WSSC Spills More than 5 million gallons of Sewage

August is shaping up to be a tough month for Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC). There have been thirty water main breaks in less than two weeks, but the big new is a massive raw sewage spill over this past weekend. The troubles began at the Broad Creek Wastewater Pumping Station at 10315 Livingston Road, Ft Washington, Md. At 11:12 am on Friday sewage began flowing into the creek. The overflow continued for just over 12 hours and WSSC estimated that 5.22 million gallons of untreated sewage entered Broad Creek.

WSSC reports that an investigation will be conducted to determine the cause of the overflow, but they believe a pipe buried approximately 30-feet deep at the Broad Creek Wastewater Pumping Station may have failed. WSSC notified the Maryland Department of the Environment and the Prince George’s County Health Department. Crews have cleaned up the impacted area around the station and applied lime to mitigate the odor. Sixteen signs were posted warning residents about the overflow and alerting them to avoid the area. WSSC is confident that sewer spill, euphemistically called an “overflow” will not affect the drinking water.

WSSC has more than 5,500 miles of sewer mains throughout its service area. Sewer overflows or the release of untreated sewage at the Broad Creek Wastewater Pumping Station in Ft Washington and the Piscataway Plant are a familiar story. WSSC is working throughout Montgomery County performing sewer repairs and maintenance to address aging sewer infrastructure. WSSC has developed a multi-year program called The Sewer Repair, Replacement, and Rehabilitation (SR3) Program.

The SR3 Program is the result of a Consent Decree entered into by WSSC, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), and four (4) local citizens’ groups. WSSC is working to repair and replace parts of the sewer system to restore pipe and manhole conditions. With these improvements, less groundwater will infiltrate into pipes through cracks. As a result, there will be fewer sewer overflows into our waterways enhancing the protection of both public health and the environment, while improving service to WSSC’s customers. WSSC has more than 5,500 miles of sewer mains throughout its service area.

This pipe break last week and the growing number of drinking water and sewage breaks in the past several of years serves to highlight the issue of aging infrastructure in the WSSC’s system and America. WSSC is in the middle of capital projects to replace 2,000 miles each of sewer and water mains, but they have thousands of miles of pipe to address so rehabilitation of the system will be slow.