McDuffie resolute on helping his ward shed image of a dumping ground This all happens less than 50 yards from someone's home. Look at this . . .  McDuffie says. It's ridiculous. This is almost criminal to me. This is unfathomable. This is untenable. "Most days," he adds, "you can smell it, too." McDuffie (D), a D.C. Council member, has represented Langdon and the rest of Ward 5 for six months. On the campaign trail last year, he listened as residents lined up at meet-and-greets and candidate forums to complain about their communities being used as a "dumping ground" while other neighborhoods are being transformed by new residents and new businesses. And in his short time on the council, McDuffie has moved aggressively to change that. He is convening a task force led by city planning officials that will be charged with looking at how to reconcile the city's gritty past with its future as a denser, more populous, more prosperous place. That means a hard look at transforming Ward 5, which now contains 70 percent of the District's industrially zoned land. Not all of McDuffie's bailiwick is so literally a dumping ground as the 2100 block of Bryant Street. But if there's a rail yard, cement plant, fleet parking lot, printing plant, laundry plant, meat packer, fishmonger, food wholesaler, liquor distributor, auto-repair shop, taxi barn, bus garage, storage facility, salt dome, warehouse or trash transfer station in the District of Columbia, it is most likely located in Ward 5. In recent years, matters have been further complicated by sex and drugs: Strip-club impresarios and medical marijuana growers have been drawn to the ward, partly because of the affordable real estate but mainly because city regulations give them little other choice. "If I was a business owner and I wanted to open up a parking lot or I wanted to open up a medical marijuana facility, I would come to Ward 5 first, because it makes business sense," McDuffie says. So I don't begrudge these business owners for doing that. But as a council member . . . I think it's our responsibility to take a more balanced approach. Self-fulfilling prophecy Some mighty forces have shaped the ward's predicament. One is history. The trash transfer station on Bryant Street opened nearly two decades ago. Nightclubs have operated on nearby Queens Chapel Road NE for years. And the rail line they abut, the taproot of the ward's industrial heritage, dates back to the 1830s. "It's not like we went to Ward 5 and said, "Let's rezone the whole ward so that we can let these uses go there," " said Harriet Tregoning, the city's planning director. They're artifacts of where the rail lines go in the city. Another is economics. A 15-year real estate boom has already claimed large swaths of industrial land, most of which was outside Ward 5, in areas closer to downtown. Hundreds of acres have been claimed in ongoing efforts to redevelop the Anacostia River waterfront alone - including the construction of Nationals Park and coming redevelopment of Buzzard Point in Southwest.