Giant Machine Tunnels Under Nation’s Capital

Lady Bird, a 400-foot-long, $30 million, 1,300-ton German-made tunnel boring machine, will soon be carving miles of 22-foot-wide tunnel 100 feet below the Potomac riverbed. It’s part of DC Water’s Clean Rivers Project, the second-largest civil engineering project in DC history (only Metrorail is bigger). When completed in 2025, the $2.6 billion EPA-funded dig will keep raw sewage from flowing into the Potomac and Anacostia when it rains hard. That’s what happens now (it’s called CSO, “Combined Sewer Overflow”).

Lady Bird will be underground and out of sight, but you can follow her on her own Twitter account.

Fish Rustlers Go to the Hoosegow

A Washington, DC fish wholesaler has been found guilty of buying rockfish from a gang of rustlers. A co-owner and a fish buyer will go to the pokey, and the company has been fined $875,000. The DC bass bandits were collared last December. The rockfish (Morone saxatilis or Roccus saxatilis), also known as the striped bass, is the state fish of Maryland. It was overfished for decades, and harvesting is tightly controlled.

A posse has been roundin’ up rockfish rustlers for some time. Convictions were based on investigations by a special task force of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Maryland Natural Resources Police, and the Virginia Marine Police between 2003 through 2007.

Rogue Beaver!

A savage beaver is attacking dogs in Virginia. Washington’s WRC-TV reports that a dog owner posted a flyer in Alexandria’s Windmill Hill Park near the Potomac, warning that a beaver bit his pooch during a walk there.

Castor canadensis is a rodent, but don’t let your pooch think it’s a big squirrel with an odd tail. The beaver is four feet long, weighs 60 pounds, and sports claws and a mouthful of wood-chipper chompers.

Beaver couples welcome new litters of cute “kits” this time of year and may be more testy than usual. Local Potomac beavers might be even more ticked off. The National Park Service deprived them of a favorite food by putting plastic sleeves on the trunks of Tidal Basin cherry trees.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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