Potomac Disaster Demonstrates Environmental Hypocrisy

Politicians in and around Washington, D.C., posture as guardians of the planet while standing by seemingly unconcerned for weeks as raw sewage from their backyard spills into the Potomac River flowing through the nation’s capital and into the Chesapeake Bay’s fishery.

The spill started January 19 with the failure of a 60-million-gallon-a-day pipe in the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) system. While DC Water reported that a bypass around the break had been completed five days later, Betsy Nicholas, president of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network (PRKN), said about 300 million gallons of sewage had gone into the river and residual spillage had continued to pollute for an extended period.

Testing by PRKN and scientists from the University of Maryland revealed a river teeming with disease. Water samples collected nine days after the disaster showed levels of fecal bacteria more than 2,700 times the safe limit established by Maryland and Virginia. Even 10 miles downstream, at the Thompson Boat House along the D.C. waterfront, contamination levels ranged from two to 59 times above the recreational safety limit.

Dean Naujoks of PRKN said that officials understated the effect of the spill. “DC Water claimed … that the sewage leak was fully contained in the C&O Canal, but on February 4 it acknowledged that ‘overflow risks remain,’ which have resulted in ‘slight increases’ in coliform levels near Lock 10 over the past two days. Our February 3 data show that the actual E. coli contamination is in fact 4,227 times over the safety limit. This is hardly slight.”