DC Water to do emergency repairs on more sections of pipe involved in sewage spill

DC Water says it will soon begin emergency work on four more sections of the pipe that collapsed earlier this year — spilling hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage into the Potomac River — in an effort to prevent impacts to the area’s drinking water.

After the sewage spill, DC Water began re-inspecting the 54 miles of the Potomac Interceptor using a robot.

“It’s a robot that goes through the sewer, takes not only CCTV, so visual inspection, as well as using laser and sonar data to understand the thickness of the pipe” said Matthew Brown, chief operating officer for DC Water.

It found significant issues with four locations, including two sections near Dulles Airport, one along the C&O Canal near the Chain Bridge and one near Pennyfield Lock, which DC Water calls the Muddy Branch location.

The part of the pipe that ruptured in January was downstream from the Washington Aqueduct so it didn’t affect drinking water. But the Muddy Branch location is upstream of the WSSC Water’s Potomac Water Filtration Plant and the Washington Aqueduct’s intakes at Great Falls.

DC Water said there’s structural deterioration, significant corrosion and exposed rebar in that section of pipe.

“So Muddy Branch is fairly unique. It’s a pipe that’s encased in 12 inches of concrete, but based on the inspections, we are, we’re taking it seriously. We want to address the emergency condition and then there’s a longer-term repair there,” Brown said.

DC Water will deploy pumps to prevent a possible sewage spill getting into the drinking water supply, Brown said.

“The bypass pumping is what’s key. So that’s the emergency response, as well as during construction to be able to have a place that moves the flow from above … the potential area of vulnerability, hopefully not a break, and then puts it back into the [Potomac Interceptor] below that break,” he said.

Workers have already begun removing some trees and branches in the area. The National Park Service has given DC Water permission for the work.

Crews will begin repair work on about 1,700 feet of the pipe on Monday, June 15. Repairs are expected to continue through the end of September, according to DC Water.

Four months after a broken pipe sent hundreds of millions of gallons of waste into the Potomac River, residents say they can still smell sewage in the area.

The rupture of the sewage pipeline on Jan. 19 sent more than 240 million gallons of sewage into the Potomac River. While a temporary bypass stopped further contamination into the river, more than 2 billion gallons of wastewater were still diverted through the C&O Canal until repairs were completed.

The federal government and Maryland filed lawsuits against DC Water three months after the spill. Maryland’s attorney general alleged that DC Water was negligent and asked the courts to hold the water utility company responsible for the cost of the ongoing cleanup and restoration of the river and parkland.

DC Water’s board of directors voted in early June to remove CEO David Gadis, who was the face of the agency’s response to the Potomac Interceptor break that sent millions of gallons of raw sewage into river.

Gadis was hired by DC Water despite being a central figure in the Flint, Michigan, water crisis as a top executive for Veolia, an engineering firm that later paid $53 million to settle civil claims alleging it contributed to and prolonged Flint’s lead disaster.

The board had placed Gadis on a performance improvement plan before the sewage spill because of concerns about his management, sources told News4.

Before Gadis’ ousting, members of Congress grilled him and National Park Service officials during a May hearing.

In the weeks after the collapse, DC Water officials acknowledged they knew in 2018 the 54-mile underground sewer line needed critical repairs. A Washington Post investigation found those repairs were delayed for more than eight years because the NPS did not issue the needed permits for the work.

“Isn’t it true that in 2018, eight years ago, DC Water requested fast-track permits to repair widespread corrosion and detach rebar at the side of the rupture?” U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo asked NPS’ deputy superintendent of the C&O Canal, Edward Wenschhof.

“We’ve been working with them on this initiative for a while,” Wenschhof said.

“Yeah, eight years,” the congresswoman said. “Do you dispute that?”

“The specifics of the prebreak are under the litigation,” Wenschhof said.

NPS and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers testified DC Water never told them there was any imminent threat of the sewer line collapsing.

“Okay, I think this is the famous movie line ‘a failure to communicate,’” said U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala. “Because this could have been avoided.”