District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority

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The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, or WASA, provides drinking water, sewage treatment and stormwater management services in the District of Columbia. It also provides sewage treatment services to several adjoining municipalities in Maryland and Virginia.

Contents

[edit] History

WASA was created in 1996, when the D.C. Government and the U.S. federal government established it as a semiautonomous regional entity. Prior to its creation, the services were provided by the D.C. Water and Sewer Utility Administration, a unit of the D.C. Government, and which was established in 1938.[1]

[edit] Operations

A General Manager is responsible for all daily operations and reports to the WASA Board of Directors.

WASA purchases its potable water from the Washington Aqueduct which is run by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Aqueduct treats the water and pumps the finished water to the WASA water mains throughout the city.

WASA operates the Blue Plains sewage treatment plant, which serves Washington, D.C. and portions of the adjoining communities of Montgomery County and Prince George's County, Maryland; and Fairfax County and Loudoun County, Virginia. The plant discharges to the Potomac River north of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

[edit] Controversy

 This section may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. Please consider moving more of the content into sub-articles and using this article for a summary of the key points of the subject. (November 2009)

A series of events starting in 2000 led to an increase in lead levels in drinking water at the tap in Washington, DC. Before the problem was controlled in 2004, it created a major local controversy over whether WASA took timely action and whether the elevation constituted a risk to public health.

On February 17, 2009 David Sanford and Stefanie Roemer of Sanford, Wittels & Heisler filed a class action lawsuit against WASA. The suit seeks injunctive relief, $200 million in compensatory damages, and punitive damages from WASA for failing to notify parents of young children in the District about the presence and prevalence of lead in its drinking water, as well as failing to notify plaintiffs about the dangers associated with consuming D.C. water; failing to take appropriate measures to remedy the dangers inherent in consuming the District's water; and continuing to cover up the severity and adverse consequences of the contamination from 2001 to the present. The relief sought for all members of the class includes establishing a system of ongoing medical monitoring and care for the children poisoned by the contaminated water and establishing a system of targeted educational intervention and services for children poisoned by lead in the contaminated water. On October 23, 2009, Judge Anita Josey-Herring of the D.C. Superior Court denied WASA’s motion to dismiss the class complaint. Plaintiffs and the class will therefore be permitted to proceed with their case to recover for one expert has called “the largest environmental crime in US history."

In 2000, anticipating a change in regulations for disinfection of drinking water, the Washington Aqueduct, which supplies treated water to WASA, changed its water disinfection process. This was done with EPA approval and WASA's agreement. The change in disinfection had been done before by other utilities with no reported problems

In 2002, WASA became aware of a problem with lead in the District's drinking water, based on a sampling of homes from July 2001 to June 2002. WASA has been accused of having failed to inform EPA in a timely manner and to have notified the public according to Federal regulations. EPA itself has not supported those allegations. WASA is unusual among large utilities in being directly regulated by EPA rather than by a state agency.

In retrospect, problems began in 2001, when water samples in 53 homes showed levels of lead that exceeded the national standard of 15 parts per billion for 95% of homes sampled (there is no maximum allowable level for lead), under the sampling protocol required by the EPA's Lead and Copper Rule. The actual water delivered to the neighborhood is free of lead. The source of lead in these situations is release from the inside surface of lead service lines (lead pipes that run from the main to the house, still present in many older houses) and lead fixtures inside the house. Based on these findings, WASA was required to initiate public notification and implement plans to replace lead service pipes in key areas of the municipal water system and did so. The first, but for a long time the only, media attention came in late 2002. [2] But the problem persisted. Federal water regulations then required WASA to conduct a larger water quality survey, which found a serious, widespread problem throughout the city in June 2003. Lead levels in over 4000 homes exceeded acceptable levels.[3]

By the fall of 2003, it had tested more than 6,000 homes in the District, finding that two-thirds tested had more than 15 ppb of lead in their water.[4]

Months later, when the issue became front page news, the situation changed rapidly. Residents inundated WASA's water hotline with calls and overwhelmed water testing laboratories with requests for their tap water to be tested for lead contamination. District elected officials immediately called for an emergency public meeting, and established an inter-agency task force to investigate and manage the problem.[3]

In the meantime, by 2004 the health aspects of the problem were being addressed by public advisories, distribution of water filters, and a special screening program organized by the DC Department of Health. During that year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a report that was interpreted as evidence that the new lead problem had probably not affected the frequency of elevated blood lead levels among children in DC, as the trend, with a slight discontinuity in 2001, was sstill consistently downward.[5]

Months later, the source of the problem was found. WASA, like some other municipalities, begin using chloramine as the primary disinfectant rather than free chlorine. They concluded that the new water treatment process introduced in 2000 had caused lead to leach from municipal water pipes into the water supply.[3] The correction to this problem was the commonly-used agent orthophosphate, which was then introduced in 2004. This additive stabilized the water chemistry and lead levels returned to and have remained normal since.

In 2007, an article was published in Environmental Health Perspectives by a team of academic investigators who had been called on for technical help by WASA, together with public healh professionals at the DC Department of Health, describing the incident, analyzing data from the 2004 screening program, and identifying sources of confounding or bias. Four indicators were examined and none showed evidence that blood lead levels had been affected by the elevation of lead in drinking water. The absence of an association in the study was consistent with the world literature for studies at that level of exposure and with predictions from the standard model used by the EPA. They reviewed the methodological issues in assessing exposure from water (the concentration in drinking water measured by the protocol used for regulatory purposes overestimates total intake). The investigators concluded that the evidence did not clearly demonstrate an overall effect on the population distribution of blood lead in the screening program. However, they cautioned that a population study is not suitable for establishing relationships between intake of lead from water and subsequent blood lead levels. They called for reduction in exposure from water as from other sources.[6]

A January 27, 2009 Washington Post article reports in detail on the 2001-2004 lead contamination in Washington D.C.’s drinking water. A study of children's blood levels sampled between 2001 and 2004 projects, on the basis of a model, a higher incidence of blood lead in very young DC children that is temporally correlated with the time that lead in water was high. The results are consistent with expectations based on decades of prior scientific study regarding harm to very young children resulting from exposure to drinking water that contains high lead levels. The key finding: a projected 42,000 children have potentially been exposed to unsafe levels of lead in their drinking water since 2001. Study authors are Marc Edwards and Simoni Triantafyllidou (Virginia Tech), and Dana Best (Children's National Medical Center), whose work appears in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.[7]

This study is not universally accepted because the temporal pattern of blood lead levels do not match the time course of increase in lead concentrations in drinking water and because the study failed to take into account other sources of lead exposure, espcially an area of the city where housing was being rehabilitated at the time, a known source of exposure for children. However because of the attention given the story by the Post, the controversy over the 2007 study, and the lawsuit the Edwards paper has figured prominently in the issue. A series of studies done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which have similar issues, have been less prominent in the political discussion.

Edwards first documented elevated lead levels in Washington, D.C.’s drinking water in 2003. His data confirm that D.C.’s drinking water contained elevated lead levels from 2001 to 2003. The spike in lead levels occurred close upon the heels of a water treatment change of disinfection chemical, which is unexpectedly early for the time course of lead elevation seen in drinking water. The switch in disinfectant triggered the increase in the lead level of the city’s drinking water. WASA, almost uniquely, does not disinfect drinking water before distributing it. The Washington Aqueduct, an entity operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers, collects and disinfects water which WASA distributes to Washington DC and suburban customers and has the final authority over water disinfection and other treatment. The Washington Aqueduct began disinfecting Washington D.C.’s drinking water with chloramine instead of chlorine in November 2000. EPA and a number of municipal water utilities saw chloramine as having advantages over free chlorine in terms of distribution efficiently and improved aesthetics of taste and odor but the primary purpose was to reduce the formation of "disinfection byproducts" (DBPs), halomethanes formed by the itneraction of free chlorine and trace amounts of organic material in water. DBPs had been implicated, mostly in animal studies, as possibly contributing to cancer risk and the EPA had responded with the "Disinfection Byproduct Rule", a regulation requiring reduction of free chlorine in drinking water. The Washington Aqueduct was responding early to the Rule, which encouraged the susbstitution of chlorine with chloramine. However, few water quality experts at the time realized the potential for chloramine to degrade a protective film inside the pipes of both distribution networks and service to individual homes. The association was discovered by an investigator at EPA named Michael R. Shock. WASA and subsequently other US utilities found that substitution with chloramine had the unanticipated consequence of releasing lead from lead service lines (the pipes connecting houses to the water main, the water in which is free of lead) and other sources (meters and lead solder).

Edwards’ findings regarding children with elevated blood lead contradict statements made by D.C. health officials. Since 2004, D.C. health officials have acknowledged that the city’s drinking water contained elevated lead levels. However, these officials stated that they have found no evidence of negative health effects on the general public’s health.[8] A major dimension of this controversy has been the meaning of "unsafe". All parties to the controversy agree that the effects of lead are significant (at leas ton a population level) even at low levels of exposure, that the current CDC "level of concern" for blood lead levels (10 micrograms per deciliter) in children is not to be considered as a valid threshold for health effects, and that exposure to lead from all sources should be minimized.

On February 7, 2009, the Washington Post published an article calling into question the professional integrity of the lead author of the 2007 study. These allegations were refuted in June 2007 by a panel convened by the journal(unpublished but available on request from the editorial office of Environmental Health Perspectives, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences), which also proposed an erratum to deal with the minor issue of a sentence carried over into the final version. Unusually, in its report the panel went beyond its mandate and called into questions the appropriateness of statements from the editors that were quoted by the Post in the January article. [9][10] Guidotti and the authors stand by the data and findings in the 2007 study. [11]

[edit] Governance and funding

An eleven-member Board of Directors governs WASA. The District is represented by six Board Members. Prince George's County and Montgomery County each have two Board Members. Fairfax County has a single Board Member.

The Authority develops its own budget which is then included in the District budget. Together these two budgets are presented to Congress for approval.

WASA's finances are completely separated from the District's finances, in accordance with an agreement between the city and WASA, signed in 1996. In 2005 the city did not review the agreement that removed WASA's finances from the oversight of the District's Chief Financial Officer. The matter is now disputed.[12]

Usage fees (water and sewer bills), revenue bonds and Environmental Protection Agency grants pay for all operations, capital improvements and debt financing.

[edit] Statistics

  • Employees: 1,200 (FY 2003)
  • Service area: 725 square miles (1,880 km2)
  • Locations served: 130,000
  • Drinking water served: 135 million gallons a day
  • Customers: 2,000,000
  • Drinking water distribution
  • Sewers
  • Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant
    • Largest advanced wastewater treatment plant in the world[1]
    • 150 acres
    • Capacity: 370 million gallons per day
    • Peak capacity: 1.076 billion gallons per day.
  • Revenue sources
    • Federal, municipal and county governments: 38%
    • Commercial entities: 40%
    • DC residential customers: 17%

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b DC WASA. Washington, D.C. "About DC WASA: Overview." Accessed 2008-10-31.
  2. ^ Levin, Josh, “Plumbing the Depths”, Washington City Paper, October 18, 2002.
  3. ^ a b c Joseph Foti,"Lead in Our Water - A Washington, DC Mystery.", World Resources Institute. March 22, 2008.
  4. ^ Elissa Silverman, "Troubled Water", Washington City Paper, March 5, 2004.
  5. ^ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Blood Lead Levels in Residents of Homes with Elevated Lead in Tap Water – District of Columbia.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report , 2007, vol. 53, no. 12, pp. 268 – 270.
  6. ^ Guidotti, Tee L., et al. “Elevated lead in drinking water in Washington, DC, 2003–2004: The public health response.” Environmental Health Perspectives , 2007, vol. 115, pp. 695-701.
  7. ^ Edwards, Marc, and Triantafyllidou, Simoni, and Best, Dana (2009). “Elevated Blood Lead in Young Children Due to Lead-Contaminated Drinking Water: Washington, DC, 2001−2004.”, Environmental Science and Technology, January 27, 2009. doi:10.1021/es802789w.
  8. ^ Leonnig, Carol D (27 January 2009), "High Lead Levels Found in D.C. Kids: Numbers Rose During Water Crisis", Washington Post: A01, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012602402_pf.html 
  9. ^ Leonnig, Carol, "Lead Study Not Tainted by Utility, Panel Says," Washington Post, June 16, 2009.
  10. ^ DeBonis, Mike, “Embattled GWU Lead Researcher Responds,” DC City Paper, 20 February 2009.
  11. ^ Leonnig, Carol D (13 February, 2009), "Agency's Role Probed in D.C. Water Report Author May Have Given WASA Final Say in Paper on Lead", Washington Post: A01, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/12/AR2009021204081.html 
  12. ^ Mike DeBonis, "Water Not Under the Bridge", Washington City Paper, February 29, 2008

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Water_and_Sewer_Authority"