Pipes divert raw sewage into the C&O Canal around a broken section of the Potomac Interceptor on Feb. 16 in Cabin John, Md.Chip Somodevilla/Getty via Inside Climate News
The warning signs were years in the making. And yet, regulators failed to heed the writing on the wall, according to Dean Naujoks.
An investigator with the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, Naujoks spent three years documenting what he calls a systemic failure that culminated in dual environmental catastrophes now threatening the health of the entire Potomac River system, which is already stressed.
In January, a 60-year-old sewer pipe known as the Potomac Interceptor, running along the Maryland shoreline of the Potomac, collapsed near the Clara Barton Parkway corridor in Montgomery County, releasing an estimated 243 million gallons of raw sewage into the river over approximately three weeks.
But even before that spill, another crisis had already begun to unfold elsewhere in the watershed. At Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, a fuel system failure on Dec. 11 led to thousands of gallons of jet fuel entering the headwaters of Piscataway Creek, a tributary that feeds directly into the Potomac. The leak continued for months before state regulators were notified.
Stretching more than 400 miles, the Potomac River is a source of drinking water for more than 5 million people in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. In April, American Rivers, a conservation nonprofit, named it the most endangered river in the country, citing both the sewage spill and the rapid expansion of data centers.
Piscataway Creek, an 18.6-mile tributary of the Potomac, begins at the edge of Joint Base Andrews and slips back into the Potomac at Fort Washington Park. Its name derives from the indigenous Piscataway people, who’ve stewarded these waters for thousands of years and maintain a living relationship with the creek and the river to this day.
Naujoks believes neither crisis happened in a vacuum.
He first began tracking contamination in Piscataway Creek around 2022, after reports emerged of tainted fish. A researcher named Pat Elder, Naujoks said, who worked for an organization called Military Poisons, which investigates PFAS contamination at military bases across the country, initially raised the alarm.
More of this article (Mother Jones) - link - more articles by the brilliant Aman Azhar - link - more like this (PFAS) - link - more like this (sewage) - link
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