🚀 go-pugleaf

Here is a press release from American Rivers. I downloaded
the press release from the PR On-Line BBS in Maryland
at 410-363-0834. I do not work for the group.

 American Rivers Applauds Administration Budget Item to Restore
Anacostia River in Washington and Maryland
 To: National Desk, Environment Writer
 Contact: Randy Showstack of American Rivers, 202-547-6900

   WASHINGTON, Feb. 7  --  American Rivers today applauded
the administration for proposing $2.3 million in Federal
funds in the 1995 budget to restore the degraded Anacostia River
basin in Washington, D.C. and Maryland.
   "This funding will help to restore Washington, D.C.'s
'forgotten river,' and serve as a symbol of hope that other badly
degraded urban rivers across the country can also be brought back
to health," said Beth Norcross, legislative director of American
Rivers, the nation's leading river conservation organization.  In
1993, American Rivers named the Anacostia as one of North
America's 10 most endangered rivers, because of degradation that
has occurred over centuries from development, water diversion,
pollution, and neglect.
   "The Anacostia typifies the appalling condition of America's
urban waterways due to channelization, poison runoff,
sedimentation, dumping, and pollution from non-point sources,
which is one of the biggest issues in the clean water Act
re-authorization debate.  All of this is occurring one-and-a-half
miles from the U.S. Capitol," Norcross said.  American Rivers is
working to include special language in the Clean Water Act
reauthorization concerning issues related to urban rivers.  In
addition, U.S. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) plans to
introduce legislation in Congress concerning urban rivers.
   "The river flows through some of the most densely populated and
economically depressed areas of the nation's capital," states the
section of the president's budget report on "ecosystem management
and biodiversity."  "Once covered with forest and wetlands,
the watershed is now highly urbanized, the natural river flow has
been altered, and the river is best known for its extremely poor
water quality.... [w]hile over $1 billion has been spent to bring
Lyndon Johnson's dream of a feasible, swimmable Potomac to pass,
less than one percent of that sum has been spent on restoration
of the Anacostia.  As a result, the Anacostia has been rated among
the nation's 10 most threatened rivers."
 -30-