“The Hill’: Who is responsible for the Potomac sewage spill? – Will Washington drown in shit from lack of money?

Photo: Getty Images

Trump declared a state of emergency in Washington due to a sewage spill into the Potomac River.

After more than 240 million gallons of sewage spilled into the Potomac River following a pipe bursting last month, politicians are both launching cleanups and playing the blame game.

The pipe in question, known as the Potomac Interceptor, is a sewer line for DC Water, a water and wastewater utility that serves Washington, D.C., as well as Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland and Fairfax and Loudoun counties in Virginia.

“DC water is the operator,” said Betsy Nicholas, president of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network.

“They had already marked the Potomac Interceptor pipe — as well as some of their other older pipelines — as needing repair and maintenance and had money allocated for it, and it just seems… the whole pipeline collapsed before they were able to do any work on it,” Nicholas told The Hill.

Gadis added that protecting the Potomac River is a “shared obligation” and “not the responsibility of any one organization alone.”

The section of the Potomac Interceptor that burst was located along the Clara Barton Parkway in Montgomery County. The interceptor carries up to 60 million gallons of wastewater daily from Virginia and Maryland to Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant on the banks of the Potomac in southwest Washington.

Photo: Getty Images

President Trump, meanwhile, has sought to blame local authorities. He initially put the blame on the state of Maryland, but later shifted to blaming authorities in D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

“Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., who are responsible for the massive sewage spill in the Potomac River, must get to work, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Tuesday.

Maryland officials have shot back at the Trump administration.

“For the last four weeks, the Trump Administration has failed to act, shirking its responsibility and putting people’s health at risk,” said Ammar Moussa, spokesperson for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), in a written statement.

“Notably, the president’s own EPA explicitly refused to participate in the major legislative hearing about the cleanup last Friday. Apparently the Trump administration hadn’t gotten the memo that they’re actually supposed to be in charge here,” Moussa added.

Moore knocked Trump for not approving Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds after separate flooding in Maryland last year.

Spokespeople for FEMA did not immediately respond to questions from The Hill about what its involvement would look like. The Trump administration has previously said that it plans to scale back the disaster agency’s footprint and make the states take on more of the costs of disasters.

The D.C. Department of Energy and Environment, Virginia Department of Health and Maryland Department of the Environment are, however, urging residents to avoid recreational activities in the Potomac, including swimming, fishing and kayaking. Thousands of people go out on the Potomac for such activities yearly, according to the Potomac Riverkeeper Network.

Researchers from the University of Maryland — in partnership with the Potomac Riverkeeper Network — found that water samples from where sewage entered the Potomac were more than 10,000 times above EPA standards on Jan. 21 and more than 2,500 times above U.S. EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] standards on Jan. 28. On Jan. 28, water from a site 10 miles downstream from the overflow tested 1.5 times above the E. coli concentration standard.

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