Observers believe regulatory failures contributed to catastrophic sewage and fuel leaks in the watershed. The river was recently named the most endangered in the nation.
The warning signs were years in the making. And yet, regulators failed to heed the writing on the wall, according to Dean Naujoks.
An investigator with the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, Naujoks spent three years documenting what he calls a systemic failure that culminated in dual environmental catastrophes now threatening the health of the entire Potomac River system, which is already stressed.
In January, a 60-year-old sewer pipe known as the Potomac Interceptor, running along the Maryland shoreline of the Potomac, collapsed near the Clara Barton Parkway corridor in Montgomery County, releasing an estimated 243 million gallons of raw sewage into the river over approximately three weeks.
But even before that spill, another crisis had already begun to unfold elsewhere in the watershed. At Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, a fuel system failure on Dec. 11 led to thousands of gallons of jet fuel entering the headwaters of Piscataway Creek, a tributary that feeds directly into the Potomac. The leak continued for months before state regulators were notified.
Why are the Feds failing to enforce the Clean Water Act?
It seems the damage to the section of the pipeline that failed had been known since 2018. But instead of immediately getting to work, the National Park Service decided it needed to perform an environmental review which dragged on for seven years and prevented the repairs from being made.
Catastrophic sewage spill followed years of delay on repairs https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/04/02/potomac-interceptor-sewer-repair-delay/ D.C. Water asked the National Park Service for permission to fast-track repairs in 2018, after inspectors found widespread corrosion and detached rebar in one area of the six-foot-wide concrete pipe that runs under federal parkland in Maryland, records show. The utility sought to strengthen a three-quarter-mile section that included the point that later ruptured…
But the National Park Service’s environmental review dragged on for years and was still not complete when the pipe collapsed — a delay that experts said appeared to flout a 2020 federal rule requiring such examinations be done within one year…
A review by The Post of more than 2,600 public utility documents reveals how concerns about the removal of trees and vegetation, along with other environmental impacts, postponed repairs to the Potomac Interceptor. The pipe continued to degrade for more than seven years before it failed on Jan. 19 and released one of the largest spills of untreated wastewater in U.S. history.
Sort of. It wasn’t a failure to enforce the Clean Water Act; it was getting tangled up in environmental bureaucracy. Did the Biden administration fail to enforce the “one year rule”? It seems that way. At the same time the scope of project kept changing, so it is possible that the clock kept getting reset.
Notice that the “interceptor sewer line” implies this sewer was relatively new. Before environmental law sewer probably went directly to the river. Interceptor used to collect that sewage for treatment. Interceptor probably built in the 70s. Poorly maintained.
This is not an ancient sewer line built before 1900. It is modern construction.
The damage to the section of the pipeline that failed had been known since 2018. Trump was president from 2016-2020. Stop blaming Biden for what happened on Trump’s watch.
Agreed, but as noted in the WaPo article things got mucked up in the environmental laws when the utility tried to get the work done. It was in 2020 that the “one year assessment” law was in place. Since the National Park Service didn’t complete the assessment (which would have allowed things to be fixed) that gets us to 2021…
The Potomac interceptor line was built in the 1960s.
Yes, DC Water did not prioritize maintenance of this, or many other of its lines. It is just now starting to catch up, but it continues to be very slow to make meaningful repairs to several other interceptors in and around the District.
NPS is a difficult partner for these projects. Their long-term lack of sufficient funding has sapped their ability to tackle impact statements promptly, and DC Water often does not take their concerns about environmental damage as seriously as they should. DC Water needs to do a much better job anticipating these and developing solutions without several revisions.
That particular park, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal NHP, is well-known as particularly slow and excessively bureaucratic, and that’s saying something.
It seems to me that there’s lots of blame to go around between two administrations, the Department of Interior, the National Park Service and DC Water. No one has covered themselves in glory.
D.C. Water asked the National Park Service for permission to fast-track repairs in 2018, after inspectors found widespread corrosion and detached rebar in one area of the six-foot-wide concrete pipe that runs under federal parkland in Maryland, records show. The utility sought to strengthen a three-quarter-mile section that included the point that later ruptured…