Washington, D.C
Aggressive Algae Bloom Clogged Water System, Prompting Boil Water Advisory in D.C. and Parts of Virginia – Inside Climate News
A severe algae bloom clogged equipment at one of the treatment facilities providing drinking water in the Washington region, forcing officials to declare a boil-water advisory on the night of July 3—as thousands of visitors arrived to celebrate Independence Day.
The advisory was lifted the morning of July 4. But the incident was an ominous sign of how warming water temperatures caused by climate change can disrupt essential civic services.
The algal blooms caused a drop in water supply at the Dalecarlia Water Treatment Plant on the Maryland-D.C. border. All water treatment operations were switched to the McMillan Treatment Plant in Northwest D.C. to ensure adequate supply of water, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) said in its July 3 advisory.
The disruption in water supplies affected the entire District of Columbia and parts of Arlington, Virginia, including the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery and Reagan National Airport. Among the blooms’ impact: increased turbidity, a measure of cloudiness in water.
The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) operates the treatment plants located in D.C. and supplied by the Washington Aqueduct, which collects, treats and pumps drinking water for nearly 1 million customers in Washington, Arlington County and other areas in northern Virginia.
Explore the latest news about what’s at stake for the climate during this election season.
The algae intruded at a time when demand for water was particularly high due to the influx of visitors and possible firefighting activities related to the annual fireworks display on the National Mall.
“DC Water issued a precautionary boil water advisory to protect public health and safety due to a sharp reduction in the volume of water being supplied by the Army Corps of Engineers’ Washington Aqueduct and due to the Aqueduct expressing concerns that they might be unable to comply with strict U.S. EPA water quality standards while simultaneously attempting to increase water supply volumes to levels adequate to meet DC Water’s customer demands,” said Sherri Lewis, senior manager of communications at DC Water, in emailed remarks. “The combined output of treated water from both of the Aqueduct’s plants was insufficient to meet DC Water’s water consumption demands.”
Lewis said the week of the July 4th holiday has historically been one of DC Water’s highest water demand days of the year.
Affected customers scrambled to stock up on bottled water supplies after the advisory was announced, quickly emptying out aisles in supermarkets and local stores.
“We had floating algae mats along the top of our sedimentation basin at our Dalecarlia Treatment Plant, which then washed into the filter building, clogging filters in the process,” said Cynthia Mitchell, a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The sedimentation portion of the water filtration process removes suspended particulates in water. In emailed comments to Inside Climate News, Mitchell said the situation at Dalecarlia led to a decrease in supply, while the McMillan Treatment Plant continued to operate under normal conditions.
“Our recent algae bloom was not a cyanobacterial harmful algae bloom—we had green algae which does not pose a risk to human health,” Mitchell added.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA, warns that “blooms of red tides, blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria can result in severe impacts on water quality, human health, aquatic ecosystems, and the economy.”
In the case of the July 3 event, it was the sheer amount of algae that caused problems. The region’s record-high temperatures are driving growth, and climate change is expected to worsen the situation, Mitchell said.
“Washington Aqueduct staff that have served for decades, including General Manager Rudy Chow with 40 years of experience in the water utility industry, agree the severity of algae blooms this summer is unprecedented,” Mitchell said.
DC Water’s Lewis said several other utilities that use the Potomac River as one of their water supply sources, such as Fairfax Water in Virginia and the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission in Maryland, encountered and successfully treated these same algal blooms.
Nitrogen, key fuel for algae, flows into water bodies from sewage overflows and runoff. Bill Dennison, a professor and vice president at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, said the Potomac River has historically had high levels of pollution from sewage but now agriculture and stormwater runoff is the biggest source of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
“Generally, both cyanobacteria and green algae form in the Potomac River,” Dennison said. “Fortunately, green algae don’t tend to be as toxic as cyanobacteria. But they’re not a pleasant addition to the environment and can clog the waterways … and produce bad taste in drinking water.”
Climate change contributes a one-two punch. More rain instead of snow in the winter leads to extra pollution runoff earlier in the season, Dennison said. And warming temperatures allow algae to bloom earlier in the summer than before.
DC Water officials said they are reviewing their actions and communications to the public about the July 3 event to determine what can be improved.
Lewis said that unlike the majority of other public water utilities, DC Water does not have a second source of water and is fully dependent on the Aqueduct to supply its needs. “It is also extremely unusual for a water utility serving a large metropolitan city not to also have direct responsibility for water supply and water treatment. DC Water will be reviewing the Aqueduct’s actions to determine if any changes are necessary to ensure proper notification steps are taken in a timely manner,” she said.
While greater D.C. avoided major calamity with this algae bloom, other cities haven’t been as lucky. In 2014, the water supply of Toledo, Ohio, had to be shut down because of a harmful algal bloom in Lake Erie, and the toxin associated with that algae could not be destroyed by boiling. Half a million people could not use water supplies for days. Agricultural runoff was later declared the cause of the ordeal.
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Aman Azhar
Reporter, Washington, D.C.
Aman Azhar is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who covers environmental justice for Inside Climate News with focus on Baltimore-Maryland area. He has previously worked as a broadcast journalist and multimedia producer for the BBC World Service, VOA News and other international news organizations, reporting from London, Islamabad, the United Arab Emirates and New York. He holds a graduate degree in Anthropology of Media from University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and an MA in Political Science from the University of the Punjab, and is the recipient of the Chevening scholarship from the UK government and an academic scholarship for graduate studies from the Australian government.
Washington, D.C
The director of the Congressional Budget Office—known for its gloomy national debt data—is very optimistic that a crisis will be avoided entirely | Fortune
Dr Phillip Swagel is an optimist, both by nature and when he looks at the U.S. economy.
This fact is perhaps at odds with what one might assume: Swagel is the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the nonpartisan agency that offers independent budgetary and economic analysis to Congress.
Very often—an inevitable occupational hazard—the subject of national debt and the interest the U.S. Treasury pays to maintain is its central focus. The numbers are eye-watering: Public debt stands at more than $39 trillion. The interest expense on that borrowing now exceeds $1 trillion a year. Indeed, the latest budget update from the CBO highlights that the government—according to preliminary estimates—paid out nearly $530 billion between October 2025, when the fiscal year starts, and March 2026. This equates to more than $88 billion in interest payments a month, or more than $22 billion a week.
The CBO’s figures are routinely cited by policymakers, think tanks, and lobbyists as alarming evidence that the U.S. needs to find a more sustainable fiscal path or risk dire straits.
Swagel doesn’t subscribe to the notion that the U.S. will face a crisis of its own making. His justification is simple: He was at the Treasury during the 2008 financial crisis, and joined the CBO months before the COVID pandemic began. He has watched as the U.S. economy, seemingly against all odds, has clawed its way out of economic crises before.
That’s not to say Swagel isn’t a staunch advocate of setting the U.S. on a more sustainable fiscal path—rather, he trusts the people in power to do so when the time comes.
Why the optimism?
Among those concerned about national debt are notable names: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also worried about federal spending and has endorsed a plan floated by Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren Buffett that would render members of Congress ineligible for reelection if they allow deficits to exceed 3% of GDP.
On the other hand, optimistic economists suggest that, despite the value of the debt, it’s not actually an issue: the bond market is holding steady, indicating a reliable market of buyers. Likewise, the U.S.’s own central bank buys huge swaths of the debt, meaning, in the simplest of layman’s terms, the economy can essentially print its own money. There are holes in this argument, not least the fact that Fed chairman nominee Kevin Warsh has suggested he would like to reduce the Fed’s balance sheet and may therefore be less inclined to finance borrowing.
Swagel’s positive outlook doesn’t rely on the argument that a crisis hasn’t happened yet, so therefore it never will: “[My optimism] is rooted in my experience,” Swagel tells Fortune in an exclusive interview in Washington D.C. “First being at Treasury during the financial crisis and seeing very difficult times and the country coming together with an effective response—not saying it’s perfect, lots of controversy—but it was effective.”
“The second thing is policymakers are smart, they’re thoughtful. Interacting with members of Congress makes me optimistic. I know you read about all the squabbles … I’m completely aware of this, but the policymakers that are thinking about these things are thoughtful and effective. Not necessarily always effective at passing legislation, but that’s part of our political system, it was set up to make it difficult ot pass legislation.”
Decisions on the horizon
Swagel’s optimism that Congress will be pushed into action will be tested sooner rather than later, likely at some point in the next six years, he told Fortune. This is partly due to the fact that, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) both Social Security and Medicare will become insolvent within that time period.
“Making progress to address the fiscal trajectory would be a positive for the U.S. economy,” Swagel said. “Credible steps would lead to lower interest rates that would make the subsequent adjustment easier, there is a reward to virtue. It’s a positive thing, we can’t go on [with] the scolding narrative. My sense is that members of Congress understand the fiscal situation, it’s not that everyone single one has looked at our one-pager of numbers and understands the debt to the third decimal point, but they understand something needs to be done.”
“It doesn’t have to be done immediately, but at some point reasonably soon.”
Swagel is of the opinion that bond investors haven’t increased risk premiums not because they’re not worried about a fiscal crisis, but because they have priced in preventative action from Congress—in his mind “a vote of confidence that my optimism is not misplaced.”
“As a country, we face up to these problems. It’s not happening now, I’m not sure it’s going to happen in the rest of this year or even the next year, or the next two years. But we will face up to it, and the market in some sense expects us to, because otherwise interest rates would be higher,” he explained.
The Cheesecake Factory
The role of the CBO, to some extent, is to provide policymakers with their options if and when they do choose to take action on federal deficits. It’s a menu not unlike the Cheesecake Factory, Swagel says: Large, inclusive of a range of modifications and options, and delivered without judgement.
“Right now it’s maybe a pick three, and you’re looking at a six or seven course menu,” joked Caleb Quakenbush, director of fiscal policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in an interview with Fortune. “The longer you delay, the more you’re gonna have to add to your tab, and those options become more expensive.”
Indeed, economists and analysts aren’t necessarily worried about the absolute level of government debt, rather the debt-to-GDP ratio. Depending on whom you ask, the debt-to-GDP ratio stands at around 122% of GDP at present. This measure demonstrates an economy’s spending versus its growth, and the risk associated with lending to a nation that isn’t growing fast enough to handle its spending. To rebalance that ratio, an economy could either cut spending or increase growth—the latter being by far the less painful option.
The growth option is becoming less feasible, Michael Peterson, CEO of fiscal think tank the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, told Fortune in an exclusive interview: “I think it requires government action because we’ve waited so long. We’ve added so many trillions, and the current deficit is so big at 6% that the level of growth you would need really exceeds what is feasible.
“Growth needs to be a part of it, but it’s sort of a vicious cycle. The longer we delay, the more debt we have, the slower growth is going to be. The more we get this under control, I think the greater optimism there is, interest rates go down, more growth comes from that. It’s sort of a virtuous or vicious cycle depending on your policy response.”
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Seventy-two veterans took a trip Saturday to our nation’s capital to visit memorials honoring their service in the armed forces.
This year marks the 12th trip to Washington, D.C. for Honor Flight Tallahassee.
Early Saturday morning, veterans and their guardians met to take a charter flight up to D.C.
Throughout the day, veterans were taken to the World War II memorial, as well as the Korean and Vietnam War memorials. The veterans also visited Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
More Tallahassee news:
The day ended with a wonderful welcome home celebration.
Our Jacob Murphey, Julia Miller, Taylor Viles, and Grace Temple accompanied the veterans, capturing moments from throughout the day.
The team will have live coverage from Washington, D.C. on Monday to share more from the day’s events.
We will continue to have coverage throughout the month of May, leading up to our Honor Flight special on Memorial Day.
To keep up with the latest news as it develops, follow WCTV on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Nextdoor and X (Twitter).
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4 things to know about the weather:
- Chances of rain in the morning
- Gusty Sunday
- Chilly Monday
- Temps will rise again through the work week
Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.
After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.
The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.
Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.
However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.
QuickCast
SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s
MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s
Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.
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