“243 gallons of sewage just doesn’t go away,” Dean Naujoks of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network told NPR. “We’re concerned about potential algae blooms and fish kills this summer.”
A proposed class-action lawsuit has accused DC Water of negligence after a partial infrastructure collapse leaked more than 243 gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac.
According to National Public Radio, the lawsuit against DC Water was filed on behalf of lead plaintiff Nicholas Lailas, a Virginia-based physician who also owns a recreational boat. Lailas is seeking compensation for him, and others affected by the leak, “whose property interests in and use and enjoyment of the Potomac River” have since been impaired.
“The collapse caused massive volumes of raw, untreated sewage to overflow directly into the Potomac River,” the lawsuit alleges. “DC Water publicly estimated that approximately 243 million gallons of wastewater overflowed from the collapse site, with approximately 194 million gallons occurring within the first five days before bypass pumping operations significantly reduced overflows.”
Attorneys for the class broadly allege that DC Water should have taken more preventative action, in part because the utility had reason to believe that its 72-inch “Potomac Interceptor” line was suffering from heavy corrosion in the prelude to its collapse.
“DC Water had 10 years to act to prevent this,” attorney Steve W. Berman wrote in a press release. “We seek losses for infrastructure failure, physical contamination and other economic damages for a failure of immense proportions.”
Berman is a managing partner at Hagens Berman, the law firm that filed the lawsuit.
“We believe DC Water has a duty to the residents it serves for what we intend to show amounts to negligence,” Berman said. “We expect DC Water will try to play the victim. As we see it, this is an instance of high-risk infrastructure that was operated without reasonable safeguards, not an inevitability.”
National Public Radio notes that the DC Water incident is one of the largest recorded sewage spills in American history. After the initial spill, DC Water set up a system of pumps and constructed a steel bulkhead to try to contain free-flowing sewage while repair crews worked to fix the leak.
President Donald Trump approved emergency funds for the clean-up last month after criticizing how local leaders handled the event.
“243 gallons of sewage just doesn’t go away,” Dean Naujoks of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network told NPR. “We’re concerned about potential algae blooms and fish kills this summer.”
In his firm’s press release, Berman emphasized that DC Water has long known that the Potomac Interceptor was at risk of failure.
“We seek losses for infrastructure failure, physical contamination and other economic damages for a failure of immense proportions,” Berman said. “DC Water had 10 years to act to prevent this, and paid dearly for that oversight.”
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