D.C. lifted an advisory steering residents away from the Potomac River on Monday, six weeks after a pipe collapsed and spilled more than 240 million gallons of sewage into the waterway.
The spill, which was largely contained by a fix installed in the week after it began, temporarily spiked levels of E. coli and other disease-causing pathogens near the spill site and downstream in D.C. waters, according to testing by local authorities and University of Maryland scientists. But water quality levels in D.C. have since returned within limits for safe recreation, aside from typical and expected bumps in bacteria levels following rain and snow, according to the D.C. government’s health and environmental agencies.