District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water)
Outcome
DC Water paid a $250,000 civil penalty (plus $1.7 million in supplemental environmental projects and $300,000 to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation) under a 2005 consent decree modified in 2015 to incorporate green infrastructure alternatives, extending the final compliance deadline to 2030 and targeting 90-98% reduction in combined sewer overflows across three District watersheds.
Details
District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority — CSO Long-Term Control Plan and Green Infrastructure Integration (2015)
Outcome: DC Water paid a $250,000 civil penalty plus $1.7 million in supplemental environmental projects and $300,000 to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation under its 2005 consent decree, which was modified in 2015 to incorporate green infrastructure into the long-term CSO control strategy and extend the final compliance deadline to 2030, targeting a 90-98% reduction in combined sewer overflows to District waterways.
The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) operated a combined sewer system across much of Washington, D.C. — particularly in older sections of the city — where stormwater and sewage share the same pipes. During wet weather events, combined sewer overflows discharged untreated mixed flows to Rock Creek, the Anacostia River, and the Potomac River, violating NPDES permit conditions and Clean Water Act Sections 301 and 402.
The original consent decree was entered in 2005, requiring a long-term CSO control plan with traditional gray infrastructure — primarily a system of large underground storage tunnels capable of capturing combined sewer flows during peak wet weather events. In 2015, EPA, DOJ, and DC Water agreed to modify the decree to allow DC Water to incorporate substantial green infrastructure — rain gardens, bioswales, permeable pavement, green rooftops, and other stormwater retention and infiltration measures — into the compliance program, replacing a portion of the planned gray tunnel capacity with distributed green infrastructure that achieves equivalent or better environmental performance at lower capital cost.
The modified consent decree extended the final compliance deadline from 2025 to 2030, recognizing that implementing and verifying green infrastructure performance across a built urban environment takes additional time compared to conventional tunnel construction. The anticipated 90-98% CSO reduction across the Anacostia, Rock Creek, and Potomac River watersheds represents one of the most ambitious CSO control targets in any major city consent decree.
Primary Source: District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority Clean Water Settlement | US EPA
How Crucible Prevents This
DC Water's consent decree modification in 2015 to incorporate green infrastructure reflects a broader national shift in CSO control philosophy — from purely gray infrastructure (tunnels and storage) to integrated green-gray approaches. The modification process, which required demonstrating equivalency between green infrastructure performance and the original gray infrastructure compliance plan, is an institutional decision-making process that Crucible's decision log would document, preserving the environmental equivalency analysis and regulatory correspondence that justify each green infrastructure project selection. Without this documentation, future administrations inherit consent decree green infrastructure programs without the technical rationale that supports each project choice.
Don't let this happen to your organization. See how Crucible works.
See How Crucible Works