DC Water crews are very close to finishing repairs to the underground pipe that collapsed earlier this year, sending more than 240 million gallons of wastewater and sewage into the Potomac River. An official told News4 on Friday that repairs could be completed as early as this weekend.
As soon as the repairs are complete, the pipeline can be put back into service, according to Sherri Lewis with DC Water.
“We are in the very final steps of being able to return the flow to the Potomac interceptor. Overnight, we completed all of our geopolymer work to seal all the trench boxes,” Lewis said. “We’re waiting for the geopolymer to cure. We need to make sure that we have a good seal. And then we’re hoping that perhaps sometime, potentially this weekend, we’ll be able to return the flow. But there are a lot of things that have to be done to make sure that everything is ready.”
Once the pipeline returns to service, no more sewage will be flowing through the C&O Canal. Currently, about 40 million gallons of sewage is flowing through the canal every day as it’s diverted back into the underground pipe.
A report the News4 I-Team obtained through the Freedom of Information Act shows a recent Maryland Department of Environment inspection found that while DC Water crews installed plastic along the walls of the historic canal locks, no lining was placed on the canal’s natural clay floor before flooding it with millions of gallons of sewage.
“We’re seeing really high levels of E. coli, which means that all the sewage that’s above this in the Lock 11 C&O Canal is leaking through, we believe, through the canal roof and potentially up through the floor via groundwater, and this is a major source of contamination,” Potomac Riverkeeper Dean Naujoks said.
Finishing repairs to the pipe will allow crews to begin cleaning up the canal. Cleanup of the surrounding area has already begun. Crews in hazmat gear were out Friday cleaning the creek bed by hand where hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage flowed through.
Recent test results of samples DC Water took from the spill site show E. coli levels far below the unsafe level, Lewis said.
“A lot of the environmental rehabilitation work that we’ve been doing in this area already, where we’ve removed a lot of contaminated soil as part of the rehabilitation, some of the additional stormwater mitigations that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has helped us with, … all of those things are keeping any of the contaminants in the soil from being carried down into the river. So we’re hopeful everything’s trending in the right direction, but I think we need a little bit more time to make sure that they continue to trend that way,” Lewis said.
Crews will continue cleaning up for weeks and longterm repairs to the underground pipe will go on for up to nine months.
Health officials are still warning people to avoid any contact with the river in Montgomery County, Maryland.
from Local – NBC4 Washington https://ift.tt/MvlOUFD
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