Hazardous Waste
Dear Recyclers:
This weekend, a slim segment of Washingtonians partied at the
glittering intersection of press, politicians, and Hollywood celebrities
that is the White House Correspondents Dinner. At that dinner in the
Washington Hilton, newspaper and network executives get to pretend they
are as hardworking as their reporters, as powerful as the politicians
they cover, and as glamorous as the movie stars they invite to share
their tables. As one of the perks of his office, Mayor Fenty was an
invited guest at the dinner.
A lot more of us spent weekend hours in the traffic jam surrounding
the Carter Barron Amphitheater, the chaotic site of the Department of
Public Works’ semiannual recycling drive for hazardous and
not-so-hazardous waste materials (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/articley/2008/04/26/AR2008042601220.html,
http://tinyurl.com/6juv5l, http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=71086).
Dorothy drove there with a few things to drop off, but drove away after
approaching the site from several directions and realizing that she
would be waiting in line for hours.
Thousands of people did show up, and hundreds of cars waited in line
all day, from 7:00 a.m., two hours before the site opened, until hours
after the event was scheduled to end at 3:00 p.m. The gridlock shut down
the surrounding Gold Coast neighborhood and inconvenienced both the
potential recyclers and the neighbors of the park. In today’s faddish
idiom, the “carbon footprint” of the event — the wasted gasoline
of hundreds of cars idling for hours — far outweighed whatever
environmental benefit the recycling may have had. We’ve heard promises
from councilmembers that the event will be better run in the future, but
of course the city council doesn’t run these events, so their promises
don’t amount to much. The Fenty administration ran this circus.
(Actually, that’s very unfair to a circus, which is planned and
organized so that large, complex, and potentially dangerous shows run
smoothly, safely, and timed to the second.) But we haven’t heard
anything from Mayor Fenty, even though the event took place in his
neighborhood, or from the Director of the Department of Public Works,
William Howland, about what they will do differently next time. How will
they reorganize these semiannual events or, better yet, rethink the
government’s recycling efforts to retire these events, so that this
doesn’t happen in the future? Fenty holds a photo opportunity nearly
every day, and shows up to share the spotlight at nearly every
newsworthy event. Why didn’t he show up at Carter Barron with
something to offer, instead of at the Hilton to party?
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Metro is notorious for its poor communications: garbled messages in
stations, no indications of how long escalators will be out of order,
etc. The agency may have outdone itself: I noticed on April 24 a new
poster at the Friendship Heights station with the text starting, “Hi,
I’m Dan Tangherlini, the new Metro interim general manager,”
followed by instructions on how to send complaints to him. Dan might be
surprised to learn about his new/old job.
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Ah, The Boys of Summer
Ed T Barron, edtb1@mac.com
The Nationals are the boys of summer here in DC. But they will not be
the boys of October, at least not this season. On last Wednesday night
the team turned in a less than spectacular performance and lost to the
NY Mets. A big crowd of 33,000 was on hand for Jackie Robinson Night
(sixty-one years after his first major league ball game with the
Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Filed) that included a very large number of
Met fans. My guess is that fewer than one hundred of those in attendance
could claim to have seen Jackie Robinson play in Ebbets Field in the
late 40s to mid 50s. I was one of those fortunate to have watched
Robinson play those years.
Metro seems to be working well from the Navy Yard station. They will
have to work on the connecting trains at Gallery Place, since three
Green Line trains dumped their fans there for transfer to the Red Line
before a single Red Line train came into the Gallery Place station ( a
wait of about twelve minutes). This caused a bit of chaos, with lots of
folks trying to pry themselves onto the northbound Red Line train. It
was most fortunate that half the Green Line folks who boarded at Navy
Yard departed at L’Enfant Plaza to connect to Virginia bound trains.
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Here we go again. For seventeen years, the bit of Klingle Road within
Rock Creek Park that passes under Connecticut Avenue, allowing drivers
to bypass the traffic light delays where Porter crosses Connecticut, has
been closed, while residents fought over whether to rebuild the road for
cars, or to convert this bit of National Park land to recreational and
natural use.
In 2003, District council passed an act calling for Klingle Road to
“be reopened to the public for motor vehicle traffic” I predicted at
the time that the National Park Service would block the construction of
the road. Wrong; it’s been the Federal Highway Administration,
requiring repeated revisions and rewrites of the Environmental Impact
Statement, the latest just this past January. Now Councilmember Graham
and Mayor Fenty want to short-circuit the Federal obstacles by paying
the full bill for road construction, now up to eleven million dollars
entirely out of local funds, without the usual 80 percent Federal
contribution.
This was a major topic in the council committee hearings concerning
the DDOT budget on April 18. Most of the arguments against the road were
the same that have been heard many times before, and which failed to
carry the day five years ago. But now there’s a new reason for
rejecting this road. Its essential function was to provide a speedy
route for us east-of-the-park folks to get to shops and schools west of
the park, back when facilities on the west side were far better than
those on the lower-income east. But look to the east side of Rock Creek
Park now, and you’ll find resources galore: a Whole Foods; a Giant; a
Target; a Best Buy; a Radio Shack; a Bed, Bath, and Beyond; a Lane
Bryant; a Fedex/Kinko’s, and now a Harris Teeter. Before long there’ll
be a Staples and more in Columbia Heights. What do we east-siders need
to go to the west side of the park for? Not schools, with two good
charter schools here supplementing an improving Bancroft Elementary. Not
banks, with three located right there at 14th Street and Park Road. Not
shops, not markets.
The need for the Klingle Road short-cut to our west has been
overtaken by developments in Ward One. The needs for unspoiled nature in
the city, for quiet places in the woods, and for automobile-free bicycle
routes, remain. The eleven million dollars that Graham and Fenty want to
spend on Klingle Road can be put to much better uses.
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And the Award Goes To
Ed T. Barron, edtb1@mac.com
The award is my own, to the ugliest house in Spring Valley. It’s
even too bad that this monstrosity is located right on the southwest
side of Massachusetts Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets, NW, instead
of being buried on one of the side streets. This newly renovated house
is probably three times the size of the original house (which, even
then, was a bit out of character with its neighbors and the more normal
style homes in the area). The new abortion is a series of huge boxes,
side by side and atop one another. And, to top it off it has a bright
and shiny metal roof on the tall, wide steep sloping roof on the front
of the main box. A caution: wear your sun glasses on a sunny day. I feel
for the neighbors who must endure the chuckles from passing pedestrians
and motorists.
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DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee
Jonathan R. Rees, jrrees2006@verizon.net
DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee keeps on saying that the key to
seeing our children do better is the quality of our teachers. How wrong
she is. The key to seeing our children do better is the quality of the
after-school help they get from their parents, older siblings, and/or
tutors.
Ms. Rhee does not know what she is talking about, but what do you
expect from a person who never ran a school district before; she ran an
employment agency that placed teachers. As for the equally incompetent
members of the DC city council who confirmed her, they showed all of us
how ignorant they are on matters of education and the historical facts
surrounding what does and does not result in Johnny-can-finally-read.
Children who have a parent, older sibling, or tutor to help them with
their after-school work will do better than those who don’t,
regardless of their teachers. Ms. Rhee is an incompetent puppet who is
only repeating what others like Dan Tangherlini are scripting for her,
as a justification to terminate good teachers. There is no evidence to
support Ms. Rhee’s novel theories.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Ward 5 Democrats, April 28
Hazel Thomas, thomashazelb@aol.com
Come out and participate in the Ward 5 Democrats April meeting,
Monday, April 28, at 7:00 p.m., at Michigan Park Christian Church
(Taylor Street and South Dakota Avenue, NE). There will be a brief
business meeting, a report from the office of Councilmember Harry Thomas
Jr., a discussion with the DC Board of Elections about what will happen
on election day at precinct voting sites located at schools slated to
close, recruiting for the Ward 5 Democrats voter registration drive, and
planning for the DC Democratic State party convention on May 3.
For more information, contact Tim Thomas at: Timthomas2202@gmail.com.
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Help Prepare the Republican Party Platform,
May 19-20
Paul D. Craney, pcraney@dcgop.com
On May 19 and May 20, the DC Republican Committee office will be open
after hours to take testimonies from the public in crafting our party
platform for the 2008 Republican National Committee Convention. The DC
Republican Committee will compose a party platform and present it at the
convention in September. If you would like to learn more about this
event, please contact us at 289-8005 or E-mail us at: info@dcgop.com.
DC residents with expertise in policy that affects the District are
encouraged to attend and let us know what you would like the DC
Republican Party to include in its 2008 party platform.
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