is in the works to help control storm water, the project is
not scheduled for completion until 2025. But in the midst of a summer that
included three major floods in a 10-day stretch, Mayor Vincent Gray said he
wants a much quicker fix.
``I
don`t believe -- and I`m sure the residents don`t believe -- that we should ask
people to wait while we simply do nothing, waiting for that solution to be
completed,`` Gray said.
Gray
ordered a new task force to submit recommendations to combat flooding by Dec.
31.
``This
has to happen soon. Answers have to happen soon. The relief has to happen soon,``
said Ward 5 D.C. Councilman Kenyan McDuffie. ``The residents of Bloomingdale
and LeDroit Park clearly are going through hardships right now, and they`re
looking toward their government to provide the relief that they need.``
The
D.C. Water and Sewer Authority has blamed aging infrastructure for the repeated
floods and expects the new tunnel below the Anacostia River to become the
crisis` permanent antidote. Alan Heymann, the agency`s spokesman, acknowledged
that the timeline for the tunnel would not help residents already in need of
help.
``If
your basement is flooding in 2012, it`s not a major consolation that there`s a
solution on the way in 2025,`` Heymann said.
Heymann
said D.C. Water engineers are scrambling to devise short-term solutions,
especially as they review new video footage of the 90,000 linear feet of sewers
in the two neighborhoods. He declined to detail what officials had learned, but
he said they had found ``some interesting things down there`` and would release
their findings soon.
``It`s
just unreal to have to be scared of rain, to have to be scared because it`s
cloudy outside,`` said Teri Janine Quinn, president of the Bloomingdale Civic
Association.
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