Unknown Oily River Sheen Approaches D.C.

A mysterious sheen on the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., has water agencies monitoring for contamination and safeguarding against fallout for their drinking water supplies.

“Water agencies are monitoring a sheen that is floating down the Potomac River. The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission [WSSC] said the Potomac Water Filtration Plant has an intake where the plume is expected to reach. In an abundance of caution, a boom has been placed in the river to divert water flow away from the intake, and the intake has been closed until the plume passes,” NBC Washington reported.

“A spokeswoman for Fairfax Water said the utility switched to an underwater intake valve to avoid introducing the substance, which is floating on the river’s surface, to the water supply,” The Washington Post reported.

WSSC indicated that it did not anticipate negative consequences for drinking water, according to the NBC report. The plume is 30 feet wide and 60 feet long in some places. “The origin and makeup of the sheen is unknown, but early testing indicated it could be something similar to a hydraulic fluid or lubricant,” the report said.

First spotted in Maryland, the sheen appeared to be moving closer to Washington, D.C., as it made its way along the river.

“On a helicopter trip up the Potomac with local and federal officials, [John Emminizer, chief of emergency operations for the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment,] said the sheen was spotted just south of the Trump National Golf Club, about 10 miles downriver of the Dickerson Plant in Sterling, Va. It did not originate at the club, he said, and probably came from somewhere north of the power plant,” The Washington Post reported.

Emminizer said the exact makeup of the sheen remained unknown, but that it is “definitely a hydrocarbon,” which can range from jet fuel to wax, according to the report.

“It makes a pretty rainbow color in the water, but if you put out a boom, it’s so diluted that it won’t stick to the stuff designed to pick it up,” Emminizer said.

The origin of the sheen remained a mystery as the plume made its way down the river. But environmentalists are trying to understand what it is and where it came from.

The Potomac Riverkeeper Network “is offering $1,000 for information about whoever spilled an oily substance discovered as a brownish sheen in the Potomac River — pollution that D.C.-area water utilities are watching as it moves toward intake pipes for their drinking water treatment plants,” The Washington Post reported in an additional article.

For similar stories visit Water Online’s Source Water Contamination Solutions Center.