Water Quality in the Anacostia River, Maryland and Rock Creek, Washington, D.c.

Water Quality in the Anacostia River, Maryland and Rock Creek, Washington, D.c.
Author: U.S. Department of the Interior
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2014-03-04
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9781496081650

Concentrations and loading estimates for nutrients, suspended sediment, and E.coli bacteria were summarized for three water-quality monitoring stations on the Anacostia River in Maryland and one station on Rock Creek in Washington, D.C. Both streams are tributaries to the Potomac River in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and contribute to the Chesapeake Bay estuary. Two stations on the Anacostia River, Northeast Branch at Riverdale, Maryland and Northwest Branch near Hyattsville, Maryland, have been monitored for water quality during the study period from 2003 to 2011 and are located near the shift from nontidal to tidal conditions near Bladensburg, Maryland. A station on Paint Branch is nested above the station on the Northeast Branch Anacostia River, and has slightly less developed land cover than the Northeast and Northwest Branch stations. The Rock Creek station is located in Rock Creek Park, but the land cover in the watershed surrounding the park is urbanized.

Examination of Water Quality in the Anacostia Watershed

Examination of Water Quality in the Anacostia Watershed
Author: Ashley D. Acevedo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 65
Release: 2020
Genre: Water
ISBN:

The Anacostia River is a major waterway located in Washington, D.C. It is also one of the nation's 10 most contaminated rivers, containing sewage, metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and has been cited by the EPA as a "major area of concern" for the Chesapeake region. The following research aimed to determine the concentrations of five contaminants - fluoranthene, naphthalene, pyrene, decamethylcyclopentasilolxane (D5) and 2,4,6,8-Tetramethylcyclotetrasiloxane (2468) - at five sites within the Anacostia watershed to determine whether there was a correlation between land use patterns and contaminant concentrations. There were no statistically significant differences in contaminant concentrations between urban and suburban sites except for D5, in which urban sites had higher concentrations. There was no statistically significant difference when comparing seasonality to fluoranthene concentrations. There was no predictive relationship at all between population density, precipitation, discharge rates and the concentrations observed. Although 2468 was not identified in any of the samples, these results provided concentrations for fluoranthene, naphthalene, pyrene, and D5 amongst the five chosen sample sites. The average sediment concentrations for fluoranthene (2.70 x 10-1 ± 2.18 x 10-1 μM/g), naphthalene (1.37 x 10-2 ± 1.58 x 10-2 μM/g), and pyrene (2.01 x 10-2 ± 3.66 x 10-1 μM/g) have increased in comparison to studies published in the early 2000s.