Scott Dance joined scientists on the Potomac River aboard the Rachel Carson, a research vessel owned by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, to report this story.
As public health officials declared the end of a sewage contamination emergency in the Potomac River last month, scientists feared the waterway was still in distress. More than 240 million gallons of human waste had poured into the river from a broken sewer main.
Researchers went out in early March to sample the water, trying to see what damage had been done.
“The color is not good,” said Judy O’Neil, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, as she looked into churning brown water from the deck of the research vessel Rachel Carson. Weeks later, the lab results confirmed Dr.
O’Neil’s unease: Telltale signs of raw human waste lingered near the site of the January sewer collapse along the riverbank in Montgomery County, Md. , some 10 miles upstream of that initial collection site.
Dilution made downstream waters relatively safer, allowing for health advisories to be lifted, but the data showed plenty of hazards for the river and the plants, animals and people exposed to it.
And as temperatures warm, the largest release of human waste into the river since wastewater treatment began nearly a century ago threatens to throw the ecosystem severely off balance, experts said.
Sewage may be lurking in river-bottom trenches and muddy banks around popular recreation spots that will soon draw people, said Dean Naujoks, the Potomac Riverkeeper. “Everybody’s ready to declare victory,” Mr. Naujoks said. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
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