The Old Man of Anacostia: An Interview with Brenda Richardson

DCGre n n The Old Man of Anacostia

An Interview with Brenda Richardson

by Philip Pannell

To paraphrase Frederick Douglass, the lion of Anacostia, we must embrace our environment in all its grandeur and all its disgrace. Brenda Richardson, a Ward 8 resident, was recently named the coordinator for the Anacostia Park and Community Collaborative (APACC), a coalition of three dozen community organizations involved with issues facing the Anacostia River and Park and their adjacent neighborhoods. She is a graduate of Ballou High School, the University of Michigan and received her Master’s degree from the University of Maryland. She served as the deputy chief of staff for the late Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry and as a DC Library Board Trustee. She is the vice chair of the Friends of Oxon Run Park and co-chairs the Anacostia Coordinating Council’s Poplar Point Committee.

1. How, why and when did you develop an interest in the environment?

I developed an interest in the environment when I was working on Dave Clarke’s campaign. He was very pro-environment. I started to go to environmental meetings at Federal City College and walked into a room of mostly men who were working on environmental policy, but folks from my community were not in the room. It was at that time I began to learn more about environmental justice and how women had to step up to the plate to advocate against the injustices in our disfavored communities.

2. There are very few Blacks in the environmental movement in DC. Why do you think that is the case?

Environmental issues are not on folks’ radar screens because it is not a priority like making sure food is on the table, you have a roof over your head and dodging bullets. It is also a long-term commitment to be well-informed on some complicated issues like electrification, floodplain mitigation, heat islands as well as rising sea levels and their impact on communities of color. For example, we need more trees east of the river to improve our air quality and provide shade. There is a direct correlation between rising heat sensitivity and violence. However, oftentimes residents in disinvested neighborhoods do not want more trees because that blocks one’s view; people can hide behind trees and hurt you or drug dealers hide their weapons and drugs in trees. Clean and green practices in dispirited areas can only make things better.

3. In DC, crime and violence are at the top of the list of issues for most DC voters. Can any approaches to this problem be found in environmentalism?

Absolutely, there are deterrents to crime and violence in environmentalism. Clean streets make a difference in how residents feel about their neighborhoods. But how often are the streets of Ward 8 swept clean by DPW? Trees play a tremendous role in reducing heat sensitivity that can lead to crime and violence. But some folks don’t want trees in neighborhoods because it is a sign of gentrification.

Brenda Richardson can be reached at brichardson@cleanwater.org

Philip Pannell is a long time Ward 8 community activist. He can be contacted at philippannell@comcast.net. u communication and education. That’s dealing with contamination and its ugly neighbor, “wish cycling.”

“There is much ‘wish cycling,’ going on, which occurs when the public – through lack of instruction/education or indifference – throws out Christmas lights, aerosol cans, dirty diapers, small (or large) appliances, etc., said David Biderman, executive director for the Silver Springbased Solid Waste Association of North America.

“People are generally not good recyclers and there are fires in facilities every day due to propane tanks and lithium batteries being tossed into the blue bins. And plastic bags,” Biderman said, “are a MRF’s (a materials recovery facility or “murph”) number one enemy. MRFs have to shut down several times a day to pull the plastic bags out of the recycling equipment.”

It’s a key aspect of the process that the public needs a better understanding of. “I don’t want to call out the public, but I think the local governments and solid waste companies can do a better job of training the general populace about what’s recyclable and what’s not,” he said. “The numbers are improving, but we have ways to go.”

Seldman concurred. “We need heightened educational efforts by the District and the companies involved to educate the public,” he said. “Know that the greater the contamination, the more expensive recycling is for the city.”

What generally happens today is that the workers who

pick up the recyclables can put a sticker on items and plastic bags that are not recyclable. “The next option is to simply not pick up the loads and let them pile up,” he said. “People get the message.”

The biggest reason to get recycling done right is to keep as much rejected material as possible away from landfills and incineration.

“We don’t want [anyone] to send any trash to incineration,” said Weiss. “There are a million reasons to not do that and it’s what the entire world is struggling to move away from. We are also trying to move away from landfills; there are many problems there, too. We want a system in DC that motivates residents to recycle the waste.”

This four-part investigation on District recycling continues in May. The third installment investigates the much larger world of commercial recycling. Where does it actually go? How much of it is properly disposed of? This series is supported by a grant from the Spotlight DC: Capitol City Fund for Investigative Journalism. Spotlight DC encourages the submission for proposals by independent journalists. For more information on Spotlight, visit www. spotlightdc.org.

Mark R. Smith is a freelance writer based in Odenton, Md. He writes for The Business Monthly, in Columbia, Md., where he also served as editor-in-chief for almost 15 years; earlier, he spent 16 years contributing to The Daily Record, in Baltimore. He has also recently worked for Expansion Solutions, the Georgetown University Law Center and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, as well as many other publications during the past three decades. u