As part of the Anacostia Watershed Society’s Rice Rangers educational initiative, Ariel Trahan would teach elementary schoolers to smoosh wild rice seeds into mud balls and fling them into the wetlands along the Anacostia River, planting the native species. She would then ask her students: How can we clean up the river?
“They always want to make some robot to come get the trash, make some filter that they could put in the river,” Trahan said in late July while assessing the wild rice in Kingman Lake, a tributary of the Anacostia.
A better answer, she added, is to simply let wetlands do their thing.
“We really need to just get back to like, okay, how can we utilize these natural systems that already provide these services?” said Trahan, who now works at the DC Department of Energy and the Environment.
The Rice Rangers program is part of the Anacostia Watershed Society’s ongoing efforts to restore the DC area’s wetlands to their natural state. Doing so, Trahan explained, increases local biodiversity and enhances the benefits that wetlands provide—in particular, absorbing storm and flood water that can otherwise create havoc, and purifying that same water before it flows into the Anacostia.
Wetland restoration, Trahan said, “really is fundamental to, like, how do we live in cities? How do we continue to live and adapt to increased rainfall or stronger storms?”
Why wetlands matter
Centuries ago—when the Anacostia River was surrounded by 2,500 acres of wetlands—rainwater would meander through tributaries as its sediment sunk into the mud and aquatic plants filtered out pollution. The flow was relatively clean when it entered the main river.
Over time, however, those wetlands were dumped in, drained, and made into channels for shipping. At the same time, buildings and roads replaced much of the region’s absorbent surfaces. The result? More rainwater rushing into local wetlands that are less able to retain and purify it.
Today, large amounts of rain funnel into waterways like Kingman Lake, which in turn spout runoff—containing debris and chemicals—into the Anacostia and eventually, the Chesapeake Bay.
In fact, these tributaries are the river’s leading source of pollution. With more rain, more pollutants enter the tributaries, causing toxic hot spots to form near their outfalls. “It’s like if you were to eat two boxes of Dots—you would get a bit of a sugar rush,” said Richard Jackson, director of DOEE. “The same thing with the river—if you’re pushing stuff into the river at a high volume that it can’t accommodate, it’s going to have an ill effect as well.”
Restoring Kingman Lake
In 2020, Jorge Bogantes Montero was paddling along Kingman Lake alone when he first spotted wild rice emerging from the shallows. After nearly two decades of the Anacostia Watershed Society hurling rice seeds into the tributary’s mudflats, “all the stars have aligned, the rice started expanding,” said Bogantes Montero, the nonprofit’s restoration program manager.
When the Anacostia Watershed Society began tracking the wild rice at Kingman Lake in 2022, they charted 10 acres of the thin, green stalks. This year, they mapped 26 acres in the same area, which Bogantes Montero said is “as good as it gets here.”
By tracking the rice, the organization can assess restoration efforts. This work by the Anacostia Watershed Society and DOEE includes seeding native species, protecting the plants from hungry Canadian Geese, removing the invasive grass called phragmites, and leading educational events. DOEE is also reshaping tributaries so water moves more slowly through them, giving them the ability to hold and filter greater amounts.
Wild rice is a keystone species in wetlands: when the population is healthy, other species return. During a recent trip onto Kingman Lake, Bogantes Montero leaned down in his waders and scooped a handful of the shallow water. His target, a small fish, disappeared into the vegetation floating beneath the surface.
“It’s like a nursery for baby fish species,” he said, grasping a handful of the plants. The submerged vegetation bloomed in the past two years after having disappeared from the river for a decade.
And it’s not only plants that are doing better. This spring, Bogantes Montero caught a pregnant mussel that his organization had tagged six years before—proof the mollusk was healthy enough to reproduce. A few years ago, he spotted a sora rail, a native yellow-beaked bird that feasts on wild rice but whose local population had disappeared as the rice fell off.
A cleaner Anacostia?
Aside from tracking wetland species, it’s hard to measure the exact effects of specific restoration projects, like Kingman Lake, on area flooding and the overall health of the Anacostia. While wetlands absorb some rainwater, reductions in flooding also could be the result of other projects, like green infrastructure or DC Water’s $3.4 billion Clean Rivers initiative that involves constructing 18 miles of underground waste and stormwater pipes.
However, the water that flows into the Anacostia from its tributaries has gotten steadily cleaner over the past decade, indicating that these tributaries are getting better at filtering out physical and chemical pollutants.
Last year, the Anacostia River scored its highest grade yet in an annual report by the Anacostia Watershed Society, with a score of 67, or a D+. The report says improvement areas include underwater plant life, water quality, and reduced trash and toxic chemicals. The worst areas are fecal bacteria and dissolved oxygen, which both worsen during storms due to organic matter in the runoff.
Overall, the findings suggest a strengthening ecosystem. “There’s a big difference between failing and getting a low grade,” said Chris Williams, the president of the Anacostia Watershed Society. “What you’re seeing in these passing grades is you’re seeing the river essentially coming back to life.”
An uncertain future
Since the Anacostia Watershed Society and DOEE have already secured funding for their restoration projects, Trahan said, they will likely continue during the current presidential administration, which has opposed many environmental protection efforts. However, an appeals court recently upheld the cancellation of $20 million in Environmental Protection Agency grants—so it’s possible that funding could still be lost.
Meanwhile, the amount of water flowing into area wetlands could increase over time due to climate change. Models predict that Washington’s water problems will worsen in the future, especially in its southwest quadrant and the city’s Southeast, which houses the poorest communities and lacks infrastructure to mitigate flooding.
“How do we adapt to deal with flooding in the district? Wetlands are a huge piece of that puzzle,” Trahan said. “If we don’t have wetlands, we don’t have places that can absorb the water. These storms have that much of a worse impact on people.”
