Potomac

To celebrate the June 5 World Environment Day, diplomats from more than a dozen foreign embassies and international organizations Monday joined the U.S. State Department to plant underwater seagrass in the Potomac River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Bay is a national, natural American treasure. It was formed 15,000 years ago when an immense glacier melted and flooded an ancient river valley. Today, the estuary marks where the Potomac and 150 other rivers, streams and creeks merge on their way to the Atlantic Ocean. The sprawling 166,000 square-kilometer watershed stretches through six states and the nation's capital, nourishing a multitude of land and marine species. It's also the source of fresh drinking water, food and recreation for 17 million people.

The sprawling watershed, where the Potomac and several other great rivers merge on their way to the Atlantic Ocean, stretches over 166,000 square kilometers and encompasses six Atlantic coast states and the nation's capital. It nourishes a multitude of marine and terrestrial wildlife. It's the source of fresh drinking water, food and recreation for 17 million people. But in recent decades, rapid population growth, farm chemical runoff and industrial activity have polluted the bay and upset the watershed's delicate ecology.

Some of the rivers that feed the bay have American Indian names like Potomac, Susquehanna and Rappahannock. The bay supported native societies for thousands of years. The name Chesapeake comes from an Algonquin Indian word often defined as "great shellfish bay."

This is the fourth piece in a five-part series on the Potomac River, the waterway in the eastern United States that flows through four U.S. States and metropolitan Washington DC into the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in North America. In a canoe trip down the river VOA's Rosanne Skirble explores the natural riches of the Potomac and the struggle to protect the land and water resources of the river in the face of population growth, sprawling development and pollution.

The Potomac has been called the wildest urban landscape in the world. In some places it is flat and broad and so clear that you can see all the way down to the rocks and sand on the bottom. In others it is thick with gardens of aquatic vegetation with native species like wild celery, curly pondweed and stargrass, and exotic plants like hydrilla.

At Harpers Ferry, between tree covered hills, the Potomac breaks through the Blue Ridge Mountains and meets the Shenandoah River, creating one of the most dramatic vistas in the watershed.

The Potomac River was a meeting place for Native Americans long before European exploration. The Indians traded goods and occasionally warred with rival tribes along its tributaries. The watershed is littered with arrowheads and spear points and discarded oyster shells from these early peoples.

In a sojourn by boat on the Potomac, VOA's Rosanne Skirble stops for a history lesson and to witness efforts to recover a bird that has been absent from the riverscape for more than fifty years.

Every April, in the weeks leading up to Earth Day, tens of thousands of volunteers converge on parks, forests and streams throughout the sprawling, four-state Potomac River watershed, on America's East Coast. They come to gather up and haul away hundreds of tons of trash before it winds up in the Potomac — the main drinking water source for towns and cities across the region. Our reporter joined some volunteers on a recent weekend cleanup and has this report.

The Potomac surges against the banks, flush with this morning’s rain.