Anacostia Watershed Society Inc

Restoration: aws restoration program celebrated key milestones for 2024. Key metrics include: - 980 native plants, shrubs and trees planted - 1,757 freshwater mussels released into the anacostia river - 1.42 acres of land cleared from invasive plant species - 35 tons of trash removed from the watershed - 2,483 volunteers joined aws staff in our field conservation and restoration efforts programmatic highlights include: earth day 2024 cleanup aws' signature earth day cleanup attracted 1,506 volunteers to 38 cleanup sites across the watershed, removing a total of 5948 lbs of trash from the watershed. Wild rice restoration after over two decades of dedicated effort, aws has successfully re- established wild rice in the wetlands of the anacostia river. This keystone species was virtually eliminated from the watershed by pollution and habitat destruction. Through careful harvest and planting of wild rice seeds by our students and volunteers, and predator control to allow the plants to grow, we reached 26 acres of self-sustaining wild rice. State of the river report card aws continued our critical role of monitoring water quality for the anacostia river through the 2024 state of the river report, receiving its highest grade to date. This report is a key accountability and transparency mechanism to ensure the watershed community continues to be aware of the status of water quality of the anacostia river. Thanks to significant efforts by the federal and district governments, the toxics remediation score has been steadily improving. While there is great progress in controlling threats to water quality, the anacostia watershed continues to suffer from the historical loss of wetlands and forests that once protected our rivers and streams from excessive run-off, sediment, and pollution. Climate change will heighten these challenges, and indeed threatens to roll back the gains we've made over the last 30 years.

Advocacy: aws saw the realization of several years-long advocacy efforts in 2024. Highlights include: plastic pollution reduction after years of advocacy to establish a deposit-return system for incentivizing recycling of single use beverage containers (plastic, glass, aluminum), aws has campaigned actively for support of a bottle bill in the maryland state legislature and in the district. This introduction marks significant progress towards reducing pollution in the anacostia watershed, where the single most common piece of trash collected in river clean-ups is the plastic bottle. This progress follows strong advocacy by aws and other partners that led prince georges county to ban single-use plastic grocery and retail bags. Preliminary surveys show the percentage of shoppers using reusable bags or no bag at all rose from 12% to 69% since this legislation went into effect, a change that will significantly reduce plastic pollution in the watershed.

Recreation: aws offers free recreational opportunities on and around the river to our watershed community, and we continued to see high demand for these programs in 2024. Our recreational program consists of motorized and canoe-based boat tours. Thanks in strong part to support from the river explorers program within the district department of energy & environment, aws engaged approximately 1,816 adult and student residents of the watershed in our free educational boat tours. These tours enabled community members to experience the beauty of the river firsthand, observe wildlife in an urban setting, and develop a sense of stewardship and connection to the anacostia river and its watershed.