Emergency repair planned for cracked sewer line threatening Rock Creek
A major sewage tunnel in Northwest Washington that dates to the 1890s has a 200-foot-long crack and is at risk of collapsing and polluting Rock Creek, said D.C. Water officials. They are planning emergency repairs.
The pipe is in an embankment near 26th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington's Northwest neighborhood. It carries stormwater runoff and wastewater from Washington, and Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland, to the Blue Plains treatment facility in Southwest Washington, where it is processed and released into the Potomac River.
The utility company said early this month that a camera system found the crack in the ceiling of the brick-lined sewer line during a routine inspection. If the crack is not repaired, D.C. Water officials said it could cause 'significant environmental harm' if there's a failure of the line, which carries as much as 100 million gallons of wastewater a day.
The crack in the pipe is not unique, experts said, given that parts of the sewer system — which has roughly 2,000 miles of stormwater lines — were built more than 200 years ago. The section where the crack was found dates to the 1890s, engineers at D.C. Water said.
'We cannot run the risk of a failure that could cause a major discharge of sewage into Rock Creek and harm this natural resource,' said David Gadis, D.C. Water chief executive and general manager. 'We were fortunate to find this before it was too late, due in large part to our proactive approach that includes routine inspections of our aging infrastructure.'
Engineers at D.C. Water said they're developing a plan to fix the crack and stabilize the pipe. For now, crews have fenced off the area. Construction for the repair is not expected to affect traffic on Rock Creek Parkway and the bridge on Pennsylvania Avenue in the area.
One option, engineers said, is to divert the flow of the wastewater and stormwater runoff to another sewer line and then repair the tunnel using high-pressure concrete. There is no time frame yet for when the work will begin or end, or for how much it will cost, but it will be part of upgrades that are included in a 10-year, $9.6 billion capital improvement plan for D.C. Water.
D.C. Water said it fixed a similar problem last July with a nine-foot tunnel along 22nd Street NW after a crack was found in it.
'We believe if nothing is done, it will fail,' Moussa Wone, a vice president of engineering and clean rivers for D.C. Water, said of the line near Rock Creek. 'It needs to be taken care of or something could happen.'
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