Since the Jan. 19 Potomac Interceptor (PI) collapse and enormous wastewater overflow into the Potomac River, residents and advocates have urged responsible agencies to provide more thorough and transparent communication.
More than a month after the collapse, DC Water and Maryland held community forums in the District and Bethesda on Feb. 25 and 26 to address residents’ requests.
The Feb. 26 meeting was held at Walt Whitman High School, where concerned people flooded the cafeteria, eager to obtain answers to their questions and solace for their worries. Presenters provided attendees with an update on emergency mitigation efforts and long-term rehabilitation and restoration plans for the affected area.
DC Water CEO David Gadis reassured the crowd of his commitment to restoring the river to health and ensuring sustainable infrastructure for the region’s water system in the future.
“This river means a lot to me as well,” Gadis said during the Thursday forum. “I live on the Potomac, so I have a vested interest in this as well, and I want to see the Potomac come back. I want to make sure that we take care of [it]. It’s a river that all of us share and love.”
In the weeks following the sanitary sewer system’s failure, residents have raised concerns about the water system’s structural integrity, asking what long-term mitigation efforts are needed to prevent a disaster of this scale from recurring.
Responding to public unease in his opening statement, Gadis informed attendees that DC Water is working toward rehabilitating the 60-year-old PI over 10 years with $625 million from the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), an initiative intended to improve the entire water system’s infrastructure and efficiency.
“It is important to note that this incident does not reflect a systematic failure of our wastewater system,” Gadis said. “It does highlight a broader reality to our region and also to the Potomac River. [The Potomac Interceptor’s] failure underscores the need for sustainable investment into [it].”
Four Phases for Rehabilitation
DC Water outlined a four-phase recovery and repair plan, of which they are currently in phase two.
The first phase, completed on Jan. 24, included the bypass installation, which reroutes the flow away from upstream of the break through the C&O Canal and around the damaged pipe section.
The second phase comprises excavating the rock dam downstream of the pipe that is currently obstructing direct access, and identifying the scope of the blockage to analyze the damage and pinpoint the cause of the collapse. With this obstacle, even though the bypass system was able to divert approximately 60 million gallons of water, repair crews needed to find a way to cease flow into the damaged line. Without a dry pipe, excavation isn’t possible.
“The pipe has been dry, and we’ve been doing that excavation,” said DC Water Chief Operating Officer Matthew Brown. “There’s a little bit more rock in there. The team [was] working yesterday overnight, and there’s still some additional material that we need to clear.”
DC Water speculates that the very rock blocking access to the damaged area is the cause of the initial failure. Rock blasting was required to install the Potomac Interceptor when it was built in the early 1960s. The same rock was used to cover the line, with many pieces being much larger than the three-inch standard for covering pipes. Theoretically, if the pipe’s walls thinned as it grew older, then it eventually became too weak to withstand the weight of the rocks on top of it.
“We are looking at the whole 54-mile pipe, and we are looking at it from Dulles all the way into D.C., looking for anything that may tell us that this pipe is deteriorating or that it could fail,” Gadis said. “We’ve been doing that, we’re continuing to do that and we will make sure that we address anything in the future that may expose itself.”
Phase three of the restoration plan consists of repairing the pipe and restoring flow by installing a bulkhead and bypass chamber to complete rock removal. Repair crews plan on reinforcing the PI by spraying geopolymer, a sprayable ceramic-like material, upstream and downstream of the break. The pipe is expected to be fully functional by mid-March.
The fourth and final phase focuses on environmental rehabilitation of the affected area, including the drainage channel, the C&O Canal, and the Potomac River shoreline to Swanson Island. DC Water and its partners are currently working through and forming that plan, Brown told attendees.
“We want to start some of the initial work as quickly as we can,” he said on Feb. 26. “So the initial rankings,… debris removal, those kinds of things, we want to start as early as next week.”
Community Members Remain Upset
District resident, Jill MacNeice, believes one step DC Water and the Maryland Department of the Environment should take toward safeguarding the ecosystem is to test for more bacteria than E. Coli, such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), an antibiotic-resistant form of staph bacteria.
MacNeice, a kayaker and volunteer water quality monitor with the Potomac Riverkeepers Network (PRKN), also hopes these agencies are as thorough as possible in their sampling and tests past the water column moving forward.
“The sediment sequesters bacteria,” she told The Informer. “Once you get down close to where the sediments are, that bacteria level spikes.”
She explained the need for meticulous monitoring of the water’s health, as fluctuations in weather easily change how low or heavy the flow is, directly affecting contamination levels.
“It’s a dynamic situation. Just because the bacteria level is safe today doesn’t mean it’ll be safe tomorrow,” MacNeice continued.
Karim Khalifa, a wastewater engineer, believes communication between responsible agencies and the public was poor. He wished a moratorium calling for reduced water use had been released as soon as the failure and overflow were discovered, because when a spill occurs, decreasing overall consumption can help lower the flow of wastewater into the river.
“That was my first signal — [they’re] just going to let this thing flow [and] not tell the community to use much less water, and that never got better,” Khalifa told The Informer. “No one ever thought to think this is actually a community involvement problem.”
Many residents left the forum frustrated, feeling DC Water and other agencies had not taken accountability for the spill and that more similar meetings are necessary in the near future for more questions to be answered in depth.
Considering it has been more than a month since the PI collapse, attendees are still concerned about community engagement, hope to receive a more extensive outline of environmental restoration efforts and overall, want responsible actors to take accountability for what happened.
“Accountability is not something we avoid. It is something we embrace at DC Water because the health of this river, the safety of this region, and also [your trust] in DC Water is important to us,” Gadis said. “We are committed to a rigorous review of the facts and will share what we learn as we move forward, and we fully evaluate this situation.”