Politicians in and around Washington, D.C., posture as guardians of the planet while standing by seemingly unconcerned for weeks as raw sewage from their backyard spills into the Potomac River, flowing through the nation’s capital and into the Chesapeake Bay’s fishery.
The spill started on January 19 with the failure of a 60-million-gallon-a-day pipe in the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) system. While DC Water reported that a bypass around the break had been completed five days later, Betsy Nicholas, president of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network (PRKN), said about 300 million gallons of sewage had gone into the river, and residual spillage had continued to pollute for an extended period.