Sitting directly across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge from the Navy Yard and Buzzard Point neighborhoods, the Bridge District has a lot of competition for apartment residents.

“You really just have to think of the Anacostia as having been an industrial waste stream,” said Doug Siglin, the former head of the Anacostia Waterfront Trust.

The District of Columbia sued the federal government Friday over pollution in the Anacostia River that the city says comes from over a century of agencies using the waterway as a “dumping ground.” ...