More than 130 million gallons of raw or partially treated sewage have illegally overflowed from Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission pipes into the waterways, streets and basements of suburban Maryland over the past two years, according to agency records.
The sewage pollutes the Anacostia and Patuxent rivers with human waste and puts nearby residents at increased risk of such life-threatening diseases as cholera and infectious hepatitis, according to the federal government and environmental groups. They said better maintenance of aging pipes could have prevented overflows at the water and sewage utility, which serves 1.6 million residents of Montgomery and Prince George's counties.
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WSSC officials blamed the volume of overflows on unusually severe storms, such as Hurricane Isabel last year, and said they are taking steps to address the situation.
"This is a large problem," said Jon Capacasa, the Environmental Protection Agency's director of water protection for mid-Atlantic states. WSSC, he said, is "running into failure mode."
Overflows are a problem for utilities across the country. Between 23,000 and 75,000 occur nationwide every year, resulting in the release of 3 billion to 10 billion gallons of untreated wastewater, according to EPA estimates.
EPA officials and several outside experts declined to characterize the severity of overflows at WSSC in comparison with problems at other utilities, citing scant national data and the unique environmental and structural factors in each system.
Nevertheless, EPA Assistant Administrator Benjamin Grumbles said, "130 million gallons discharged is 130 million gallons too much. It's a violation of the Clean Water Act and EPA policy."
For the past two years, the EPA has been negotiating an enforcement agreement to legally require the utility to improve its 5,300-mile system of pipes. Capacasa said he expects it to be finalized within the next few months.
Three environmental groups -- the Natural Resources Defense Council, Anacostia Watershed Society and Audubon Naturalist Society -- said they plan to file a lawsuit against WSSC by the end of the month to force the utility to stop the overflows.
WSSC spokesman Chuck Brown said the utility is implementing measures to prevent the problem. The agency plans to spend $85.8 million over the next six years to replace old pipes and analyze overflow patterns, he said, more than twice the $40 million spent on those programs from 1996 to 2001. The utility also formed a group last year to maintain sewer lines, Brown said.
"We are working to prevent and minimize [overflows] wherever possible," he said. "But we can do more, and we will do more."
Environmental groups, however, said the utility has inadequately addressed the problem.
"I think every sewage system in the country is saying, 'Sure, we're working on it.' But the question is, are they doing enough?" asked Nancy Stoner, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Clean Water Project. "As far as we've seen, WSSC does not have the critical pieces in place to solve the problem."
Brown said the volume of overflows is due mainly to weather patterns over the past two years.
