If swimming in the Potomac River is on your bucket list for whatever reason, it SEEMED like you might have a chance of doing it, without getting a nasty bacterial infection.
In 2024, the “Washington Post” ran an article titled, “We might be able to swim in the Potomac soon. Really.” Swimming in D.C.’s waters has been illegal since 1971, due to the high levels of bacteria from human fecal matter.
So, things looked like they were improving. But not anymore.
There’s currently a “small geyser” of poop water flooding into the Potomac, thanks to last week’s collapse of a sewer line carrying wastewater from Virginia and Maryland.
Drinking water isn’t affected, but it’s still super gross.
And the “small geyser” isn’t THAT small. An estimated 40 million gallons of untreated sewage is spilling into the Potomac daily, enough to fill about 66 Olympic-size swimming pools. That’s been going on for about a week, so it could be around 300 million gallons overall. It’s also bubbling two to three feet up in the air, hence the geyser comparison.
A water sample taken near the site of the rupture found high levels of E. coli, about 12,000 TIMES HIGHER than the recommended limit for human contact. No thanks.
(Washingtonian / ARL Now / WUSA-9)
