Almost six years after WTOP reported D.C. only has a one or two-day supply of drinking water if the Potomac River weren’t available, a study to find potential water storage or another drinking water source will soon begin.
The Energy and Water Appropriations Bill approved by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden last week contains $500,000 in funding for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin a study on potential solutions.
In 2016, water officials finally made public a long-standing water system shortcoming: D.C. has no backup drinking water supply. And surrounding communities have limited options.
“We only have about 24 to 48 hours of water supply available should the Potomac River become unavailable to us,” said Tom Jacobus in 2016 while he was general manager of the Washington Aqueduct. Operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the aqueduct processes drinking water for the District and Arlington County and the City of Falls Church in Virginia.
The aqueduct is one of the few water-processing facilities with only one source. WSSC Water, which serves most of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, draws 30% of the water it sends to customers from the Patuxent River. Fairfax Water, which serves Fairfax and Prince William counties, gets a portion of its water from the Occoquan Reservoir.
Now, in 2024, funding is finally in place for the Army Corps to begin identifying ways to ensure the region has enough drinking water.
“Overall, for the whole region, about 80% of our water supply comes from the Potomac River,” said Steve Bieber, water resources program director for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
A train crash, power plant discharge, underwater pipeline rupture or act of terrorism could make the Potomac temporarily unavailable and affect the entire region’s drinking water.
“The impact of it could really be catastrophic,” Bieber said. “You can imagine businesses having to close, schools having to close, if the water supply were severely diminished or, in some cases, unavailable.”
Bieber said the total estimated cost of the study over three years is about $3 million.
“The $500,000 is to get things started in year one,” Bieber said. For the $3 million total, “we envision half of that being paid by the federal government — the U.S. Army — and the other half paid by local partners like COG, and the water utilities in the region.”
In terms of possible water storage possibilities, Rudy Chow, general manager of the Washington Aqueduct, told WTOP in 2022, the possibility of utilizing the Travilah Quarry on Piney Meetinghouse Road in Rockville, Maryland, to provide water storage for the region’s water utilities would be very expensive.
Chow believes there are some less-costly options than a quarry.
“Can we increase underground storage facilities, tanks, to increase that capacity? That is something that needs to be looked at,” Chow said in 2022. Other options might be reclaiming Potomac Water, by recycling it for drinking water purposes.
Bieber told WTOP local water suppliers need to plan ahead, “for things in 2050 or 2070.”
“The reality is, if we want to have something built, online and running to meet the needs two decades from now, we need to do the three-year study now, to identify the option we prefer,” Bieber warned. “Planning, design, and to implement that plan will take another several years after the study — we need to get started now, so we’ll have something online, before there’s a problem.”
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