The National Security Crisis No One in D.C. Is Talking About

The worst-case scenario would begin with a boil water warning.

By the next morning, faucets and toilets in the nation’s capital would spew brown water — even at the Capitol, the White House and the Pentagon.

Schools and businesses would have to close, and Congress would go out of session indefinitely. Life in the contamination zone would come to a standstill.

It takes just 24 hours for the region to exhaust its backup water supply. It takes just one month without drinking water for the region to lose $6 billion worth of economic growth.

Washington has narrowly avoided this scenario three times in the last six years — most recently in January, when a sewage pipe collapsed and millions of gallons of wastewater spilled into the Potomac River.

For weeks, the city and surrounding states have been dealing with a challenging environmental disaster. Had the Potomac Interceptor sewer line burst several miles up the river, it had the potential to devolve into a full-blown national security crisis.

“There is no direct pumping to the White House versus Mrs. Smith in the Seventh Ward,” said Cynthia Mitchell, the spokesperson for the Baltimore district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “You’re looking at contingency measures for all of the hundreds of agencies throughout D.C. and NOVA, as well as the Pentagon and the White House.”

Contamination levels in the Potomac river are improving. But even as this crisis fades from public memory, the region’s drinking water remains at extraordinary risk.

The Potomac River feeds the Washington Aqueduct. Run by the Corps, the aqueduct is the only source of drinking water for the region. It remains vulnerable not only to future sewage spills from the old and corroding Potomac Interceptor, but also to chemical spills from freight trains, severe algal blooms and sabotage.

Currently, there is no backup plan if D.C.’s water becomes seriously contaminated. And the political will to secure one has yet to materialize.

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Hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage flowed into the Potomac River after a pipe ruptured on Jan. 19. mpi34/mpi34/MediaPunch/IPx

In late 2019, two freight cars fell off the tracks and into the Potomac River near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

The freight line frequently carries oil and chemicals. These freight cars, luckily, were empty.

“If they were filled with a harmful chemical, or oil or something like that, it would be a different story altogether,” said Michael Nardolilli, the executive director of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, an advisory organization created by Congress to oversee pollution and water-use issues that affect multiple states and the District of Columbia.

“Oil, of course, is a major concern, because it really would foul up the machinery if it got in,” he added.

Less than four years later, on July 3, 2024, a dense bloom of algae mushroomed across the Potomac and clogged one of the water-treatment facilities in the Washington Aqueduct, forcing the available drinking water supply to drop precipitously.

Because the Washington Aqueduct was originally designed to pump water for fire suppression, the Army must shove water through the system, even if it water becomes undrinkable.

“We found ourselves getting very close to: Do we need to flip that switch and make that call? And keep pushing water, because now you’re looking at the Fourth of July, which is coincidentally the biggest fire-suppression need day of the year, right? And we cannot fail that mission,” Mitchell said. The Corps came within just a couple of hours of making that decision.

These two near catastrophes passed with little public awareness about what had been avoided. And with no sense of crisis, there was no new reckoning about the need for a plan.

And then came January 2025. The Potomac Interceptor pipe collapsed, spilling hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage into the river. It was yet another close call.

“This is unprecedented,” Nardolilli said of the clean up efforts after the Potomac Interceptor break. “We really don’t know what the impact would be on drinking water if the same scenario happened above the intakes.”

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Washington does not have a backup for drinking water. It doesn’t even have a plan for a backup.

What it does have is a study.

Next year, the Army Corps of Engineers is expected to finish its evaluation of possible back up sources of drinking water for the District of Columbia and surrounding Virginia cities. The study was funded in December 2022, when Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton finally persuaded Congress to pony up the $3 million needed to evaluate the problem.

So far, the study has not yet produced any answers about serious alternatives and has already run into significant problems.

Congress has rules restricting the cost and length of time that an Army Corps of Engineers study can run. In this case, those limitations have stymied the group’s ability to study serious alternatives for a legitimate backup supply.

“We have kind of conflicting paradigms here. So Congress was very frustrated with the Corps of Engineers for many years, because we’re taking too long to do studies,” said Trevor Cyan, the chief of the Civil Works Project Management Office for the Corps’ Baltimore district. “So we’re trying very hard to lean into building infrastructure, not paperwork, so we’re trying to deliver an early, actionable project that can help with the problem as soon as possible.”

The early project they’ve landed on is an expansion of the existing backup reservoir, which can currently provide 24 to 48 hours of supply. The expansion, if it is ever funded by Congress, would allow for an additional 12 hours of water supply.

While those 12 hours would be helpful in an emergency, the Corps acknowledged that would not be enough during a security crisis.

“We’ve got to come up with a measure that would work for all of us. It’s not only health and security for local communities, but now you’re talking national security, because this is the seat of government,” Mitchell said.

Members of Congress need to work with Virginia, Maryland and D.C. leadership to agree on a project and help to fund it.

But Congress has little interest in addressing this problem.

“You have a real problem with the federal government’s reputation in the rest of the country,” Nardolilli said. “So what is it to a congressman from Nebraska, if there’s no water in D.C.? They’re more concerned about their neck of the woods and trying to get the Army Corps of Engineers to focus on flooding in their area or water supply in their area.”

The Washington Aqueduct is not owned by the states, so why would states want to pay to fix it?

“A lot of nonfederal partners have not wanted to come to the table because they felt the perception was they would just improve the aqueduct, which is not theirs. It’s been a tricky nuance for us,” Cyan said.

President Donald Trump’s administration canceled grants for hazard prevention projects. Jacquelyn Martin/AP

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A crisis with the aqueduct is not the only Washington water disaster that’s just one terrible 24 hours away.

The largest advanced wastewater treatment plant in the world sits near the end of the Potomac River. The plant rests at one of the lowest points on the river, so that sewage can flow downhill to be treated without needing to be pumped.

That makes it vulnerable to flooding.

A severe flood would likely render the region’s largest treatment facility out of operation for weeks or even months.

Hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage that usually flow into the treatment plant every day would instead spill into the Potomac River near Alexandria, Virginia. It would drift through Northern Virginia, stinking up and clogging the river coastline, and eventually leak out into the Chesapeake Bay. The environmental cleanup task would be unfathomable.

“Imagine every pipe from every community that’s now served entering into the local river system,” said Rachael Jonassen, the director of the Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Management Program at George Washington University. “That’s what we’re talking about. Untreated waste being sent out into the environment, with just huge implications in terms of the public health, but also an ecological tragedy of massive proportions.”

Unlike with Washington’s drinking water, there’s a plan to mitigate a potential disaster.

D.C. Water has had some construction underway for years, building the flood walls that could dramatically improve protection for the plant.

But now the project has paused — because of political problems.

In April 2025, the Federal Emergency Management Agency canceled the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which was partially funding the construction of the flood wall. Trump administration officials at the time called the program “wasteful” and pledged to cancel all of its awards.

A federal judge has since ordered the administration to restore the program, but the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Kristi Noem has done nothing to restore any of the hundreds of grants awaiting funding.

That includes the remaining funding for the Blue Plains floodwall: Just $23.4 million from FEMA.

“The floodwall includes four segments totaling 4,125 feet. Only one segment has been completed,” said Sherri Lewis, a spokesperson for D.C. Water. “The project remains in the design phase, and construction has not begun while D.C. Water explores its options due to the funding uncertainty. The construction of the remaining segments remains a priority.”

When asked about the grant, FEMA responded with information about the smaller first phase of the project, not the $23 million DC Water still needs to complete the flood wall.

“The agency remains committed to supporting State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial partners and ensuring communities receive the resources they need to enhance safety and preparedness. FEMA will continue to follow all legal requirements and court directives as we work to deliver funding and support for disaster resilience. FEMA is complying with all applicable court orders and administering the program consistent with statutory requirements, judicial direction, and available appropriations,” a FEMA spokesperson said.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office directed questions about the grant to D.C. Water.

“We doubt there’s anything we could do to get that funding back until we have a new administration that revives BRIC,” a spokesperson for Holmes Norton said.