Worker Error at Treatment Plant Blamed for Capital ‘Water Alert’

The Army Corps of Engineers has blamed worker error at a Corps-operated treatment plant for this week’s “boil water alert” that affected a million residents of Washington and its suburbs.

A preliminary investigation found there was not “a proper and timely response” to increased levels of particles in the raw water from the Potomac River going into a water treatment plant, Col. Richard Capka of the Army Corps of Engineers said at a news conference Friday.

Capka said the Corps staff should have increased the amount of aluminum sulfate added to the water entering the plant. There was an increase in turbidity--the presence of solids in the raw water--following heavy rains. The aluminum sulfate causes the particles to fall to the bottom of treatment tanks.

Stanley Laskowski of the Environmental Protection Agency said at the news conference there were no signs of contamination in three samples of water taken from the plant Thursday. He said a second round of tests had to be conducted, and it was not known when those results would be reported.

The alert could be called off as early as today, however, if those tests are clean, officials said.

The EPA declared the alert Wednesday for most of the District of Columbia and parts of suburban northern Virginia, urging residents to boil cooking and drinking water for a minute as a precaution. About 100 homes in one suburban Maryland community were included in the affected area Thursday.