DC Water was founded in 1996 when the city government and the U.S. federal government established it as an independent authority of the city's government.
Service area
DC Water provides more than 600,000 residents, 16.6 million annual visitors, and 700,000 people employed in the District of Columbia with water, sewage collection, and treatment. The agency also provides wholesale wastewater treatment for 1.6 million people in Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland, and Fairfax and Loudoun counties in Virginia.[1]
In 1938, the District of Columbia built a sewage treatment plant in the Blue Plains area, at the southernmost tip of DC. The cost was $4 million. The plant was built to stop raw sewage from entering the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. At that time, the plant was built to treat sewage from a population of 650,000, with a capacity of 100 million gallons per day (mgd). By 1943, the population grew to 1.5 million people, contributing much more sewage, and upgrades to the plant were necessary.[4][5]Secondary treatment units were added in 1959, with an expanded discharge capacity of 240 mgd. In the 1970s a major expansion commenced that led to construction of advanced wastewater treatment components, and by 1983 the capacity was 300 mgd.[6] In addition to Washington, the plant serves several adjacent communities in Maryland and Virginia.
Agency reorganization and name change
Drinking water and sewage treatment services were initially provided by the District of Columbia government. DC Water was established as an independent agency in 1996 by the District Government and the U.S. federal government.
In 2010, under new leadership, the Authority underwent a rebranding effort. The rebranding included a new logo, a new color palette, and a new name. Since its inception, the Authority had been doing business as DC Water. The legal name of the agency remains the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority.
Statistics
Employees: 1,000 (FY 2009)
Service area: 725 square miles (1,880 km2)
Drinking water pumped: 108million US gallons (410,000m3) a day (FY 2009)
Largest advanced wastewater treatment plant in the world
150 acres (0.61km2)
Capacity: 370million US gallons (1,400,000m3) per day
Peak capacity: 1.076billion US gallons (4,070,000m3) per day.
Governance
An eleven-member Board of Directors governs DC Water. Six Board Members represent the District. Prince George's County and Montgomery County each have two Board Members. Fairfax County has a single Board Member. Each participating jurisdiction is a signatory to the Blue Plains Intermunicipal Agreement, which spells out the roles and responsibilities for each party and addresses facilities management, capacity allocation, and financing.[8]
The Authority develops its own budget, which is then included in the overall District of Columbia budget. Together these two budgets are presented annually to Congress for approval.
When DC Water was created as an independent authority in 1996, its finances were separate from those of the District of Columbia. The independence of DC Water with regard to finance, procurement and personnel matters was affirmed by Congress under the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority Independence Preservation Act of 2008.[9]
A President and CEO is responsible for all daily operations and reports to the DC Water Board of Directors. The current President/CEO is David L. Gadis.
DC Water purchases drinking water from the Washington Aqueduct division of the Army Corps of Engineers. The Aqueduct sources the water from the Potomac River at Great Falls and Little Falls, north of the District. The Aqueduct treats the water, and DC Water distributes it through 1,300 miles (2,100km) of water pipes throughout the District of Columbia.
DC Water also manages over 1,800 miles (2,900km) of sewer lines and operates the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant.[10] The plant discharges to the Potomac River at the southernmost tip of the District.
Awards
The National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) honored DC Water with its Research and Technology Award, given annually to member agencies who contribute to the field of biosolids usage and disposal or wastewater treatment. The research project must be completed in-house (or by a contractor working directly with the agency). It must relate to the collection process, treatment process, or reuse of wastewater. This innovation by the DC Water team has a global impact in protecting aquatic life in waterways that receive wastewater discharges. The year 2010 marks the second consecutive year that DC Water has been recognized with this award.[11]
In 2010, DC Water received from NACWA the Platinum Peak Performance Award after receiving five consecutive Gold Awards for 100 percent compliance with permit limits. This award is presented to member agencies for exceptional compliance for their National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit limits.[12]
Funding
Rates paid by ratepayers cover the cost of delivery of water and sewer service. A little more than half of the rates cover operations. Another quarter covers the cost of capital projects like replacement of aging water and sewer lines, valve replacements, and pump station improvements. Capital projects also include several projects designed to protect the environment and are required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Though the mandate comes from the federal government, the funding sources for these construction projects are not identified. While a small amount of funding has come through the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act and other grants, the majority of these capital costs are borne by the ratepayers.[13]
Environmental stewardship
At Blue Plains, wastewater treatment goes beyond primary and secondary treatment levels to tertiary (or advanced) treatment. The effluent that leaves Blue Plains and is discharged to the Potomac is highly treated and meets some of the most stringent NPDES permit limits in the United States.
Historically, wastewater treatment plants have contributed nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen to the waterways in which they discharge. These nutrients have been found to deplete oxygen in the marine environment, a process that is detrimental to fish and other aquatic life.
Since the mid-1980s, Blue Plains has reduced phosphorus to the limit of technology, primarily in support of water quality goals of the Potomac River, but also for the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Bay Agreement, reached in 1987, was a first step in reducing nitrogen discharge to waterways that are tributary to the Chesapeake Bay. Under the agreement, the Bay states and the District committed to voluntarily reduce nitrogen loads by 40 percent from their 1985 levels. Blue Plains was the first plant to achieve that goal. Furthermore, every year since the full-scale implementation of the Biological Nitrogen Removal (BNR) process was completed in 2000, Blue Plains has every year successfully achieved and exceeded that goal of a 40 percent reduction. In Fiscal Year 2009, the BNR process at Blue Plains reduced the nitrogen load by more than 58 percent.[14]
DC Water and EPA agreed upon new nitrogen limits as part of the NPDES permit effective September 2010, reducing nitrogen levels to 4.7 million pounds per year. DC Water plans to achieve these levels by constructing new facilities at Blue Plains to perform enhanced nitrogen removal (ENR). The total cost of the project is nearly $1 billion.[15]
In FY 09, the Authority rehabilitated pumping equipment and accessories in one of two stations that pump incoming wastewater into the plant and replaced aged infrastructure and equipment in the plant's final filters with a more effective system. All the upgrade projects were tied into the plant-wide process control system (PCS), which monitors and controls the plant's processes from a central location.
Progress was achieved by implementing the nitrification/denitrification facilities upgrade to convert nitrification reactors from coarse to fine bubble diffusion and modify structures equipment. The rehabilitated and new equipment will support other ongoing upgrades to the nitrification/denitrification process and aims to meet the nitrogen reduction goals of the Chesapeake Bay Program. It will also increase energy efficiency.
On the waterways, the Authority operates two skimmer boats that remove floatable debris from the Anacostia and Potomac rivers every Monday through Friday. These crews remove more than 400 tons of trash from our waterways each year.
Plastic bottles, plastic bags, inflatable toys, baseballs, and environmental debris like tree limbs, are all skimmed from the waterways and deposited into oversized dumpsters for removal. In decades past, there used to be more oversized items, such as sofas and refrigerators. However, over the years, the skimmer boats have removed most of those. Still, there is the occasional unlikely item, such as the live deer that was recently rescued to dry ground.
In addition to their full-time work assignments, these crews clean the way for special events like the Nation's Triathlon and high school crew competitions, as well as for conservation efforts.
As a result of the work DC Water contributes, "The District, as a city, is head and shoulders above any other municipality in the Bay watershed," said Tom Schueler of the nonprofit Chesapeake Stormwater Network. In 2009, The Stormwater Network developed a stormwater performance grading scale. The District received the highest grade of B+, and others scored as low as Cs and even Ds.[16]
DC Water Clean Rivers Project
Construction workers check on progress inside a tunnel in the Clean Rivers ProjectCutting head of a tunnel boring machine used in the Clean Rivers Project
The District of Columbia is one of 772 older cities in the country with a combined sewer system. The system covers about a third of the city and was built in the late 19th century to carry sanitary sewage and stormwater in the same pipe. The system operates well in dry weather. However, during rainstorms, the flow can exceed the capacity of the pipe. To prevent sewer backups and flooded streets, these combined sewers may discharge into the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers and Rock Creek, a phenomenon known as combined sewer overflows (CSOs).
To date, DC Water has significantly reduced CSOs by eliminating approximately 40 percent of the overflows through a $140 million construction and mitigation program. This investment included inflatable dams to catch and store overflows during rainstorms, tide gates to keep river water from flowing into the sewer system, sewer separation to eliminate CSO outfalls, and pumping station construction and rehabilitation to increase flow capacity.
In 2013 the agency began construction of a deep tunnel system for its "Clean Rivers Project." The $2.4 billion, 20-year project will reduce CSOs by 96 percent overall and 98 percent in the Anacostia River. Once operational, the tunnel system will store the combined sewage during wet weather and release it gradually for treatment at Blue Plains.[14]
In 2001, water supplied by the Authority was found to contain lead levels of at least 1,250 parts per billion (ppb)—about 83 times higher than the accepted safe level of 15 ppb.[17] The discovery was made by Marc Edwards, a civil engineering professor specializing in plumbing who DC Water had hired to investigate complaints of plumbing corrosion. DC Water threatened to cut off Edwards's funding unless he abandoned his investigation.[18] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report dismissing the idea of health risks from the water.[19]
The story was picked up by The Washington Post, which ran front-page stories about the problem in January 2004.[18] This led to a Congressional investigation, which found that the CDC had made "scientifically indefensible" claims about the lack of health effects from the lead in DC's water supply.[20]
The problem was traced to the Washington Aqueduct decision to replace the chlorine used to treat the water with monochloramine, a similar chemical.[18] Chloramine picks up lead from pipes and solder, keeping it dissolved in the water throughout the system.[21] The Aqueduct subsequently started adding orthophosphate, a corrosion inhibitor, to the water, which reduced the extent of lead leaching from the pipes.[22]
In 2010, the CDC said that 15,000 homes in the DC area might still have water supplies with dangerous levels of lead.[23]
A septic tank is an underground chamber made of concrete, fiberglass, or plastic through which domestic wastewater (sewage) flows for basic sewage treatment. Settling and anaerobic digestion processes reduce solids and organics, but the treatment efficiency is only moderate. Septic tank systems are a type of simple onsite sewage facility. They can be used in areas that are not connected to a sewerage system, such as rural areas. The treated liquid effluent is commonly disposed in a septic drain field, which provides further treatment. Nonetheless, groundwater pollution may occur and can be a problem.
Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies, usually as a result of human activities, so that it negatively affects its uses. Water bodies include lakes, rivers, oceans, aquifers, reservoirs and groundwater. Water pollution results when contaminants mix with these water bodies. Contaminants can come from one of four main sources: sewage discharges, industrial activities, agricultural activities, and urban runoff including stormwater. Water pollution is either surface water pollution or groundwater pollution. This form of pollution can lead to many problems, such as the degradation of aquatic ecosystems or spreading water-borne diseases when people use polluted water for drinking or irrigation. Another problem is that water pollution reduces the ecosystem services that the water resource would otherwise provide.
A sanitary sewer is an underground pipe or tunnel system for transporting sewage from houses and commercial buildings to a sewage treatment plant or disposal. Sanitary sewers are a type of gravity sewer and are part of an overall system called a "sewage system" or sewerage. Sanitary sewers serving industrial areas may also carry industrial wastewater. In municipalities served by sanitary sewers, separate storm drains may convey surface runoff directly to surface waters. An advantage of sanitary sewer systems is that they avoid combined sewer overflows. Sanitary sewers are typically much smaller in diameter than combined sewers which also transport urban runoff. Backups of raw sewage can occur if excessive stormwater inflow or groundwater infiltration occurs due to leaking joints, defective pipes etc. in aging infrastructure.
The Anacostia River is a river in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States. It flows from Prince George's County in Maryland into Washington, D.C., where it joins with the Washington Channel and ultimately empties into the Potomac River at Buzzard Point. It is about 8.7 miles (14.0 km) long. The name "Anacostia" derives from the area's early history as Nacotchtank, a settlement of Necostan or Anacostan Native Americans on the banks of the Anacostia River.
Rock Creek is a free-flowing tributary of the Potomac River that empties into the Atlantic Ocean via the Chesapeake Bay. The 32.6-mile (52.5 km) creek drains about 76.5 square miles (198 km2). Its final quarter-mile is affected by tides.
Sewage disposal regulation and administration describes the governance of sewage treatment and disposal.
The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, historically known as the Chicago Drainage Canal, is a 28-mile-long (45 km) canal system that connects the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River. It reverses the direction of the Main Stem and the South Branch of the Chicago River, which now flows out of Lake Michigan rather than into it. The related Calumet-Saganashkee Channel does the same for the Calumet River a short distance to the south, joining the Chicago canal about halfway along its route to the Des Plaines. The two provide the only navigation for ships between the Great Lakes Waterway and the Mississippi River system.
The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) is a regional government agency that provides water reclamation and flood management services for about 1.1 million people in 28 communities in the Greater Milwaukee Area. A recipient of the U.S. Water Prize and many other awards, the District has a record of 98.4 percent, since 1994, for capturing and cleaning wastewater from 28 communities in a 411-square-mile (1,060 km2) area. The national goal is 85 percent of all the rain and wastewater that enters their sewer systems.
A combined sewer is a type of gravity sewer with a system of pipes, tunnels, pump stations etc. to transport sewage and urban runoff together to a sewage treatment plant or disposal site. This means that during rain events, the sewage gets diluted, resulting in higher flowrates at the treatment site. Uncontaminated stormwater simply dilutes sewage, but runoff may dissolve or suspend virtually anything it contacts on roofs, streets, and storage yards. As rainfall travels over roofs and the ground, it may pick up various contaminants including soil particles and other sediment, heavy metals, organic compounds, animal waste, and oil and grease. Combined sewers may also receive dry weather drainage from landscape irrigation, construction dewatering, and washing buildings and sidewalks.
The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission is a bi-county political subdivision of the State of Maryland that provides safe drinking water and wastewater treatment for Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland except for a few cities in both counties that continue to operate their own water facilities.
Sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) is a condition in which untreated sewage is discharged from a sanitary sewer into the environment prior to reaching sewage treatment facilities. When caused by rainfall it is also known as wet weather overflow. Causes of sanitary sewer overflows include: Blockage of sewer lines, infiltration/Inflow of excessive stormwater into sewer lines during heavy rainfall, malfunction of pumping station lifts or electrical power failure, broken sewer lines. Prevention of such overflow events involves regular maintenance and timely upgrades of infrastructure.
Watts Branch is a tributary stream of the Anacostia River in Prince George's County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
Sewage treatment is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable to discharge to the surrounding environment or an intended reuse application, thereby preventing water pollution from raw sewage discharges. Sewage contains wastewater from households and businesses and possibly pre-treated industrial wastewater. There are a high number of sewage treatment processes to choose from. These can range from decentralized systems to large centralized systems involving a network of pipes and pump stations which convey the sewage to a treatment plant. For cities that have a combined sewer, the sewers will also carry urban runoff (stormwater) to the sewage treatment plant. Sewage treatment often involves two main stages, called primary and secondary treatment, while advanced treatment also incorporates a tertiary treatment stage with polishing processes and nutrient removal. Secondary treatment can reduce organic matter from sewage, using aerobic or anaerobic biological processes.
Sewage is a type of wastewater that is produced by a community of people. It is typically transported through a sewer system. Sewage consists of wastewater discharged from residences and from commercial, institutional and public facilities that exist in the locality. Sub-types of sewage are greywater and blackwater. Sewage also contains soaps and detergents. Food waste may be present from dishwashing, and food quantities may be increased where garbage disposal units are used. In regions where toilet paper is used rather than bidets, that paper is also added to the sewage. Sewage contains macro-pollutants and micro-pollutants, and may also incorporate some municipal solid waste and pollutants from industrial wastewater.
George S. Hawkins is a lawyer, college professor and environmentalist. He served as general manager of the DC Water and Sewer Authority from 2009 to 2017. Hawkins has worked in the environmental industry, as a corporate lawyer and as a regulator.
Pope Branch is a tributary stream of the Anacostia River in Washington, DC. The headwaters of the stream originate near Fort Davis Drive, and the branch flows roughly northwest for about 1 mile (1.6 km) to the Anacostia, which drains to the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. The watershed area of Pope Branch is about 0.4 square miles (1.0 km2).
The East Side Big Pipe is a large sewer line and tunnel in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is part of a combined sewer system of pipes, sumps, drains, pumps, and other infrastructure that transports sewage and stormwater run-off to the city's Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant. The East Side Big Pipe project, begun in 2006 and finished in 2011, was the largest of a 20-year series of projects designed to nearly eliminate combined sewer overflows (CSO)s into the Willamette River and the Columbia Slough. The combined projects were completed on time, and they reduced CSOs into the river by 94 percent and into the slough by more than 99 percent.
Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant in Washington, D.C., is the largest advanced wastewater treatment plant in the world. The facility is operated by the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority. The plant opened in 1937 as a primary treatment facility, and advanced treatment capacity was added in the 1970s and 1980s. The effluent that leaves Blue Plains is discharged to the Potomac River and meets some of the most stringent permit limits in the United States.
The Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) is a regional water authority in the U.S. state of Michigan. It provides drinking water treatment, drinking water distribution, wastewater collection, and wastewater treatment services for the Southeast Michigan communities, including Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties, among others. GLWA overlays a majority of the water and sewer assets which were formerly operated and maintained by the Detroit Water Sewer District (DWSD) prior to the bankruptcy of the City of Detroit, Michigan.
Ever since Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, it has faced multiple issues concerning water quality to accommodate its growing size, driven by the city's ideal geography and accessibility to one of the largest bodies of fresh water, the Great Lakes. The City of Chicago has implemented multiple proposals and plans such as the Master Drainage Plan and Tunnel and Reservoir Plan to combat the increasing water quality issue and move in a more environmentally friendly direction. These plans will construct spillways to temporarily store overfilling sewage or stormwater and clean it before releasing it. However, it wasn't until 2015 that Chicago began to treat sewage and stormwater runoff, thus finally shedding its title as the last major city not to treat its sewage before being discharged into its waterways.
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