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Great Falls Graffiti

Submitted by Howard Morland <hbmorland@aoll.com> on 28/Jan/2018
173.73.140.235

Message:

I spent most of Saturday as a Park Service volunteer removing spray-painted graffiti from rock walls on the Virginia side of Great Falls. It makes you want to outlaw spray paint. Brushed-on paint would probably be easier to remove, and less likely to be applied in the first place. A few seconds to cause the damage and hours to fix it. This graffiti had been up for a month. My theory is that it should be removed immediately, but this spray-paint attack is thought to be retaliation for earlier graffiti that was, in fact, removed immediately. So how long should we postpone removal to avoid retaliatory graffiti? Who knows?

The removal process is tedious. The paint remover has to be environmentally friendly, i.e., not as strong as it could be, because Mather Gorge water is our drinking water. Anything we put in the water could be sucked up at the Brookmont/Little Falls pumping station. Several techniques are used to collect all the chemicals and rinse water. There is a lot of time to think about causing bodily harm to the people who did this, especially if they retaliate by doing more of it.

The job is not finished, so anyone who would like to help can send me an email. We will include you in the next work party.

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