The Justice Department sued D.C. and its water and sewage authority in federal court Monday over the January leak of untreated wastewater into the Potomac River.
A similar lawsuit over the pipeline break, from Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown, was filed Monday in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
The federal lawsuit, brought by the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, seeks civil penalties against D.C. Water over the break in the Potomac Interceptor, a 54-mile-long pipeline that transports sewage from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to a treatment plant in D.C.
The suit alleges that the authority neglected years of problems with the pipeline before it ultimately collapsed on Jan. 19, allowing more than 240 million gallons of raw sewage to flow into the river before it was fixed.
Officials have said the spill elevated levels of E. coli and other bacteria in the river, prompting them to temporarily declare it a public health risk.
“After decades of use and years of neglect, including at least eight years of D.C. Water knowing about severe corrosion requiring immediate repair, a section of the Potomac Interceptor known by D.C. Water to be severely corroded catastrophically failed,” Justice Department attorneys alleged in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in D.C.
Inspections of the pipeline conducted from June 2024 to October 2024 indicated that “(a) more than 5 inches of the pipe wall’s thickness had corroded (or deteriorated) away, leaving less than two inches, (b) the inner cage of reinforcing steel was missing, and (c) failure was imminent,” but officials did not act, according to the lawsuit.
The suit alleges that D.C. Water violated the federal Clean Water Act and asks a judge to impose civil penalties on the city and order that it “develop an Enhanced Operations and Maintenance Plan for all its sewer lines.”
In response to the two lawsuits Monday, D.C. Water issued a statement lauding its repair efforts and suggesting that previous repair plans were slowed by environmental reviews.
“D.C. Water is fully committed to the long-term rehabilitation of the Potomac Interceptor,” the utility stated. “Although the lawsuits are still under review, they underscore our commitment to advance the planned repairs for the entire 54-mile pipeline, including the impacted segment.”
The work requires close collaboration with National Park Service, D.C. Water said.
“Since 2018, D.C, Water has worked with NPS on site assessments, environmental reviews, and emergency repairs on portions of the pipeline to ensure environmental protection and public safety. DC Water will renew its requests for streamlined environmental reviews to allow rehabilitation of the interceptor to move forward more quickly,” the utility said. “From the outset, DC Water’s highest priority was to safely and quickly contain the overflow and repair the damaged section of the Potomac Interceptor,” the utility stating, adding that water tests are showing “that downstream conditions have returned to normal and have remained stable for several months.”
In the Maryland case, state officials are seeking penalties of hundreds of thousands of dollars against D.C. Water for allowing 14 different pollutants into the Potomac, including E. coli, suspended solids, mercury and other contaminants.
The state is also seeking to force D.C. Water to pay for all expenses related to the investigation, cleanup, restoration and treatment of those contaminants. “D.C. Water has acknowledged that inspections between 2011 and 2015 of individual segments of the Potomac Interceptor indicated that the majority of the pipe showed signs of corrosion,” the lawsuit alleges.
Brown said in a statement Monday that “D.C. Water knew this aging infrastructure was corroding, yet it delayed repairs and failed in its duty to protect this treasured waterway, failures that we allege constitute gross negligence.”
“We are going to court to make sure they make it right for Marylanders,” he said.
A class-action lawsuit previously filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland alleges that D.C. Water failed to adequately address corrosion in the interceptor pipeline detected during inspections between 2011 and 2015.
D.C. Water was in the midst of a long-term, $625 million project to rehabilitate the most vulnerable sections of the 60-year-old pipeline, but crews had not yet reached the section where the collapse occurred by the time of the incident in January.
Dana Hedgpeth contributed to this report.
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