There's a price to be paid for neglect, as anyone can tell you.  On Monday, local, state and federal officials  unveiled an ambitious plan for restoring the Anacostia River, which flows from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., past the U.S. Capitol.   The Anacostia is sometimes referred to as the "forgotten" or "other" river because of the attention lavished on the much larger Potomac into which it empties. It flows through some of the District's most blighted neighborhoods.

The plan, drawn up by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, lays out more than 3,000 projects to be undertaken over the next 10 years to tackle the trash, sewage and storm-water runoff polluting the river.  The estimated cost:  $1.7 billion - none of it budgeted so far.

Among the first tasks will be to put the Anacostia on a "trash diet," making it the first water body on the East Coast and one of only a few in the nation with a mandate for communities along its banks to halt the flow of garbage and debris into it.

That leaves one wondering when Baltimore Harbor will get its own "trash diet." Like the Anacostia, it is littered with so much plastic, foam, paper and other debris that the state and federal governments have officially declared its waters "impaired" by refuse. 

The harbor has no cleanup plan - yet - though a group of waterfront businesses is launching this week a campaign to make the harbor swimmable and fishable in 10 years.  They're proposing to start by putting some floating wetlands in the bulkheaded Inner Harbor.  But the full scope of what's needed to clean up the harbor, and the cost of fixing decades of neglect here, has yet to be confronted by anyone in authority.

(Photo: Associated Press)