Brookland resident Daniel Wolkoff: indoor farming in DC (including McMillan)

Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2014 01:52:15 -0700
From: amglassart@yahoo.com
Subject: Indoor Farming for DC

 April 2, 2014 

Dear Council Committee Chairperson Cheh, 

             
I was very encouraged to hear your Environment  Committee Roundtable on March 24, especially concerning combining food, nutrition, physical activity and "Urban Farming". One year ago you emailed me saying,

"Dear Mr Wolkoff

   Thanks so much for sending me your testimony(on McMillan Park). I found your vision for the Park to be inspirational. I confess I haven't been focused on this and regret that. Have all of the plans proceeded so far that this is a lost cause....

 I am having my staff brief me on this next week. 

Again, thanks for sending this to me." 

Mary Cheh
Council-member Cheh and committee staff,

it's not a lost cause, just the opposite, it's an incredible opportunity for large scale sustainable adaptive re-use, to benefit the environment, all the people of DC, the nation and international visitors for generations.

I was encouraged by your compliment last year and offer additional testimony to the March 24, 2014 hearing. I'm connecting the rapidly growing movement to save a "Great Place" with your committee hearing on "indoor agriculture, a DC food hub".

   
We need an urban nutrition and exercise hub very much, which  would be a DC Eco-Campus, and we have the place! McMillan Park, preserving all 25 acres of historically protected surface park and 20 acres of existing mystical underground galleries, creates the exciting potential for sustainable large scale “indoor agriculture” and aqua-ponic fish production, and unlimited other potential benefits.
Enlightened urban planning, would start the process with McMillan Park, and keep going to include the entire 113 acre McMillan Reservoir, save the Harewood Rd. wetlands, and re-open the parkland at Armed Forces Retirement Home, for wooded hiking, biking and jogging paths, the "green emerald necklace" of Senator McMillan’ vision.  We’ll create community gardens, a food, nutrition and healthy exercise complex, jogging around the reservoir, like in NY's Central Park, where residents and visitors can come and enjoy the outdoors, the sunsets, stroll and meet, at our “Sustainable Eco-Campus”. DC needs a “Great Place’ for music and film festivals, art studios, yoga classes, a “ DC Glen Echo”, with sustainable energy demonstrations, even an urban sand beach when we “sunlight” Tiber Creek.. Please see this fascinating video on the vertical farming process at http://youtu.be/ILzWmw53Wwo

I would like my testimony to be included in the record, I regret not attending the meeting. I would like to follow up with you, the  committee staff and the DC Department of the Environment as well.

 
Thank you for a very important hearing on "Urban Agriculture", nutrition and health in DC. Please see, attached, a graphic of "vertical agriculture" in the McMillan Underground 20 acres and my testimony text.

Daniel Goldon Wolkoff
amglassart@yahoo.com

Daniel Goldon Wolkoff

Adams Morgan Stained Glass
1231 Randolph Street, NE
Washington, DC 20017
Tel: 202-232-8391
www.adamsmorganstainedglass.com