The District of Columbia will receive federal assistance in the clean-up effort of the Potomac River. On Saturday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced President Donald Trump approved an emergency declaration following the sewer line collapse.
“The President’s action authorizes FEMA to coordinate all disaster relief efforts to alleviate the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population and to provide appropriate assistance to save lives, to protect property, public health and safety and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe,” FEMA stated in a press release.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump blamed the governors of Maryland and Virginia, along with the mayor of Washington, D.C. for failing to maintain the infrastructure.
“Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., who are responsible for the massive sewage spill in the Potomac River, must get to work, IMMEDIATELY. If they can’t do the job, they have to call me and ask, politely, to get it fixed,” Trump posted on social media.
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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore responded on Friday stating the broken pipe resides on federal property.
“D.C. and the federal government maintain primary responsibility for repair and cleanup operations,” Moore said.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser also responded, stating the district asked for federal assistance.
DC Water said part of the sewer system called the Potomac Interceptor collapsed, leading to this spill.
“It’s coincident with this extreme cold snap that we’ve been experiencing out here in the mid-Atlantic,” Weston Slaughter, a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland who’s been testing water samples from the river, told Straight Arrow News.
The spill has had several impacts on the area, with the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment warning people to avoid contact with the river, including avoiding boating, fishing and more.
“This is happening in the middle of this densely populated area, also in the middle of this ecosystem that lots of people live alongside,” Slaughter said.
Slaughter said a big part of the issue is what’s in that wastewater.
“It could have high concentrations of heavy metals or certain types of man-made chemicals or essentially anything that tends to get concentrated in human sewage,” he said.
Parts of the Potomac also serve as an oyster sanctuary.
“It could impact oysters or anything in the system,” Slaughter said.
