Power restored to WSSC Water; Prince George’s, Montgomery counties’ customers urged to continue conservative water usage

Power has been restored to a water treatment plant on Tuesday night following an outage earlier in the day, causing residents in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties in Maryland to be conservative about their water usage.

WSSC Water issued an essential water use only warning Tuesday morning because of a power issue at the Potomac Water Filtration Plant. According to a release, the plant supplies drinking water to about 75% of its customers.

Close to 1.9 million customers in Montgomery and Prince George’s County were affected by the warning.

“The plant, as you can imagine, uses an extraordinary amount of power to bring the water in the river to treat the water and put the water back out into the distribution system,” WSSC Water spokesperson Lyn Riggins told WTOP.

Residents are still being asked to limit their water usage and to avoid or limit flushing toilets, using the washing machine and dishwashers. Water is still available in the distribution system and is safe for consumption and normal use. There is currently no boil water advisory.

Riggins said the urgent request was to preserve water for sanitation and safety.

“What we’re trying to do is preserve the water that is in the system, not only for people’s use that you think about all the time — you know, washing your hands and brushing your teeth and taking showers, but also to ensure that there is fire protection,” Riggins said.

WSSC Water said there were no indications that the power outage was caused by a cyber attack or bad actor.

This is a developing story. Stay with WTOP for the latest.

WTOP’s Liz Anderson and Anna Chen contributed to this report.

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