On WSSC Board, a 'Pathetic' Stalemate

Feud Between Pr. George's, Montgomery Members Holds Up Manager Choice

Decades of acrimony between the Montgomery and Prince George's county commissioners who oversee suburban Maryland's beleaguered water system have come to this:

The three Montgomery members say they so distrust their Prince George's colleagues that they now boycott monthly meetings to prevent a quorum unless all of them can attend.

The six-member board of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission has been stalemated, 3 to 3, for a year on the choice of a general manager. One Prince George's commissioner has filed a state ethics complaint against two Montgomery commissioners, accusing them of racial bias in the search.

And the board became so bogged down in minority contracting and other matters at its 12-hour January meeting that it has yet to scrutinize the Dec. 23 rupture of a 66-inch water main beneath River Road in Bethesda, which forced firefighters to rescue stranded motorists from the resulting torrent.

"This situation is pretty pathetic -- that's the only way to describe it," said Montgomery County Council member Marc Elrich (D-At Large).

The makeup of the WSSC board -- three commissioners are appointed from Montgomery and three from Prince George's -- has long reflected the political and cultural tensions between the neighboring counties. They date at least to the 1970s, when commissioners argued over why Prince George's got stuck with sewage treatment plants while clean water facilities were built in Montgomery.

But rarely before have the feuds so paralyzed the board at a time when the agency's pipes are failing so spectacularly. Some officials question whether the board's disagreements have prevented WSSC from fixing problems they now consider a matter of public safety -- or whether they will thwart efforts to secure money for repairs to the system, which serves 1.8 million people in Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

"It's very clear to me River Road is going to happen again," said Montgomery Council member Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large). "Next time, we might not get so lucky, and we might have loss of life."

In the past eight months, four huge pipes have burst, some decades short of their life expectancies. The larger breaks have led to advisories to boil water, shut down schools and restaurants, left hospitals scrambling for fresh water, snarled roads and left some homes and businesses without running taps or flushing toilets. Last month, WSSC officials blamed 611 breaks and leaks -- the largest monthly total in the utility's 90-year history -- on old pipes and freezing temperatures.

Even opinions about the board's effectiveness fall along county lines. Joyce Starks, a Prince George's commissioner who chairs the board, defended the utility's ability to respond quickly to the breaks and continue delivering safe and relatively affordable water.

"If we were having unsafe water or a whole bunch of things falling apart, then I'd say we have a real issue," Starks said, noting that large numbers of WSSC pipes have been breaking for years. "Even if we agreed on a general manager, that wouldn't change the aging pipes. In order to fix an aging pipe, you've got to have funding."

Her Prince George's colleague, Juanita D. Miller, said she's tired of the media portraying Prince George's commissioners as "holding up the process" even though they "follow procedures."