Maryland Gov. Wes Moore pushes back on Trump blaming him for massive sewage spill<\/a><\/p>\nNicholas said the spill occurred in a residential area on National Park Service land, where many people live nearby. She said the group has heard from people who were fishing in the days before a \u201cgiant ice storm\u201d and did not know about the spill, then became sick.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it probably wasn\u2019t the fish,\u201d Nicholas said. \u201cIt was probably the water they were in contact with when fishing.\u201d She added that the group is “pretty frustrated that it’s taken as long as it has to get those warnings out to people so that they can stay safe,” noting that the area near the spill includes a popular fishing spot.<\/p>\n
On whether the spill is contained, Nicholas said she would call it \u201cpartially contained\u201d because an effective bypass is in place, but she said calling it contained is \u201ca pretty big overstatement.\u201d She described the bypass as using smaller pipes than the original pipeline, which makes for a temporary but ultimately unsustainable solution. Nicholas said the bypass has reduced the amount of sewage entering the river, but she does not consider the situation fully contained because of the open-air canal and the risk of additional overflows.<\/p>\n
Nicholas also raised concerns about long-term impacts, saying repairs and replacement could take up to nine months, with a temporary fix expected sooner. She said the spill has caused \u201cstigma damage\u201d to the Potomac River, with an oyster hatching business and a blue catfish fishery among the businesses reporting negative impacts, despite their products being unaffected by the spill itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there\u2019s sewage all over the place right now on the banks of the river,\u201d Nicholas said, adding that she visited the area and \u201csterilized myself quite heavily before coming back into my house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicholas said cleanup will take time and that it will be a long process to restore the river\u2019s health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BALTIMORE (WBFF) \u2014 Clean water advocates urged officials to take stronger action on public health warnings after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-479324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}