After the massive sewage spill into the Potomac, a shitload of questions remain

It was a month ago that a massive pipe running from the Virginia suburbs to the Blue Plains Advanced Water Treatment Plant in D.C. ruptured, resulting in a massive discharge of raw sewage into the Potomac River.

The spill itself has been largely contained, but the political shitstorm has just started. Questions are flying about what D.C. Water knew about the condition of the aging sewage pipe, what the agency and local jurisdictions could have done to better notify the public, how long the repairs will take, and what the ultimate impact on the river might be. 

And to complicate matters, President Donald Trump has jumped into the fray, taking to social media to blame Maryland Gov. Wes Moore for the catastrophe and to threaten federal intervention – even as D.C. Water had already been working with federal agencies on the response. And on Wednesday evening, Mayor Muriel Bowser asked Trump for a presidential disaster declaration, which would give D.C. access to federal funds for repairs and remediation. 

Here’s the latest on the situation. 

The state of the sewage

The majority of the discharge into the Potomac took place between January 19, when the break occurred, and January 24, when D.C. Water was able to start redirecting it into the C&O Canal. Since then, the sewage has largely been contained to the canal, where it travels downstream before being funneled back into the Potomac Interceptor pipe about a quarter-mile south of the break. 

There has been some additional discharge, though, most notably on Super Bowl Sunday, when a disgusting mountain of flushed sanitary wipes clogged up some of the pumps used for the redirection. That resulted in an estimated 600,000 additional gallons of sewage going into the river. (D.C. has had a long-running fight with makers of “flushable” wipes over whether they can actually be flushed; the incident prompted reminders from local governments that flushing any wipes is generally not advised.) 

This week, D.C. Water CEO David Gadis said that there haven’t been any other sewage overflows into the Potomac since February 9, and that he’s “cautiously optimistic” that there’s “enough pumping capacity at the site of the break until repairs are completed.”

Much has been made of the amount of waste that D.C. Water says ended up in the river, some 243 million gallons. While some environmental advocates initially called it one of the country’s worst spills ever, D.C. Water officials pushed back on that claim this week. They say there have been bigger events, including a 5.1-billion gallon spill in Milwaukee last year. 

That was sewage combined with stormwater runoff, though, and the Potomac similarly gets about 600 million gallons of that type of combined overflow every year from the city’s aging sewer system. What happened last month was a spill of undiluted sewage, so whether or not it’s the biggest such spill of its kind, everyone at least agrees that it’s bad.  

Differing views on the river's safety

Soon after the break, E. coli readings in the Potomac River came in thousands of times higher than would be safe for human contact. That eventually prompted local jurisdictions to advise residents against touching the water, letting their pets consume it, or otherwise recreating on it. (The city’s drinking water supply is drawn from further up the Potomac, and remains safe for consumption.) 

Since then, though, testing by D.C. Water, the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment, and environmental advocates (all the results are available here) have produced varying results, with extremely elevated E. coli levels near the break site and levels generally considered safe in D.C. and points farther south.

That created one of this week’s most jarring moments, when DOEE Director Richard Jackson proclaimed his faith in the river’s safety. “I would eat the fish,” he told the D.C. Council during a briefing on the rupture and response. “I am not afraid of the fish in that water. I am very comfortable.”

His own agency isn’t, though; the city’s official guidance remains that residents should avoid the river water – and the fish in it. Jackson eventually walked back his proclamation, but the mishap pointed toward the lack of clarity of exactly how safe the river is right now. 

For example, in a message to its members this week, the Washington Canoe Club said that it has no restrictions on paddling at this time, noting that E. coli levels at the site they use (which is about 8 miles from the site of the break) are in line “with that we would normally expect to see year-round.”

D.C. Water’s latest test results, released Wednesday, continued to show decreasing levels at the site itself and normal levels in the District’s waters.

“You definitely see decreasing numbers as you go down river,” says Dean Naujoks of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, which sounded the first alarm on the spill’s severity last month. “But keep in mind it’s very limited data. It’s a lot of sewage and there’s a lot of unknowns.”

He worries about the impact on fisheries downstream, as well as people’s perception of the river’s safety as warmer months arrive. “The only thing that will solve this is an abundant amount of data that happens daily all the way down river,” he says.

Bowser has asked for federal help beefing up the city’s testing capacity so it can be done more frequently than the current once-a-week rhythm as part of her request for emergency assistance.

For the time being, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia are expected to keep their warnings in place. 

“I think the challenge is that the situation is changing every day, with changing weather and even with potential for additional overflow,” Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau told The 51st. “So it’s wise to leave the official warning in place.”

Weeks of repair work still ahead 

Other than the safety of the river, a prevailing question has been how long it will take to fix the portion of the 72-inch diameter sewage pipe that collapsed. 

D.C. Water officials say the project should take between four and six weeks. “It’s hard to find a 72-inch pipe out there that you can just buy. This has to be welded and put in place,” Gadis told The 51st this week. 

But before they can get to welding, engineers face another challenge: large boulders that fell onto the part of the pipe that collapsed. D.C. Water officials say the boulders – which have to be cleared out – may have been used for backfill when the Potomac Interceptor was first built starting in the 1960s, but they can’t be sure if their presence contributed to its collapse. (No immediate cause of the break has yet been determined yet.)

After the immediate repairs, Gadis said D.C. Water will be kicking off a longer (and pre-planned) rehabilitation of a 2,700-foot section of the pipe in the area of the break, part of a $625 million, 10-year project to shore up the critical sewage line. (A portion of the pipe just upstream of where the break happened had been rehabbed last fall.) 

Of course, all of this has raised questions: Was this preventable, and could other portions of the Potomac Interceptor be at risk? Gadis said that D.C. Water has inspected roughly 20 miles of the pipe, rating sections on a scale: 1 is pretty much fine, 5 is in need of critical repairs. When the portion that ruptured was last checked a few years ago, he said it was rated a 3.5 – not in the greatest of shape, but also not in immediate need of repair.

D.C. lawmakers also pressed D.C. Water officials this week on what steps would be taken on environmental remediation, especially in and around the C&O Canal and potentially further downstream.

“I do think D.C. Water is taking seriously the repair work that’s needed,” Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen told The 51st. “My concern is around the environmental impacts on the Potomac River, and I did not hear a really clear remediation plan yet.”

That is also top of mind for Bowser in her request for federal assistance, including getting the feds to pick up the cost of cleaning up the portion of the C&O that’s currently being used to redirect the sewage. 

Trump weighs in 

How D.C. Water has managed the situation is certainly a political question, but it got significantly more heated this week when President Trump decided to weigh in. (White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president was looking to get involved because he worried that the city would smell like poop during celebrations of the country’s 250th birthday.)

"There is a massive Ecological Disaster unfolding in the Potomac River as a result of the Gross Mismanagement of Local Democrat Leaders, particularly, Governor Wes Moore, of Maryland," Trump wrote on Truth Social, incorrectly assigning blame based on where the break occurred. (D.C. Water is an independent D.C.-based utility, but serves Maryland and Virginia.) 

He later followed up with a separate message demanding that repair work start “IMMEDIATELY,” and that if D.C., Maryland, and Virginia weren’t up to it, “they have to call me and ask, politely, to help.” 

Moore dryly responded, “Mr. President, this spill is basically contained.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem also chimed in, chiding Democrats for the partial government shutdown (which impacts the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and claiming they were responsible for the sewage that was “flowing straight through our nation's capital and endangering millions of people, wildlife, and the entire D.C. region's water supply.” (Recall that local officials have said the drinking water supply is safe.)

Beyond the online bluster, D.C. Water had already been cooperating with federal agencies – some of which have to be involved because they oversee the utility, others because the pipe sits on their land. Gadis told the D.C. Council that he had been keeping EPA officials abreast and had toured a senior agency official around the site last week. On Wednesday, FEMA officials similarly visited the site. 

All of that was capped off on Wednesday evening, when Bowser made her official request to Trump (politely, of course) for a presidential disaster declaration – which would open up the federal funding spigot to help D.C. cover its expenses for repairs and remediation. 

Calls for accountability at D.C. Water

For a catastrophe of this size and significance, it goes without saying that people want accountability. For now, much of the attention is focused on D.C. Water, a fact Gadis himself seemed aware of last week when he posted an open letter about the incident. 

“Restoring confidence – both in the river’s health and in our stewardship – requires more than repairs. It requires listening, learning, and continuous improvement,” he wrote “We take seriously the calls from community members and environmental partners for accountability, transparency, and long-term solutions, and we are committed to engaging constructively as this work continues.” 

As part of that effort, D.C. Water says it is planning a public meeting next week – likely in Maryland near the site of the pipe’s rupture. The D.C. Council, for its part, has a pre-scheduled oversight hearing with D.C. Water on March 2; expect much of that to focus on the sewage spill.

One area in which D.C. Water officials have been roundly criticized is how they communicated about the spill and its potential impacts. Environmental advocates like Naujoks say the utility was slow to notify the public about the severity of the break and initially misreported some E. coli test results. Gadis’s first public appearance wasn’t until three weeks after the break, and he didn’t take direct questions from the press until this week. 

“I think D.C. Water has an excellent team of engineers who acted quickly to try and mitigate what was a serious and what could have been a more terrible situation,” At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson told The 51st. But “D.C. Water and their agency partners have not been the best in terms of communication with the public, and that is certainly an area for improvement as we move towards the long-term environmental remediation that will need to take place.”

This week, nine members of Congress representing Maryland and Virginia wrote to Gadis similarly pressing the utility to improve its communications moving forward. 

Naujoks is less forgiving; he says someone should be fired for what happened. Absent that, he wants to know what D.C. Water will be doing to prevent a repeat catastrophe should another break occur.

“They should have some spill prevention plan because [the pipe] carries so much waste and runs along the river,” he says.