Washington's big dig aims to clean up "nation's river"

Washington is starting to dig deep in a $2.6 billion underground solution aimed at helping clean up the polluted Potomac River and the ailing Chesapeake Bay, the biggest U.S. estuary.
In the U.S. capital's biggest public works project in more than 40 years, work started this fall to cut about 16 miles of tunnels to keep overflow sewage and stormwater from running into the Potomac.
The project, designed to be finished in 2025, is seen by environmentalists as part of resolving the next great water pollution challenge facing the United States -- keeping fouled runoff out of lakes, streams and rivers.
The vast dig "is a dramatic piece of the puzzle to improve the water quality in the Potomac," said Carlton Ray, head of the District of Columbia's Clean Water Project.

For the 15 million tourists who visit Washington each year, the broad Potomac serves as a dramatic backdrop to the city's gleaming monuments and public buildings, like the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.
But the smoothly flowing waters of what admirers call "the nation's river" hide deep problems.
The Potomac carries so much sex-changing pollutants that male bass have been found carrying eggs. Swimming is banned after heavy rains because of polluted runoff.
Locals are warned about eating the Potomac's fish because of contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls, a likely carcinogen in humans.
The river and its almost 15,000-square-mile basin is the top source of sediments dumped into the Chesapeake Bay, a leading U.S. crab fishery and itself struggling to revive from decades of overfishing and pollution.
REPORT CARD: D
In its report card this year, the Potomac Conservancy, an environmental group, graded the Potomac at "D." It cited poor land use practices, new contaminants and continuing fights to control pollution.
"If we can't figure out how to clean up and be able to swim in a river and eat the fish you catch, if you can't do that in the nation's capital, what hope do we have?" asked Hedrick Belin, the Potomac Conservancy's president.
Washington's sewers project, which will use a tunneling machine the length of a football field, is aimed at eliminating 96 percent of one of the biggest sources of Potomac pollution -- stormwater from the District of Columbia.
About one-third of Washington, including the White House and the Capitol, is hooked up to a 19th century sewer system that carries both sewage and stormwater into the Potomac and its District of Columbia tributaries, the Anacostia River and Rock Creek.
About 2.5 billion gallons of raw sewage mixed with rainwater is swept into the river each year when Washington's sewers back up from heavy rain, fouling the river.
"Basically, anytime it rains we have overflow events," said Ray, the project's chief.
The new project, set up under a 2005 federal consent decree, is designed to hold millions of gallons of runoff until it can be pumped out and treated.
Part of the cost of the dig, Washington's biggest public works project since the building of its subway, will be defrayed by the District's impervious surfaces tax. The levy taxes surfaces that feed runoff and was doubled in October.
The passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act helped shut off much of U.S. pollution from single sources, like factories. The biggest culprit now is water sheeting off roads, farms, houses and urban areas that sweeps waste into lakes, rivers and streams, environmentalists said.
FOUL RUNOFF
"Most of the pollution is not coming out of a big pipe, a big plant. It is coming from water flowing off surfaces," said the Potomac Conservancy's Belin.
Tim Guilfoile, deputy director of the Sierra Club's Water Sentinels program, estimated about 60 percent of U.S. water pollution comes from runoff mixed with manure, pet waste, fertilizers, oil, chemicals and trash.
The problem is especially acute in areas like Washington and its sprawling suburbs, where development has stripped land cover and replaced it with surfaces like houses, parking lots and roads that feed runoff.
For example, Prince George's County, which borders the District of Columbia, lost half its forest cover from 1993 to 2007, the Potomac Conservancy said.
One inch of rain can produce from 1,000 to 1,500 gallons of runoff from a 1,500-square-foot roof, Guilfoile said.
"The only way we can have an impact (in controlling pollution) is to change how we handle stormwater," he said.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) required the District of Columbia in October to take a raft of steps to cut runoff further. They include roof gardens, planting trees, refitting drainage and that 1.2 inches of rain be retained on a development's site in a 24-hour storm.
Ray, the tunnel project's director, said the District of Columbia was in talks with the EPA about building swales, or marshy troughs filled with vegetation, and other green structures to hold runoff, and cut the dig's price tag.
"If we can show it's successful, we can spend millions and millions of dollars on green infrastructure and reduce the gray infrastructure" of the concrete tunnels, he said.

Obamas go to church, dine in for Christmas in Hawaii

President Barack Obama spent a low-key Christmas Day with his wife and daughters in Hawaii, going to church and thanking U.S. troops for their service before hosting friends for dinner at the first family's rented beach house.
The Obamas started opening gifts around 8 a.m. on Sunday and then ate breakfast and sang carols together before heading to the chapel at the Marine Corps Base Hawaii for a Christmas service, the White House said.
Far from Washington officialdom, and making the most of a bright, warm day, Obama dressed casually in a polo shirt and khaki pants to church and Michelle and their daughters Sasha and Malia wore summer dresses.

After a few hours back at their multi-million-dollar temporary home, the president and Michelle Obama returned to the base to shake hands, hold babies and pose for pictures with hundreds of sailors and marines stationed there.
"In the evening, the First Family and friends will celebrate with a Christmas dinner at home," a White House official said. Sam Kass, the White House chef, is spending the holidays with the Obamas and was expected to do the cooking.

Gunman in Santa suit killed six, self in Texas: police

A gunman who killed six people and himself at a family Christmas celebration was dressed in a Santa Claus suit when opened fire, police said on Monday.
Authorities continued their search for clues in Grapevine, a Dallas suburb dubbed the "Christmas Capital of Texas," to explain the Sunday murder-suicide rampage that left the seven shot dead among unwrapped holiday presents.
The dead -- four women and three men ages 15 to 59 - were found Sunday morning in an apartment living room by police answering a voiceless 911 emergency call, authorities said.

Two pistols were recovered from the home, said Sergeant Robert Eberling of the Grapevine police department, who called it a "gruesome crime scene" and the worst outburst of gun violence in the town's history.
The last homicide in the town was in June 2010.
Authorities were waiting on autopsy reports before releasing identities, a potential motive and details on what exactly happened inside the home, Eberling said.
"We have a pretty good idea who these folks were, and we're trying to work through contacting other family members so we can better piece together what took place and why it took place," he said.
Eberling said the shooter was dressed in a Santa Claus suit but gave no details.
Grapevine police Lieutenant Todd Dearing said the victims' ages were 15, 19, 22, 55, 56, 58 and 59. The victims in their 50s were two couples, Dearing said.
The shooter was one of the older men, he said.
Circumstances of the shooting remained sketchy, but Eberling said it appeared as though the bloodbath unfolded during a family holiday celebration.
No one was found alive by police arriving at the home, he said.
A community of about 46,000 people some 20 miles northwest of downtown Dallas, Grapevine is known for its wine-tasting salons. It was proclaimed by the state Senate as the "Christmas Capital of Texas" for its abundance of annual holiday-season events.
"This is obviously a terrible tragedy," Mayor William Tate said Sunday night in a statement given to Reuters.
"The fact that it happened on Christmas makes it even more tragic."
VOICELESS 911 CALL
Police dispatched at about 11:30 a.m. on Sunday found the bodies in the first-floor living room of a two-story unit in the Lincoln Vineyards apartments, police said.
The 911 caller never spoke to police, and officers did not see the telephone when they arrived, officials said.
Eberling said the victims appeared to have just opened Christmas presents when the shooting started, and there was no sign of forced entry or a struggle.
"By all appearances, they're all part of the same family," Eberling said, adding that some were related through marriage.
Lincoln Vineyards is a middle-income complex near Colleyville Heritage High School, one of the area's most highly regarded schools.
Several neighbors told Reuters that children frequently played in front of the apartment, and they regularly saw young adults leaving for work.

U.S. regrets Cuba failure to free American citizen

The State Department said on Saturday it deplored Cuba's failure to free Alan Gross - a U.S. citizen serving a 15-year prison term in a case that has stalled progress in U.S.-Cuba relations - as part of an announced humanitarian release of some 2,900 prisoners.
"If this is correct, we are deeply disappointed and deplore the fact that the Cuban government has decided not to take this opportunity to extend this humanitarian release to Mr. Gross this holiday season, especially in light of his deteriorating health, and to put an end to the Gross family's long plight," Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, said Saturday.
The Cuban government said on Friday it would free 2,900 prisoners in coming days for humanitarian reasons ahead of a visit next spring by Pope Benedict XVI.

Those to be pardoned do not include Gross, a government spokesman said in Havana. He was imprisoned after setting up Internet equipment as a subcontractor in a U.S.-funded program promoting political change in Cuba.
The Cuban government considered his work subversive. His arrest halted a brief warming in U.S.-Cuba relations that have been hostile since Fidel Castro embraced Soviet Communism after his 1959 revolution.
In a statement, Toner reiterated a U.S. call on Cuban authorities to release Gross "and return him to his family, where he belongs." The State Department has said in the past that Gross was merely providing Internet access for Jewish groups in Cuba and should be released immediately.

U.S. Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking classified files to the WikiLeaks

The lawyers made closing arguments at a hearing to determine whether Private First Class Bradley Manning, 24, should be court-martialed on charges including aiding the enemy and wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet.
Manning's lawyer David Coombs accused prosecutors of overreaching in bringing 22 criminal charges, saying the massive release of documents had caused no harm to national security and the government was trying "to strong-arm a plea from my client."
"The sky is not falling, the sky has not fallen and the sky will not fall" as a result of the document release, Coombs said.
Captain Ashden Fein, the lead prosecutor, countered that the
document release had helped al Qaeda, showing a video in which a recruiter for the militant group referred to WikiLeaks and urged followers to "take advantage of the wide range of resources available today on the Internet."
Aiding the enemy is an offense that could bring the death penalty but the prosecution has said it intends to seek life in prison for Manning. Coombs said the prosecution needed a "reality check" and focused his closing remarks on urging them to seek no more than 30 years in prison.
Coombs asked the court to throw out charges of aiding the enemy and giving intelligence to the enemy, saying the audience for the information was the American people. He also urged the court to dismiss several other counts, saying overall security within the unit was lax.
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Almanza, the investigating officer in the case, will now review the evidence presented at the hearing and make a recommendation by January 16 on whether the military should court-martial Manning.
Manning is accused of downloading more than 700,000 classified or confidential files from the military's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, while serving in Iraq.
Those files are thought to be the source of documents that appeared on WikiLeaks, which promotes the leaking of government and corporate information.
The prosecution has portrayed Manning as a trained and trusted analyst who knowingly committed criminal acts when he allegedly passed the documents to WikiLeaks.
Prosecutors have sought to link Manning to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, introducing logs of web chats that an investigator said appeared to show conversations in which the two discuss sending government documents.
Manning's lawyers have portrayed him as an emotionally troubled young man whose behavioral problems should have prompted superiors to revoke his access to classified information.
Witnesses said Manning sent an email to his sergeant expressing concern that confusion over his gender identity was seriously hurting his life, work and ability to think. Manning had created a female alter-ego online, Breanna Manning, according to testimony at the hearing.
"UNFETTERED ACCESS"
The courtroom at Fort Meade, northeast of Washington, was packed on Thursday for the closing arguments. Assange's lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, attended, as did Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War in the 1970s.
Fein said Manning "gave the enemies of the United States unfettered access to these documents."
He used a PowerPoint presentation to underscore the training Manning had received on the importance of protecting classified information. He said Manning even cautioned his colleagues in a briefing he conducted in 2008 about the common way in which leaks occur, including through the Internet or journalists.
Coombs underscored Manning's emotional instability, saying he mainly "struggled in isolation" but showed warning signs that should have prompted the unit's leaders to take action.
He went over excerpts of Manning's email to his sergeant discussing his gender identity issues.
"This is my problem. I've had signs of it for a long time. I thought a career in the military would get rid of it ... It is not going away ... and now the consequences of it are dire," the email said. "At this point it feels like I'm not really a person ... sorry."
Coombs also cited memos between Manning's supervisors discussing his increasing instability and the need for therapy. But in the end there was no effective action.
"It was the military's lack of response to that which also smacks in the face of justice," Coombs said.

New Mexico and New Hampshire renewed hopes for a white Christmas

Much of the rest of the country was expected to celebrate a sunny but brown Christmas, forecasters said.
A wintry storm dumped as much as a foot of snow on parts of New Hampshire, forcing scattered road closures during the morning rush hour on Friday, said meteorologist Mark Mancuso on Accuweather.com.
Temperatures were expected to drop after a stretch of unseasonable warm weather, increasing the likelihood that the frosting would last through Christmas Sunday.

"I'm glad we're going to have a white Christmas," said Ray Cloutier, 63, proprietor of the Tannery Marketplace commercial building in Littleton, New Hampshire.
"Yesterday the ground was brown and now it's beautiful with wet snow coating the branches of the trees," Cloutier said.
Heavy snow in New Mexico closed highways south of Albuquerque around Las Cruces, and another three inches was expected to fall before evening, forecasters said.
Snow was headed to El Paso, Texas, where an accumulation of more than one inch would put it ahead of Chicago in terms of snowfall so far this winter, said Accuweather meteorologist Mark Miller.
Ski resorts eager to draw crowds to their slopes over the holidays, typically the most lucrative week of the season, welcomed the long-awaited snow and predicted cold temperatures.
At Attitash Mountain Resort in northern New Hampshire, five inches of fresh snow on the ground spelled relief ahead of Christmas week, said Thomas Prindle, director of marketing at the ski resort.
About 92 million Americans -- 30 percent of the total U.S. population -- will travel more than 50 miles this holiday season, 91 percent of them by road, said AAA.

economic struggles and loss of faith in the U.S. political system

"How dare you!" the girl said abruptly as she nudged a toy caracross a conference room table at the Chapman Partnership shelter in Miami'stough and predominantly black Overtown neighborhood.
There was no telling what Aeisha was thinking as her 32-year-old mother, Nairkahe Touray,spoke of how she burned through her savings and wound up living in a car withfive of her eight children earlier this year.

But how dare you indeed? How does anyone explain to kids like Aeisha andcountless others how they wound up homeless in the world's richest nation?
In a report issued earlier this month, the National Center on FamilyHomelessness, based in Needham,Massachusetts, said 1.6 million children were living on thestreets of the United States last year or in shelters, motels and doubled-upwith other families.
That marked a 38 percent jump in child homelessness since 2007 and Ellen Bassuk, thecenter's president, attributes the increase to fallout from the U.S. recessionand a surge in the number of extremely poor households headed by women.
Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau provided a sobering backdrop. Basedon new or experimental methodology aimed at providing a fuller picture ofpoverty, the data showed that about 48 percent of Americans are living inpoverty or on low incomes.
Under the bureau's so-called Supplemental Poverty Measure for 2010, issuedlast month, the poverty level for a family of four was set at income anywherebelow $24,343 per year.
"I see it every day," said Alfredo Brown, 73, a retired army officer anddeputy director of the non-profit Chapman Partnership, when asked about childhomelessness.
The organization, funded largely by a 1 percent food and beverage tax onlarger restaurants to bankroll homeless programs, operates two sprawlinghomeless shelters in Miami-Dade County.
"I see so many children and mothers that are homeless and sleeping intheir car or an abandoned building, an old bus. It's a sad situation that welive in a country that has so much and many people have so little," Brownsaid.
Child homelessness is a relatively new social problem in the United States,where being on the street and the stigma attached to it has long beenassociated with adults with alcohol or drug dependency issues.
IMPOVERISHED MOTHERS
Families accounted for less than 1 percent of the U.S. homeless populationin the mid-1980s, according to Bassuk, but they now comprise about a third ofthe homeless population. A lot of children are dependent on poverty-strickensingle moms.
"There's sort of a Third World emerging right in our backyard. Youknow, we talk about developing countries but look at what's going onhere," Bassuk said.
To put a face to the breadth and depth of the homeless problem, a team of Reutersjournalists fanned out across the country in the past week, for interviews withparents and children who are down on their luck.
From Skid Row in LosAngeles to the South Bronx in New York, a common thread ofeconomic devastation from the recession ran throughout many of the storiesthese people told.
But there also was a common thread of hope running through their compressedlife stories.
Little Aeisha in Miami got visibly upset as her mother spoke tearfully aboutthe wear and tear on her children amid her struggles with a bad economy, severedepression, diabetes and chronic foot problems stemming from torn ligaments.
Touray sounded like an Occupy Wall Street protester herself, as shecomplained about bailout money for banks but not people. "You get treatedlike an animal because you're homeless," said Touray, who said she liveson just $583 a month in child support after going through a divorce last year.Her parents, who live separately in Atlanta and Chicago, are also homeless.
"Just because I'm homeless it doesn't mean that I was like nothingyesterday," said Touray, who said four small businesses she owned inAtlanta only went bust due to the recession.
She also complained about the tone-deafness of many politicians, saying theywere doing nothing to ease the unemployment and inequality that have come todominate the national conversation.
"I'm living the real deal," Touray said. "I don't need forsomebody to come up here and tell me what the economy's doing. They (thepoliticians) need to get out here and see these children, see theseparents."
RIDING THE RAILS
Across the country in Los Angeles, Reuters came across Luis Martinez, 34. Asingle parent, he lives with his three children at the Union Rescue Mission ona trash-strewn city block where homeless men and women stand vigil over plasticshopping carts.
But the shelter is an improvement over the time when Martinez passed nightson the L.A. subway with his children, riding the rails to nowhere.
A junior high school dropout who became unemployed after he injured his backon construction site job about six years ago, Martinez spoke proudly about howwell he said his kids were doing in school.
They have a laptop computer, which they use to help do homework through freewireless connections at McDonalds and Starbucks. They also have an Xbox videogame system and Martinez, who wears a necklace that says "My KidsFirst," has a cell phone to stay in touch with family and potentialemployers.
"I mean, I'm homeless but not hopeless," Martinez said.
"(It) gets easier as you go," said Jesse, Martinez's 8-year-oldson.
Highlighting the shrinking middle class in America, a reporter found Tracyand Elizabeth Burger and their 8-year-old son, Dylan. The Burgers said theyonce earned nearly $100,000 a year combined but saw their middle-classlifestyle evaporate when Tracy lost his job in audiovisual system sales.
Unable to pay rent, they were evicted from their apartment in early 2009 andhad to move into a motel. In March they moved into a cramped converted garageat Elizabeth's mother's house in Los Angeles.
Elizabeth, a former medical assistant, said she has less than six weeks lefton her unemployment insurance and was anxiously watching this week's standoffin Congress over extending those payments, along with the payroll tax cut for160 million Americans.
The congressional debate highlighted the partisan bickering that has madethis a tumultuous year in U.S. politics, while throwing Washington's ability tomake sound economic policy into doubt.
In central Florida, JustinSantiago, 15, said he was not surprised when he, his parents andthree younger siblings landed in a downtown Orlando shelter last September.
Since the national economic collapse in 2008, his out-of-work family bouncedfrom one relative's home to another, and left California in search ofemployment and stability.
"I wasn't shocked. When the economy's going down and it just drops,it's out of control," Justin said.
EYES ON THE PRIZE
In 16 years of marriage, his parents, Theresa and Timothy Santiago, managedto provide for their family by working multiple jobs, earning about $20,000 intheir best year. But work dried up and the family set out for Florida lastspring in search of cheaper living expenses.
After a run of more bad luck, they found their way to the Coalition for theHomeless of Central Florida shelter. But Justin is taking eighth grade honorsclasses now and says his family's recent experience will not keep him frompursuing his dream career in video game production and becoming an Internetsuccess story.
"It will get better for me and my family," he said. "I'll bemaking billions, I know that."
Antonio Dixon, 26, knows all about things getting better. His mother,Corenthia, said he bounced between at least a dozen homeless shelters growingup in Miami and Atlanta.
He eventually won a football scholarship at the University of Miami andfought dyslexia to become the first person in his family to graduate college.
"They had me study hard every hour," Dixon told Reuters.
He has since gone on to play defensive tackle for the NFL's PhiladelphiaEagles, making good on his boyhood dream.
Dixon has been sidelined by a torn tricep since early October. But he seemsconfident about overcoming adversity yet again and plans on being in thestarting lineup next season.
His advice to homeless kids is to stay in school and get focused on whateverit is they really want to do in life.
"Just keep on doing something you like and don't give up," Dixonsaid. I had to work myself up from the bottom to the top. I did that. Don't letnobody stand in your way. You just got to go and get it. You can't be afraid totake a chance on life."
Bassuk, a psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School professor said medicalproblems and under-achievement in school were among the things that often gohand in hand with childhood homelessness.
"These are kids who don't have any opportunities," she said."If you look at some of the educational variables, they're doing reallypoorly. And they're kids who can do OK. They just don't have appropriatesupport.
"It just seems that on every front this is a very vulnerable group ofkids," she said.