{"id":473744,"date":"2026-02-14T04:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T04:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/473744\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T04:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T04:09:10","slug":"sewage-spill-near-washington-may-be-largest-in-u-s-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/473744\/","title":{"rendered":"Sewage spill near Washington may be largest in U.S. history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published on Feb. 13, 2026, 8:59 PM<\/p>\n

The spill has dumped nearly 1 billion litres of wastewater into the Potomac River since the middle of January<\/p>\n

A large sewer line collapse near Washington, D.C., has dumped more than 900 million litres (243 million gallons) of wastewater into the Potomac River basin over the past several weeks.<\/p>\n

This is one of the largest wastewater spills in American history.<\/p>\n

RELATED: More than half of the world’s rivers impacted by human activity<\/a><\/p>\n

Major wastewater spill near Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

The incident began on Jan. 19 when a large sewer line known as the Potomac Interceptor (PI) broke beneath a roadway along the Potomac River about 14 km upstream from the heart of Washington, D.C. The break released a steady stream of untreated wastewater into the local environment.<\/p>\n

DC Water said in a release<\/a> on its website that \u201cthe PI carries about 60 million gallons [227 million litres] of wastewater daily\u201d from as far away as Washington-Dulles Airport.<\/p>\n

\"Washington<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO: The world is officially in its water bankruptcy era<\/a><\/p>\n

Wastewater continued flowing from the broken pipe for five days until crews were able to implement a bypass system.<\/p>\n

Officials estimate that more than 900 million litres (240 million gallons) of wastewater have spilled into the environment, including the river itself, since the initial break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on Feb. 13, 2026, 8:59 PM The spill has dumped nearly 1 billion litres of wastewater into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,77,8568,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-473744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-international","12":"tag-pollution","13":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}