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Panda_alley t1_j50b5fp wrote

Good for them to be leading clean-up efforts, but lol at WashPo's circa 2020 clickbait framing.

Articles like these make me feel like DC has a real gap in local journalism. We can't get an investigative deep dive into, say, where the $200M per year for housing, but we can get a graphic mapping out four abandoned cars.

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"At least four abandoned vehicles are rusting in Southeast Washington." lol

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Edit: $200M per year for affordable housing, not writ large homeless. fixed that. referring to the two year $400M plan bowser announced in 2021.

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asldkjgljkaeiovne t1_j50mi9f wrote

I've lived all over the US, if you're looking for abandoned, rusting vehicles your best bet is to head to the country. I've happened upon many a long forgotten "junk yard" with 10+ cars in back yards, sometimes 50+. Pretty much every house that's not a planned community with an HOA you'll find has a few of rusting cars that haven't started in decades not too far from the house.

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joebobjoebobjoebob12 t1_j5190fq wrote

There's a reason why every episode of "American Pickers" involves an old white guy in rural America with at least 3 rusted cars among his accumulated junk.

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fvb955cd t1_j516cpt wrote

There is worse industrial dumping in lower income areas. That absolutely is true, and it's usually slower to be picked up.

But long abandoned cars? The moco ag reserve, with its massive plots of multimillion dollar lots and mansions, has a litany of old abandoned cars along its woods and streams. Some are definitely from when the land was converted from abandoned farmland to parkspace, some seem like they may have been picked up and moved by the streams, some appear to have gone off the road and never been recovered, and there's one that I think about frequently that looks like it may have been driving on a railroad track far from any roads just ahead of a railroad bridge, realized a train was coming, and had to veer down a very steep stretch of about 200 yards, miraculously not hitting a big tree on the way to the edge of the stream. That was a 70s some car.

Its not racism that cars get left in nature, cars get left in nature because it's a massive pain in the ass and huge commitment of limited resources to get them out of nature. I genuinely don't think you could get the car by the railroad Bridge out without a helicopter. The focus of this article should have been the industrial dumping like the tire pile.

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[deleted] t1_j4zyzdr wrote

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maun_jax t1_j50m7q4 wrote

By “derelict construction materials” are you referring to the Capitol stones??

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[deleted] t1_j50sv52 wrote

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eccentr1que t1_j50w3y0 wrote

What I'd like to know is why the city hasn't asked the Fed's for the ability to get and usee the stones for a monument, or why the NPS hasn't used them

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sol_in_vic_tus t1_j50xu0w wrote

I love the idea of National Parks but the longer I live in DC the more I come to hate whoever is actually running the show at NPS. The way they operate here is more about maintaining a fiefdom than actually having great parks for the public.

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eccentr1que t1_j510qga wrote

At the least they could be users to make a similar monument to the capital columns in the arboretum

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professor__doom t1_j51pfmv wrote

Honestly, I'm surprised nobody stole them over the decades to build garden terraces, stairs, sheds, footpaths, etc. To this day, there are random bits of Hadrian's Wall used as parts of buildings, fences, and even as paving stones all over that part of Britain.

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JerriBlankStare t1_j52z6ch wrote

>The way they operate here is more about maintaining a fiefdom than actually having great parks for the public.

Huh... I've always enjoyed my experience at NPS sites in the DMV and surrounding areas.

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sol_in_vic_tus t1_j533aen wrote

It's the smaller parks littered throughout the city that are the problem. NPS doesn't take good care of them but refuses to let the city do it.

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jpapa93 t1_j51003o wrote

chemical weapons?

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[deleted] t1_j511rpf wrote

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fvb955cd t1_j516huc wrote

Iirc it was yard near AU

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Hills_Dweller_22305 t1_j52wftc wrote

It's in Spring Valley -- 4825 Glenbrook Road. The Army Corps of Engineers recently finished the cleanup. The lot that literally stood on top of the chemical weapons pit aka the "pit of hades" just sold for over $1.5 million. Absolutely crazy. The redfin listing still shows it with the protective fencing from the remediation.

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[deleted] t1_j532x8o wrote

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fvb955cd t1_j540kad wrote

I trust the army corps to do a publicized cleanup more than I trust a lot of the amateur craftsmen of America to diy an electrical system through a flipped house. The news will care if you find a leftover jar of chemical weapons, only HGTV will care if you discover that there's a bunch of live uncoated wires from the early 20th century running all through your house

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BoozAlien t1_j507idz wrote

Is there a way to request that DDOT clean up a stretch of roadway? There's so much trash both near and on the South Capitol Street ramp off eastbound 695 that it's almost spilling out onto the roadway, and DC's archaic 311 system makes it impossible to select an address on an exit ramp.

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SchrodingersCatfight t1_j5145ve wrote

I would recommend calling 311 directly. I've done it a handful of times to ask a human about something random and have truly found them very helpful.

This isn't exactly the same, but recently we requested a whole unit cleanout of the alley behind our place via phone (SO much illegal dumping), which is a much better alternative that opening, like, 20 separate cases for each piece of bulk trash back there.

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PSUVB t1_j51p1ob wrote

Has anyone every heard of Environmental Racism before? Is this just made up?

The people that dumped the cars in their own park are racist against themselves?

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Evening_Chemist_2367 t1_j520b73 wrote

I think it ties into the broader topic of environmental justice, and it's not necessarily the locals doing the dumping. Often zoning laws are such that heavy industry and polluting businesses are zoned to be where low income people and minorities live, and it's often intentional, knowing they are not as empowered or have the legal means or political connections to be able to fight it. That's at one end of the spectrum. At the other is stuff like illegal dumping - likewise, people are likely to dump their waste in marginalized neighborhoods where they think they are more able to get away with it.

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PSUVB t1_j521uw5 wrote

I get the first part. That seems separate from that article. The article itself says "environmental racism" and talks about abandoned cars.

I highly doubt racist people or people from NW are driving to SE to dump their cars in the woods. More likely people their dump their own cars in the woods and it has nothing to do with racism.

There is broken down cars littered through the woods in low income rural areas. The answer there is simple.

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Evening_Chemist_2367 t1_j52iy10 wrote

Yes, partly - in an overwhelmingly white part of the country, the dumping would be happening in low-income white areas. But where the racism component starts to come in is that many of the low-income minority communities are the way they are because of a legacy of racism like redlining that kept minorities zoned into certain areas. But no, it's not as though racist rednecks are towing their cars a hundred miles just to dump them in a black neighborhood.

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PSUVB t1_j530k6t wrote

Yeah but I still don’t see the connection between redlining and dumping a car in your own neighborhood park?

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Evening_Chemist_2367 t1_j53300m wrote

Do you know for a fact that it was someone dumping the car in their own neighborhood park? Could have been a car used in a crime, they dumped it there with another car waiting.

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Evening_Chemist_2367 t1_j55xhg1 wrote

Given the downvotes, it's amazing that some of you don't actually know what's going on but insist on being hardline opinionated on it anyhow.

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supercoffee1025 t1_j52nwof wrote

It’s…four abandoned cars in the woods?

I mean you’ll find that all over the country because properly disposing of these things can be prohibitively expensive. Tbh I’m not shocked it’d happen in SE just because that’s a more car dependent part of town than NW.

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9throwaway2 t1_j55a4ah wrote

lol, pretty sure the palisades is as car dependent as SE. NW is freaking huge

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HockeyMusings t1_j50e92d wrote

I encounter derelict cars in the woods all over the DMV (and in national parks even elsewhere FWIW). Granted, most of them (but not all) are much older.

They are all pretty well picked over. And in various states of going back to nature.

This is much ado about nothing. Though if any snivelers out there want to take matters into their own hands, The Man in Black has some advice.

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strangechicken t1_j50w2ev wrote

This is the meme of the guy sticking something in their own bike spokes and asking who would do that.

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kstinfo t1_j50ejcr wrote

If I recall correctly it's against the law to abandon a car in DC and you can be fined. That's why people pop the vin numbers and leave the cars where they won't be found for a while.

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joebobjoebobjoebob12 t1_j519mcf wrote

My neighbors and I have been dealing with an overgrowth of bamboo in our backyards that was planted decades ago by previous owners. One day I made it all the way back into the bamboo, and I ended up finding an abandoned shed and three rusting cars. From what we can figure out, it looks like one of the former inhabitants of our place got tired of seeing the other person's junk and planted bamboo to cover it up.

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