Monday's not-so-surprising flooding on the Georgetown waterfront, among other areas of the Potomac River, is a good reminder that although we Washingtonians live in an incredibly planned and built environment, Mother Nature can still pack a punch. Seasonal flooding has been going on for eons, which has helped carve one of the region's most spectacular natural environments: the Potomac's gorge between Georgetown and Great Falls.

The pictures you see here were taken in the District's far western corner, near Chain Bridge, on March 18 of last year, a couple days after the river gorge flooded. It's an area that I've explored extensively over the years, a conveniently situated wilderness below the bluffs where I used to live, overlooking Chain Bridge and the gorge.

If you hike in this area between the river's channel at Little Falls and the C&O Canal in the next few days, you should expect to see boulders, logs, and other material that's been washed downstream over the years, sitting amid a complex network of pools and rivulets. You'll also see a fresh layer of silt. And if you get the timing right, you'll see a brilliant green carpet of new life sprouting.

If you make return visits, you'll see how this natural wonder changes over the seasons. It's too bad more people don't even know it's there.

Photos by Michael E. Grass

Anyone who has plied the C&O Canal just beyond Georgetown or—hell—anyone who has driven across Chain Bridge with the windows open knows about the city's premier sewage-stench problem. It hovers over these swanky neighborhoods along the canal and never seems to go away. It's heavy with that hydrogen sulfide nastiness of rotten eggs plus feces with a side of urine. And it has been bothering some pretty motivated civic activists for decades.

The culprit is the Potomac Interceptor, a huge pipe that snakes along the river that bears its name. It carries about 50 million gallons of shit-and-stuff per day. The trademark of the Potomac Interceptor is its vents—they spew the noxious air that sometimes makes adjacent 'hoods uninhabitable.

This fall marks a big moment in the fight to eliminate the odors: The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) is deep into a bidding process to build some carbon scrubbing stations along this sewer pipe, the better to treat the gases that come up through the vents and scandalize canal users and area residents. The scrubbers are going to be little brick structures equipped with some cool air-treatment technology. They have their work cut out for them.

Michael Caputo of Reasonable Shade of Green, wonders whether a few high-tech huts will do the job:

But will DC-WASA's idea really solve the problem? Or will the scrubbers pump new chemical compounds into the air of surrounding neighborhoods? And will the pipe continue to crumble and soon break, sending hundreds of millions of gallons of human waste into the C&O Canal?

Caputo's site features a video on this entire yucky affair. One activist on the video tells of the reaction of WASA officials when neighbors first approached the organization with complaints about the gases: "It's a sewer. It smells. What do you want from us?"

Creative Commons Attribution License Courtesy of magerleagues.

Last September, Tropical Storm Hannah blew out a breach about 125 feet long and about 50 feet deep in the wall of the C&O Canal in Maryland. It's an impressive hole, and will likely stay that way for some time.

According to Bill Justice, chief of interpretation for C&O Canal Park, repairing the "Hannah Hole" is a matter of about $3 million. That's considerably more than what was raised at a swanky party at Nalini and Chris Rogers’ "recently restored Marwood home overlooking the Potomac River" back in November (incidentally, the mansion with 13 bathrooms was the site of a party scene in Broadcast News, I'm guessing the one where Holly Hunter and William Hurt are supposed to be flirting at the Correspondents Dinner).

The 30 grand raised there and from other donors who've come forward helped repair the towpath. The cave-in is located along the path and is fenced-in about a mile in from Angler's Inn. The C&O Park, in partnership with the National Park Service, which runs Great Falls National Park on the other side of Mather Gorge, is putting together a proposal to get the funding together. If they're able to get it, the hole won't be repaired for another year or two, says Justice.

Park employees inspecting the wall by bicycle the day before the storm noted the weak spot. In response, the park lowered the water level in the canal. "If we wouldn't have done that, the damage would have been a lot worse than the 125-foot hole we have now," says Justice.

Once it broke, earlier repairs completed in the late '70s were exposed, he says. Today's repairs would employ different feats of engineering. "We've learned it doesn’t pay to cut corners on reconstruction....It's not a matter of if we're going to have a major weather event along the canal, it's a matter of when."

NPS photo above taken by Terry Adams. About it, Justice says: "This picture was taken the day following Tropical Storm Hannah. This doesn't look like much, until you realize the greenery in the hole was a big tree that fell into it. [The hole was] about 80 feet wide at this point."