President Donald Trump said Thursday night that the federal government would “get involved” with D.C. in the Potomac sewage spill recovery a day after D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) declared an emergency and sought federal aid.
“Muriel Bowser, the Mayor of Washington, D.C., has politely asked that I get involved, so the Federal Government will do that from the D.C. standpoint,” Trump said in a Truth Social post, while continuing to attack Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), pressing him and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) to seek federal aid.
The exact nature of the aid or involvement from the federal government for the District was not immediately clear.
Bowser (D) had faced questions Thursday over the timing of her decision to declare a public emergency and seek federal aid, coming a month after a collapsed pipe sent millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the Potomac River.
Bowser said she took the actions, in part, after recent signals from the Trump administration that federal officials may support the request, and maintained that the response to the spill had been urgent from the start. She framed the request as a potential financial benefit to both the District and broader region given the costly nature of the extensive recovery work; the emergency repairs alone are estimated to cost about $10 million.
“When I make a request, I want to get it approved,” she told reporters at a news conference. Bowser said federal officials have yet to provide formal assurances in response to the request made Wednesday, but pointed to ongoing talks with the White House as a promising sign. “I have had outreach from the president’s team, and that would indicate to me that they’re supportive of the request, and that’s the president’s decision,” she said.
A White House official said in an email Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had started coordinating with the District.
D.C. Water, the agency leading the response, was able to start diverting sewage from the broken part of the Potomac Interceptor pipe within days of the Jan. 19 collapse. The pipe carries about 60 million gallons of wastewater daily from Virginia and Maryland into D.C. for treatment.
While remediation efforts continue, officials have maintained the drinking water remains safe because an intake station currently in use lies upstream of the spill.
Bowser issued the emergency declaration two days after President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post, directed federal authorities to intervene in the spill — which has dumped over 200 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Potomac — and lambasted local leaders, namely Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, over what he claimed was an “incompetent” response. In a follow-up attack, he told the “two governors and Mayor of D.C.” that he was “awaiting your call” to seek federal help.
Representatives from each jurisdiction met at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the spill, hours before Bowser issued the formal request.
That the ask ultimately came from Bowser was notable given the spill occurred in Maryland, on federal land, and the primary agency responsible for fixing it is D.C. Water, a quasi-governmental regional agency that provides drinking water to D.C., Maryland and Virginia residents. Bowser, as mayor, appoints much of its board of directors.
It is exactly the type of jurisdictional hot potato not uncommon in the capital region but one that blew up politically after Trump’s interjection. It also underscored the differing approaches to the president by the region’s leaders, as Bowser took Trump up on requesting federal aid while Moore traded barbs with the president.
“Mr. President, please do your job,” Moore, seen as a potential 2028 presidential contender, shot back, noting the interceptor is on federal land. He added that if the president wanted to offer FEMA aid, he’d take it for flooding in Western Maryland, a request Trump previously rejected.
Bowser, who had been largely silent about the spill over the past month and had said nothing in response to Trump’s social media attacks, said Thursday: “I think the president rightly signaled that they could be helpful — especially financially helpful.”
The mayor said the federal aid request could help the District and D.C. Water customers in the region — including Maryland — recoup costs associated with the response and repairs amid fears the burden could be passed onto residents in the form of higher water bills.
She stressed that the response to the spill, led primarily by D.C. Water, was urgent from the onset, calling the speed of the repair in five to six days “pretty remarkable.” An earlier emergency declaration, she said, would likely not have changed work significantly.
“The repair, and getting to the planning for a permanent repair, has not been slowed,” she said. “What an emergency declaration speeds up, in some ways, is consideration for how we recoup costs.”
D.C. Water spokesman John Lisle said the utility has “not spared any resources in addressing the problem.”
But, he said, “it’s also a very expensive repair, and I think the mayor addressed that in her declaration.”
D.C. Water officials had been evasive in response to recent questions about whether they would hike rates to recover the costs of repairs and remediation. Bowser said in her letter this week to Federal Emergency Management Agency officials that she was seeking “100% reimbursement for costs incurred by the District” and D.C. Water, so that costs “are not incurred by ratepayers in any impacted state or the District.”
Rhyan Lake, a Moore spokeswoman, said the state would not also seek an emergency declaration or aid “because the responsibility for the repair and subsequent cleanup does not fall to Maryland.”
“Since Maryland owns neither the infrastructure nor the land, Maryland does not anticipate needing supplemental resources for infrastructure repair and land remediation at this time,” she said.
The section of the aging sewer line that collapsed had been scheduled for repairs this summer before it failed in mid-January. All told, the spill has sent 243 million gallons of wastewater into the river — the vast majority during the week after the spill while D.C. Water was working to install pumps to reroute the sewage.
D.C., Maryland and Virginia environmental agencies have been aiding with water quality testing and other aspects of the response. “We’ve had nice, collaborative meetings” with all the jurisdictions, said Mike Rolband, director of Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality. “We’ve said anything they need, just tell us.”
Federal officials previously raised concerns about sewage leaking if the Potomac Interceptor wasn’t maintained. The National Park Service and D.C. Water had a project in the works to rehabilitate segments of the sewer system, specifically referring to concerns that the reinforced concrete pipe would wear away, according to federal documents. The concerns were first reported by NOTUS.
“Over time, if not renewed, extensive RCP deterioration could result in the release of raw sewage to the environment,” according to a 2022 announcement of the federal project. Park Service records say that D.C. Water is “the current party responsible for its operation and maintenance” of the Potomac Interceptor.
Gary Belan, a senior director at the D.C.-based nonprofit group American Rivers, said the Potomac disaster has been remarkable for a variety of reasons, including the volume of sewage that spilled, the involvement of three different jurisdictions and the scrutiny of the federal government.
“There’s been nothing normal about this,” he said.
Belan praised what he called “herculean” efforts by D.C. Water crews, who worked around-the-clock in a snow and ice storm to haul in pipes and specialized equipment to build a bypass around the broken pipe and stop the flow of sewage into the river.
The recovery efforts have faced some setbacks: On Super Bowl Sunday, emergency pumps got clogged from an increase in non-disposable wipes being flushed, causing more sewage to be dumped into the river. Crews also unexpectedly discovered a large rock dam in the pipeline.
It’s expected to take four to six weeks to complete initial repairs to the interceptor, according to D.C. Water.
Belan said he would have liked to see more unified communication from various leaders in the region, and less hand-wringing about who is in charge, given the amount of confusion spreading in the public.
“We need to get past the finger-pointing and we need to get the sewage back in the pipe. There’s enough work for everybody, so let’s work together,” he said.
The environmental damage from the spill — and the potential risk to human health — is still coming into focus. In a typical year, sewer overflows from rainwater already dump about 600 million gallons of wastewater into the Potomac — a problem that D.C. Water is tackling through its multibillion dollar Clean Rivers Project.
Shortly after the January pipe collapse, residents documented dead fish near the spill site. Researchers with the University of Maryland also found lower-than-normal dissolved oxygen levels, which can be harmful to fish. Initial testing also revealed high levels of E. coli and the bacteria that causes Staph infections in the water near where the pipeline burst, according to University of Maryland scientists and researchers with the Potomac Riverkeeper Network.
But there are signs that the waterway is recovering. Lisle said water testing of the river shows drops in the levels of bacteria considered unsafe for human contact. The readings may spike, he said, after heavy rainfall, but the concentration of bacteria can reduce as the river flow increases and the sewage is diluted.
While E. coli levels remain high near the spill site, the bacteria levels downstream in the D.C. section of the river are now meeting recreational standards, according to D.C. Water’s latest testing data.
Still, city officials are advising residents to avoid touching the river as those numbers could fluctuate.
Meryl Kornfield and Gregory S. Schneider contributed to this report.
The post Trump suggests agencies to aid in Potomac rehab after Bowser ‘politely’ asks appeared first on Washington Post.
