Approaching Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Facility headquarters is like coming upon a huge sea-going tanker. From the fourth floor “bridge” of headquarters, one looks out at a vast “deck” of cylindrical and rectangular tanks and holding boxes. Its bow points into the Anacostia River. Headquarters is a busy place. Responsibility for the wastewater of a vast metropolitan network – some 320 million gallons daily – is no light matter, says David McLaughlin, acting director of engineering and technical services.

Blue Plains is on task, its engineers and managers competent. All are working diligently towards meeting the court-ordered mandate to reduce CSOs (combined sewer overflows) in the District to a point where very little sewage will actually enter the Anacostia or Potomac. WASA estimates that along the Anacostia River the number of CSOs will be reduced from 82 to two in an average year.

Sewage is both a physical problem and an intellectual conundrum for wastewater processing engineers like Sudhir Murthy. “I am obsessed by waste water treatment,” Murthy says. “My father in India was a wastewater engineer, and I am married to a Canadian-born waste water engineer. It is in the family and is an important part of our life.” For engineers like Murthy, sewage is a problematic mix of effluvia, sediment and chemicals that has to be gotten right in processing.

Currently, in the Potomac River basin, there are 169 municipal and industrial sewage treatment plants of various capabilities that treat 691 million gallons of wastewater per day. Blue Plains alone processes 50 percent of that total! Gazing at both the plant and the vast amount of new construction that is updating Blue Plains, it appears that the plant is preparing for a host of wastewater problems that metropolitan growth will bring during the coming decades. “Blue Plains is one big constriction project. We need to keep up with both the growth in population and changes in technology,” says Murthy. As we tour the plant in a driving rain, the pervasive smell of sewage is not totally unbearable. It is far less onerous than the smell of a pulp and paper plant.

Today, many North American cities – ranging from the District to Chicago to Rochester, New York, to Ottawa, the capital of Canada – have to grapple with CSO problems caused by rapid metropolitan growth. Further, cities in the US have to abide by the legal mandate for long-term control of CSOs outlined in Section 402 (q) of the Clean Water Act, which demands better control and monitoring of storm water.

A New Storage Tunnel System
WASA is planning to build three large storage tunnels for excess storm water during heavy rain periods. The water will be stored in these tunnels until the rain event is over, rather than being released as dirty water with a host of pathogens and debris into District rivers. Engineers hope that the new tunnel system will bring about a 96 percent reduction in CSO volume. Large sewer outfalls, like the one big enough to admit small boats near the CSX train bridge, may become a thing of the past.

Construction will soon begin on the tunnels, which is a major engineering task. They will be built far underground using locomotive-sized tunnel boring machines equipped with massive cutting wheels. These machines can bore through rock, sand or practically anything else. After the debris is transported back through the tunnel on conveyor belts, pre-cast cement sections are jacked into place, bolted and attached with gaskets to the tunnel’s unlined surface.

The Blue Plains tunnel will begin at the wastewater plant and run parallel to Interstate 295 northward under Bolling Air Force Base, Poplar Point and the Anacostia Naval Annex before it crosses under the Anacostia River and terminates at WASA’s main pumping station near Canal Street NE, a short walk from the Navy Yard Metro station. The Anacostia River Tunnel will divert from a junction of the Blue Plains tunnel near Poplar Point and flow underneath the Metro Green Line, following Anacostia Park, then crossing under the Anacostia River to the Northeast Boundary tunnel. It then will course under RFK Stadium to Mount Olivet and the National Arboretum and terminate at a reservoir site under New York Avenue.

These are massive undertakings in terms of sheer cost, planning and engineering difficulty. Further, the construction of drop shafts in the District for machinery and debris extraction may cause disruption to utilities and traffic. Together, the tunnels, when functioning, should keep 194 million gallons of storm water from entering District rivers during peak rain events. The tunnels carry a $2.2 billion price tag, with most of it being funded by District ratepayers.

Referring to the tunnel project, Jim Connolly, the acting president of the Anacostia Watershed society, says, “I am optimistic about the future of these tunnels and hope they will do the job. Meanwhile CSO reduction in the past two years has been very impressive. You can tell just by looking at the color of the Anacostia River.” The cost of the tunnels will overwhelm the city’s rate payers, Connolly believes. “The feds used the Army Corps of Engineers and built Washington’s sewer system,” reflects Connolly. “Now they need to pay for repairing it.”

The Future of DC Sewage
Currently the District’s storm water and sewage future is being charted in part by George Hawkins, the 47-year-old head of the District’s Department of Environment. Hawkins is poignantly aware when it comes to sewers that the District has dilapidated lines coursing through 12,478 acres of city real estate or 33 percent of the District. Rebuilding the infrastructure is, Hawkins says, “a big challenge.” His agency has little control over WASA and Blue Plains. But Hawkins is emerging after 19 months on the job as a well-educated advocate/lobbyist for environmental improvement on the capital’s rivers. Also Hawkins has scored notable successes in the area of tightening storm water permits and being a champion of what he calls “green change.” Hawkins notes under the new Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System – MS4 – program the District is getting tougher at enforcing its storm water laws and is eliminating illicit sewer connections. The task, Hawkins argues, is to get the District environment “beyond compliance” when it comes to water and sewer issues. As the District moves into a greener phase, it will go “beyond the pipe” as well in charging for water and sewer to include impervious surfaces like parking lots and other paved spaces that contribute to runoff.

Meanwhile many of the District’s future sewage problems will probably come from upstream rather than from Blue Plains. Anyone in the water business these days has to deal with effluent dominated natural streams with diminishing assimilation capacity. In the coming years, the number of sewage treatment plants putting wastewater into the Potomac will grow. According to Carleton Haywood, a water geographer at the Interstate Commission for the Potomac River Basin, there are currently 41 municipal sewage plants above the Potomac Fall line that put 114 million gallons of treated wastewater a day into the Potomac River – a source of our drinking water. That is nearly one-third of the capacity of Blue Plains.

Visit WASA online at www.dcwasa.com, Anacostia Watershed Society at www.anacostiaws.org, and the District’s Department of the Environment at www.ddoe.dc.gov.