DCist: ‘It’s Just Calm:’ How Community Organizers Harness Nature For Youth Healing In Ward 8

Image: DCist

From DCist:

At 11 years old, Glenn Washington probably knows more about the water quality in the D.C. region than most of its residents.

He’s collected trash from the Anacostia River, tested the health of the water in the Potomac River, and most recently, spent a morning gluing tiny numbered tags on freshwater mussels the size of this thumb — all in an effort to keep the region’s waterways healthy. Mussels are like nature’s water purifiers (one single mussel can filter 15 gallons of water in a day) but locally, their population has been threatened by pollution and stormwater runoff.

“The mussels can finish cleaning their water and do their part, while we do our part,” Glenn, with a temporary tattoo of a mussel stuck squarely in the middle of his forehead, told DCist/WAMU in Southeast D.C.’s Oxon Run Park on a rainy Saturday morning.