Last night, PBS’s Frontline aired a program about the threatened Chesapeake Bay. “More than three decades after the Clean Water Act, iconic American waterways like the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound are in perilous condition and facing new sources of contamination,” they write. Our health and food sources depend on these coastal areas, but new pollutants are entering the water from “industry, agriculture, and massive suburban development.”

The complete program starts with the threats to the Chesapeake and the ways public interest in protecting water quality has waned over the last 30 years. After heading west to examine problems in Seattle, it returns to the Mid-Atlantic to discuss of land use, including residential sprawl of the Chesapeake region and the auto-dependent, impervious surface-filled Tysons Corner. But the piece ends on a positive note, with one of the nation’s best examples of suburban development: Arlington County.

The Coalition for Smarter Growth’s Stewart Schwartz walks Frontline through Arlington and the potential for evolving Tysons into something more like Arlington. You can support CSG and its efforts to realize this vision at at tonight’s house party.

Tips: Michael, Lynda, Rebecca.

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Tagged: arlington, development, environment, smart growth, sprawl, sustainability, tysons, virginia

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.