An historic sewage spill along the Potomac River and the struggle to contain it are raising

alarms after a major sewer line collapsed late last month, sending over 240 million gallons

of waste into the water. For nearly a week, raw sewage flowed directly into the river before

it could be diverted to a treatment facility. Yet reports of

intermittent spills have continued into February and repairs are expected to take more than a month.

Public health experts say it could be one of the largest sewage spills in American history. For more,

I'm joined by Hedrick Beelen. He's president of the Potomac Conservancy. Thanks for being here.

Appreciate the opportunity. So let's just start with the obvious question here. How polluted

is this water after all of that sewage spilled for as long as it did? What do we know?

Well, it was certainly unprecedented in terms of the amount of sewage going into the Potomac

River, which is our nation's river over just a week. And water quality sampling efforts have shown astronomical levels of pollution

well, well above the EPA guidelines for what is safe for humans to touch.

And so, you know, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to address this,

both in terms of the river health, but also the remediation that that needs to be done to address this, both in terms of the river

health but also the remediation.

It's going to be needed to ultimately restore the area to a place where people can splash

around safely.

Before we get to people in the water, what are some of the bigger environmental concerns?

What are you looking at?

Well, I think, you know, at macro level, the good news is over decades, the Potomac River's

gotten a lot better.

We come out with a river report card every couple of years, and the Potomac's clearly

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