By Kris Maher

CABIN JOHN, Md. -- High levels of raw sewage passed through the nation's capital last month, spawning jokes, raising health concerns, hurting fishermen's business and sparking a political fight involving the president of the United States.

People like Vicki Judson, who has been swimming in the Potomac River for 25 years, want to know when the river will be safe. "Catastrophes like these make one cherish even more the wonderful resource we have in the Potomac River," she said.

One of the biggest sewage spills in U.S. history started Jan. 19 and lasted about a week, after a 60-year-old, 6-foot-wide pipe collapsed. The burst sent some 240 million gallons of untreated waste from toilets and sinks into the Potomac. On Super Bowl Sunday, household wipes clogged workaround pumps and released an additional 600,000 gallons of waste into the river.

DC Water, the water and wastewater utility in Washington, has diverted about 40 million gallons of sewage a day into a section of the nearly 200-year-old Chesapeake & Ohio Canal to bypass the break. Long-term concerns are coming into focus -- the biggest of which is when people will be able to trust the Potomac again for swimming, kayaking and commercial fishing.

The accident is highlighting political dysfunction as well as aging infrastructure.

"Washington, D.C., has an unstoppable geyser of poop. And now, there's one in the Potomac, too," Stephen Colbert said last month.

This week, President Trump blamed what he called the "massive Ecological Disaster" on state and local Democrats, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore. He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency would aid the response. A spokesperson for Moore criticized Trump, saying the federal government should have been in charge from the start.

On Wednesday, the DC Water spokeswoman said the utility was engaged with FEMA. The agency didn't reply to a request for comment.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a local public emergency Wednesday and requested federal emergency disaster relief, including help from federal agencies and full reimbursement for repair costs incurred by the city and DC Water.

Dean Naujoks of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, a watchdog for the river, has called for more accountability from DC Water and state and federal agencies. "We need to restore the public's faith and confidence to come back to the Potomac River," he said.

Nationally, between 23,000 and 75,000 overflows release 3 billion to 10 billion gallons of sewage a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Far more is released by systems that combine stormwater after significant rain.

Sections of the Potomac offer a nearly pristine slice of nature tucked beside the urban geography of Washington. There are world-class rapids where Olympian kayakers train and islands with boating and swimming clubs. It is one of the most biodiverse areas in the eastern U.S. The ornithologist Roger Peterson of the famed field guides once lived and studied its birds in the area.

Fishing for the invasive blue catfish in the Potomac downstream of D.C. has skyrocketed in recent years, and there is concern about how the fishery will be affected. Maryland, which has jurisdiction over the river downstream from the spill between D.C. and the Chesapeake Bay, issued an advisory for shellfish harvesting in part of the river.

Risks of additional sewage overflows won't be eliminated until repairs on the pipe, known as the Potomac Interceptor, are completed by mid-March, the DC Water spokeswoman said Wednesday. The spill hasn't affected drinking water.

The Virginia Department of Health issued a recreational advisory for 72.5 miles of the river, advising people to avoid contact with the water "out of an abundance of caution."

Fishermen are concerned about coming runs of shad and striped bass.

On Wednesday, Tim Blanchard, a captain, stood next to his three charter boats docked at Yards Marina and said he doesn't have a single booking for the three-week shad run in March, a potential loss of $40,000. He told his two other captains to keep a children's fishing club on the Anacostia River this weekend because parents are worried about the Potomac.

"I told the captains, I want you to stay off the Potomac for now," he said.

Water samples taken by DC Water show E. coli bacteria decreasing sharply in the Potomac, but still elevated near the spill site. Wastewater typically also contains viruses, chemicals, parasites and pharmaceuticals, among other contaminants.

Frankie Delaney said he got sick after fishing for blue catfish at a favorite spot upriver from Georgetown in January, while sewage was still pouring into the river. He now wonders if he got a fever and severe gastrointestinal symptoms after rinsing his hands and coffee cup in the river.

"If somebody had notified us, we would have never went out there," he said. He added that he doesn't have medical insurance and still feels unwell.

The DC Water spokeswoman said that historically E. coli levels in the Potomac and Anacostia rivers vary widely and that levels reported downstream "cannot be attributed solely to this incident."

Rachel Rosenberg Goldstein, a microbiologist and assistant professor at the University of Maryland, has also found a strain of bacteria that can cause staph infections as well as MRSA since the spill. On Tuesday, she and two Ph.D. students took water samples on a placid bend of the river near a creek that had been swollen with sewage.

She took soil samples because there is concern that the sewage deposited bacteria in the sediment and that people could be exposed to it later.

That is a worry for Doug Dupin, caretaker for the Sycamore Island Club, a paddling and swimming club that dates to 1885. Dupin lives on the roughly 4-acre island year-round and hauls members ashore with a hand-pulled ferry. He woke up the morning of the spill and saw the river running brown.

"The ecosystem is taking a hit," he said, pointing to white globules floating on the surface next to the ferry.

A few miles upriver, at Lock 10 on the old canal, workers were busy removing boulders so they could eventually reach the damaged pipe. Wastewater gushed from bypass pipes and flowed down the canal.

Charlotte Taylor Fryar, a teacher who lives in Glen Echo and commutes to Washington along the canal's towpath, said she thought it was telling that a canal built in the 19(th) century was being used to repair a failed 60-year-old pipe.

Fryar, who wrote a book about the Potomac after discovering its hidden wilds, plans to stop foraging for pawpaws and a leafy green called sochan. She and many of her neighbors moved to the area to enjoy the river, she said over the noise of construction generators.

"It's not for the traffic," she added. Just then a great blue heron flew overhead.

Write to Kris Maher at Kris.Maher@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 19, 2026 08:00 ET (13:00 GMT)

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