Grant allows small Community to Connect to Public Water

Washington County Service Authority in southwest Virginia received an Excellence in Community Engagement Award from the U.S. EPA under the 2020 Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) AQUARIUS RecognitionProgram.

Residents in the Rattle Creek Road Community using private wells and springs for their drinking water supply approached the Washington County Service Authority (WCSA) and asked to connect to their water system after experiencing years of diminished water quality as more residents moved in and the residents’ wells and springs tested positive for bacteria. The effort was begun by Laura Morrison, a longtime resident.

The Washington County Service Authority partnered with this disadvantaged community to plan and design a solution and assist in the search of funding options. The residents and Service Authority worked together to collect user agreements, water quality data, and other funding application information. Additionally, the Mount Rogers Planning District Commission, which serves counties in southwest Virginia, assisted in the reviews for the Davis Bacon requirements. The Virginia Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and Community Development Block Grant programs partnered with the Service Authority to fund this $420,000 project, which included the construction of 6,000 linear feet (LF) of water main, laterals and related appurtenances and provided drinking water to 15 homes and a church.

The Drinking Water State Revolving Fund program paid for the construction of the water main, the Community Development Block Grant program paid for the installation of the laterals, service lines between the water meters and the homes , and the Service Authority funded the project planning and design. This project was completed in late 2019 and is was a great example of community engagement resulting in public health protection.

For 48 years, Laura Morrison and her husband, Roger, had relied on a spring to provide their home in the Rattle Creek Road community with water.

“The spring has supplied us well throughout the decades,” Mrs.Morrison said last year. “However, more people have moved into the community over the years and also draw from the spring, and we’ve also noticed that the water has become murkier when it rains and isn’t as good to drink.”

She went on: “Whenever the electricity goes out, so does the pump from the holding tank in our basement. We have to go to the spring or to a neighbor on the water system and fill up cans and buckets to use at our house. As we’ve gotten older, it’s become harder for us to deal with that.”

In late 2015, the Morrison family approached the Washington County Service Authority about the possibility of bringing water to the Rattle Creek Road community. Mrs. Morrison oversaw the process of getting paperwork to all of her neighbors who were also interested in being connected and returned those to the Service Authority, who then embarked on the long process of bacteriological testing of the water supplies for those residences, soliciting user agreements for a potential water line extension project to serve those homes, and applying for funding to support the project costs because the residents could not afford to pay for the extension of the Service Authority water mains and the lateral pipes for each home.

Following the completion of the Rattle Creek Water Line Extension Project earlier this year, 15 homes and a Chruch in the Rattle Creek Road community were connected to WCSA’s water service, providing them with clean and dependable access to clean drinking water for the very first time. This all started with Mrs. Morrison who sadly died this past spring, though not until after the project was completed. May her memory be a blessing. 

Why WSSC Pipes Are Failing

The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) provides water and sewer service to nearly 1,000 square miles in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties in Maryland. Established in 1918, WSSC is one of the largest water and wastewater utilities in the nation, with a network of nearly 5,600 miles of fresh water pipeline and over 5,400 miles of sewer pipeline. WSSC supplies water and sewer service to 1.8 million residents in approximately 460,000 households and businesses.

In addition to the water and sewer pipeline systems, WSSC operates 3 reservoirs, the Triadelphia, Rocky Gorge, and Little Seneca, that have a total holding capacity of 14 billion gallons. A regional reservoir, the Jennings Randolph Reservoir, holds an additional 13 billion gallons of water is shared with the other two regional water utilities, Fairfax Water and the Washington Aqueduct.

WSSC also operates 2 water filtration and treatment plants – The Patuxent (max 56 million gallons per day and the Potomac (max 285 million gallons a day) plants that together produce an average of 167 million gallons per day of safe drinking water. Despite the recent brown or rust colored water problems reported over the past 6 months in Montgomery County, the water reportedly remains safe if unappealing. The brown water problem is become symbolic of the problems with WSSC. About 15 years ago WSSC ceased flushing the water distribution system with chlorine each spring.

Though WSSC operates 6 wastewater treatment plants – Western Branch, Piscataway, Parkway, Seneca, Damascus, and Hyattstown with a total capacity to handle 71.08 million gallons of wastewater per day, most of their waste water is treated at Blue Plains. The Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, operated by DC Water, handles as much as an additional 169 million gallons a day of waste water under a cost sharing agreement with the WSSC, treating on average approximately 65% of WSSC’s wastewater annually.

When WSSC was founded Prince George’s and Montgomery counties were mostly rural. The utility was overseen by the two County Councils. During the 1960s and continuing through the late 1980s, WSSC experienced growth rates that were unprecedented. For most of that time WSSC charged only nominal fees for new customers to join the system instead of the actual cost to run the piping, instead WSSC used debt to finance the expansion of the system. In the mistaken belief that growth and increasing revenues would solve the debt problem. However, by the end of the last century, debt service (principal and interest) on bonds used to finance the system expansion accounted for one-half of WSSC’s total revenues and revenues were falling.

While WSSC was incurring a pile of debt to expand the system, the differences between the commissioners appointed by Prince George’s and Montgomery counties resulted in deadlocked decision-making, preventing the needed investment in repairing, replacing and rehabilitating the oldest parts of WSSC’s water and sewer systems, which were approaching the end of their useful life. WSSC had also lost a class action suit when they tried to impose increased hookup charges and capital charges as a System Expansion Offset Charge. In its 1984 decision, the court found that WSSC did not have the authority to adopt the charge and that the System Expansion Offset Charge as adopted was unreasonable.

Though the General Assembly finally gave WSSC the explicit authority to impose a system expansion charge, but by that time WSSC had already inherited a legacy of debt-financed expansion costs and an operating culture that did not have preventive maintenance and viewed inappropriate cutting of system maintenance and upgrade as cost savings, rather than what they were. No investment in the infrastructure took place unless it broke or was a mandated upgrade by the regulators. The majority of the investment in the systems was spent at the central waste water treatment plants and water treatment plants.

About 15 years ago WSSC went so far as to cut the annual flushing of the water distribution system. Flushing of the water distribution system removes sediments comprised mostly of minerals (including iron and manganese) which have accumulated over time in the pipes. An annual flushing program helps to keep fresh and clear water throughout the distribution system. Removing the residue ensures that when the water arrives in your home, it is the same high quality as when it left the water treatment plant. While these programs continued with Fairfax Water and DC Water, WSSC stopped. The recent increasing occurrence of brown or rust colored water in Montgomery county is probably the result.

WSSC representatives initially claimed the brown water was caused by an increase in the sodium from the winter’s road salt triggered increased leaching of manganese from the soil, into groundwater and then into the Potomac River. Iron and manganese can cause discolored water, but would have been seen in the water exiting the water treatment plant, though reportedly elevated sodium and manganese levels were seen in the finished water, it was within drinking water standards and clear. In addition, neither Fairfax Water nor DC Water customers have been experiencing increased incidences of brown water. If the water was clear leaving the water treatment plant the problem was in the distribution system. Now, WSSC has revised their theory and believes that the salty snowmelt and elevated sodium levels loosened the buildup of rust and manganese in their distribution system. The root cause, the failure to flush the distribution system for years, has caught up with them. Despite the appearance, WSSC reports that the water remains safe if unappealing. This is just one symptom of the problems at WSSC.

WSSC officials say the amount of water pumped, sold and paid for, dropped from a daily average of 130 million gallons in 2004 to 95 million gallons in 2013 due to federally mandated water conservation like low flow toilets and water saving appliances and water awareness brought on by drought. Water consumption which has been the basis of revenue is falling as costs are mounting to upgrade sewer systems and repair and replace aging water pipes and sewer pipes, some more than a century old, that are bursting after decades of decay and neglect. Meanwhile, WSSC’s costs for electricity, chemicals and labor have continued to rise with inflation.

A crisis is brewing because the sustainability of WSSC is eroding. Much of the WSSC’s service areas was built out in the building boom of 1960s and continuing through the late 1980s. The pipes installed in 1960 are 55 years old, in the next decades WSSC will have to replace a significant portion of their piping systems. Over the next 10 years WSSC will have to replace over 2,000 miles of water pipe and similar amount or sewer pipes at an average cost of $1.4 per mile of pipe (2009 WSSC figure) that is almost $6 billion to replace the piping that has exceeded it design life. However, WSSC estimates that they will have to spend about $2.6 billion dollars in the next five years on capital improvement projects and has been studying how to pay for those needs. Issuing more debt and extending the maturities of the existing and future debt to 30 years will simply push their problems down the road a few more years and not develop a plan to renew the water and sewage systems for this century. This is in addition to operating costs, upgrades necessary to water treatment and Blue Plains.

Customers of WSSC might want to consider their own water treatment systems. Chlorination, the oldest method of disinfection can also be used to solve the most vexing problems with minerals. Chlorine will oxidize iron and manganese so they can be filtered out and also oxidize hydrogen sulfide to reduce or eliminate the rotten egg order that can render water here undrinkable. Chlorination followed by a media filter or a rechargeable carbon filter to capture particles and precipitate and the free chlorine can produce pleasant, sanitary water.

It is Not Your Imagination, WSSC Pipe Failure Has Increased

Last Wednesday, August 12, 2015, a 20-inch pressurized sewer main on Rose Theatre Circle in Olney broke causing 270,791 gallons of raw sewage to flow from the pipe and from sewer manholes. Within three and a half hours of the break the Olney Wastewater Pumping Station was shut down to stop the sewage flow so the pipe could be repaired. However, shutting down the Olney Wastewater Pumping Station did not stop the sewage from entering the system and manholes in the area began to overflow with sewage after a couple of hours and did not stop until after the Olney pumping station was put back in service. WSSC brought in septic haulers that were able to prevent approximately an additional 123,425 gallons of sewage from overflowing into the nearby waterways.

This sewage spill may sound a bit familiar, but it is new. What you are recalling is that on Tuesday, July 28, 2015 a different section of the same 20 inch pressurized sewer main began leaking. It was Wednesday morning, July 29th before WSSC stopped the leak and by then about 460,000 gallons of raw sewage had been spilled. Within an hour the same 20 inch sewer main had sprung another leak about 100 feet away and another 534,000 gallons of sewage was spilled before that leak was stopped. WSSC repair crews located the second leak and repairs to the main were completed on Thursday, July 30th. Now less than 2 weeks later another section of the pipe is leaking.

This is the third break in this sewer 20 inch diameter pressurized sewer pipe in two weeks. Though there were 160 sewer “overflows” in 2014, most of these were caused by blockages in the pipes from grease, tree roots, and debris not pipe failure. Sewer pipe failure, though less frequent cause’s larger spills, this is especially true of sewer pipes that flow under pressure. On Friday WSSC used closed circuit television cameras to examine the pressured sewer main and surprise, it found severe deterioration of the pipe. WSSC has hired a consultant to inspect the condition of the entire main and see if there are more leaks and is planning to develop a comprehensive solution that will eliminate future breaks. WSSC plans to insert a camera inside the pipe to better assess the condition of the sewer main to help determine a long-term solution. After three breaks in the same sewer main, replacing the entire sewer main seems like a sensible long-term solution.

WSSC emphasizes that the water and wastewater systems are separate. The sewage spill will not impact drinking water in anyway. However, the drinking water distribution system is in only slightly better condition than the sewer system. Last Wednesday while dealing with the Olney sewer problem, WSSC had two 90-year-old water main pipes break. The first break, in a 12 inch water main located on East-West Highway at Route 1 in Prince George’s County, was repaired fairly quickly restoring water service to all area customers. The second break in a 10 inch water main, at Flower Avenue and Piney Branch Road in Montgomery County, needed to have Washington Gas fix a gas line before repairs can be completed.

These pipe breaks last week during the summer serve to highlight the issue of aging infrastructure in WSSC’s system. Though, WSSC is currently replacing about 55 miles of water mains per year and 274 miles of sewer pipe over a 12 year period, that is not enough. That rate of pipe replacement would replace the sewer system in 236 years and the water system in 101 years. Pipes do not last that long. WSSC reports that approximately 37% of the water system delivery pipes are over 50 years old. Though age is not the only factor that causes pipe failure, most of the system’s pipes were designed for an average lifespan of 65 years. The break rate for pipes increases after 60 years. Age alone, however, cannot always be used as an indicator of failure, but it is a good predictor in warm weather breaks. There is a relationship between water temperature and pipe breaks. A sudden temperature drop provides a kind of shock to the pipes. Water temperature below 40 degrees Fahrenheit can also cause pipes to become more brittle, and break. That leads to increased pipe breaks in the winter, and why water utilities typically report their February number of breaks- when most breaks take place.

Established in 1918, WSSC is one of the largest water and wastewater utilities in the nation, with a network of nearly 5,600 miles of fresh water pipeline and over 5,400 miles of sewer pipeline. For decades WSSC has deferred maintaining their piping systems, choosing instead to repair pipes as they failed. It is not your imagination, the piping is failing more frequently and is about to get worse. Much of the WSSC’s service areas was built out in the building boom of 1960s and continuing through the late 1980s. The pipes installed in 1960 are 55 years old, in the next decades WSSC will have to replace a significant portion of their piping systems. Over the next 10 years WSSC will have to replace over 2,000 miles of water pipe and similar amount or sewer pipes. WSSC estimates that they will have to spend over $2.6 billion dollars in the next five years on capital improvement projects and has been studying how to pay for those needs.

Water the Fluid of Life

Environmental awareness began with water. The basis of the Clean Water Act was enacted in 1948 and was called the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. In July of 1970, the EPA was established in response to the growing public demand for cleaner water, air and land. The first actions of the new agency were to significantly reorganized and expand the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1972. The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was originally passed by Congress in 1974 to protect public health by regulating the nation's public drinking water supplies. The law was amended in 1986 and 1996 and requires many actions to protect drinking water and its sources: rivers, lakes, reservoirs, springs, and ground water wells. (SDWA does not regulate private wells which serve fewer than 25 individuals.)

The waters of the earth are contaminated in numerous ways. Rivers and streams are contaminated by industrial discharge, contaminated run off, contaminants leaching into groundwater aquifers, animal waste polluting rivers and There are a number of threats to drinking water: improperly disposed of chemicals; animal wastes; pesticides; human wastes; wastes injected deep underground; and naturally-occurring substances can all contaminate water supplies. Drinking water that is not properly treated or disinfected, or which travels through an improperly maintained distribution system, may also pose a health risk. In addition as demands for water have increased in cities, waste treatment plants and other facilities release their treated water to rivers and streams and that water is mixed with more pristine water. In California, they inject treated water into groundwater sources to recharge the aquifer.

The New York Times recently published an article highlighting the limitations of the Safe Drinking Water Act. First of all, only public water supplies (those that serve more than 25 individuals) are required to test their water. There are only 91 substances of concern under the clean water act. Private well owners need to monitor their own water quality. The substances of concern under the Safe Drinking Water Act are a series of metals and inorganic compounds, volatile organic compounds, organic compounds and herbicides and pesticides. It is virtually impossible to test for all known chemicals; there are not even good tests to find trace levels of some substances. Analysis costs money. Water purification and disinfection costs money and disinfection may introduce undesirable contaminants into the water. There are more than 57,400 water systems in this country that need to test their water monthly. The regulatory process is impacted by politics, which are in turn controlled by various interest groups, and limitations on knowledge, money and time.

An example would be the EPA experience when trying to lower the acceptable limit on arsenic in drinking water. EPA proposed lowering the acceptable arsenic limit in drinking water to five parts per billion from 10 parts per billion. Arsenic is difficult to remove from water without “wet chemistry” and cannot be filtered out. Water systems and industries that use arsenic complained, arguing that the science was uncertain and the chemical was expensive to remove. Regulators relented and the arsenic limit remained at 10 parts per billion.

Money and the limits of chemical analysis are not infinite. I view the basic list of primary and secondary contaminants as indicators that other related chemicals might be present. For example if you have traces of gasoline, then you would look for the additives to gasoline. Finding any traces of pesticides then a detailed analysis for pesticides and their break down products would be searched for. In order to target your analysis you need to know what to look for. The history of the land and source of the water is a good starting point to know what you are looking for. It really is not feasible to test for everything in environmental investigation or in medicine. The largest municipal water supply systems pull water from so many sources and mix it that exhaustive analysis would be prohibitive. Some municipal water supplies ignore everything but the letter of the law; others try to push for more purification facilities to clean the water further.

In all honesty, mixed source municipal water containing reprocessed water is not water I am entirely comfortable with drinking. Chemicals are a fact of modern life they exist in pharmaceuticals, household products, personal care products, plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals, human and animal waste; they are in short, all around us. There are estimated to be over 80,000 artificial chemicals in the world today. The structural diversity is enormous and it is not known which of these substances might adversely affect living things in subtle ways. Having worked for the EPA in the pre-manufacturing notice section I know testing for new chemicals is for gross and acute impact, subtle impact is very difficult to identify or predict. However, one thing is certain the growing class of known endocrine disrupting chemicals can disturb a staggering range of hormonal processes. Like natural hormones, some EDCs bind directly with hormone receptors.

When I purchased my home, one of my contingencies was water quality. The house sits on one of the most productive aquifers in Virginia and draws its water from a private well. I had the right to exit the purchase if the water quality was either unacceptable to me or did not meet US EPA Safe Drinking Water Standards. All we could negotiate was 12 day contingency period and in reality I had less time than that. The power needed to be turned on to operate the water pump, the and water tanks drained and the water run to clear out the lines and holding tanks. Though an old friend at the US EPA had identified a reasonably priced informational oriented analysis package, the turn around time was 4-6 weeks plus the analytical limits were higher than I wanted. I was interested in obtaining a water supply as pristine as possible, thus I would refuse any traces of any industrial compounds. I was specifically looking for solvents, hydrocarbon fuels, heavy metals and pesticide traces. So I determined my best option to verify water quality within the transaction timeframe appeared to be to use an US EPA certified laboratory to perform a rush compliance analysis of the water sample for every primary and secondary contaminants listed under the Safe Drinking Water Act while simultaneously researching the history of the land. The good news is the results confirmed that the on-site drinking water well provided water that met the Safe Drinking Water Standards and was free of trace contaminants beyond the small traces (parts per million) of naturally occurring items such as iron, barium, cooper and moderately hard water (the presence of calcium carbonate). The groundwater supplying the house was uncontaminated. To obtain that analysis within the time frame of the contingency period I spent $1,635.00. The house was the most expensive purchase of my life and I did not want to purchase a house with “bad” water. The water also tasted good. There is no guarantee that the water will remain uncontaminated so I need to monitor it regularly as well as keep an eye out for likely sources of contamination.