Friday, June 27, 2014

WaPo: "Residents express safety concerns over 1st Street Tunnel project"

Click on the link to read the entire Washington Post article.

I have only included a few paragraphs below.



 
June 27 at 8:05 PM


City officials broke ground Friday on the First Street tunnel, even as local residents protested some particulars of the project, which is intended to mitigate flooding and sewage overflows in the Bloomingdale and LeDroit Park neighborhoods.
The tunnel was conceived after decades of flooding and sewage runoff in these neighborhoods, with a particularly damaging season in 2012 that prompted Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) to appoint a task force to solve the problem.
The tunnel — a 20-foot-wide cistern that will hold 8 million gallons of wastewater and storm water during heavy rainfalls — is scheduled for completion in 2016.
But it is not without its critics. Some community members have expressed concern over living conditions during construction — especially traffic disruptions and the impact of vibrations on their homes’ structural integrity.
...
Teri Janine Quinn, vice chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 5E and president of the Bloomingdale Civic Association, said that, although community relations with D.C. Water are not perfect, they are fairly good.

“It doesn’t mean that they always come in with answers that we like,” Quinn said. “What it does mean is that when they perceive that the neighborhood is 100 percent against something or they discover that there are issues that they had not yet contemplated, they’ve shown a real willingness to go back and review that plan and in many instances, edited them substantially.”
...

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