President Donald Trump didn’t just take his feud with Maryland governor and possible 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful Wes Moore into the gutter this week. He turned to the toilet.
In a series of social media posts Monday and Tuesday, Trump blasted Moore for what he deemed an inept response to a sewage spill that sent hundreds of millions of gallons of raw waste into the Potomac River beginning four weeks ago.
“There is a massive Ecological Disaster unfolding in the Potomac River as a result of the Gross Mismanagement of Local Democrat Leaders, particularly, Governor Wes Moore, of Maryland,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social, saying that it’s time for the federal government to step in. “I cannot allow incompetent Local ‘Leadership’ to turn the River in the Heart of Washington into a Disaster Zone.”
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president is worried that the Potomac River will carry the stench of excrement during the July 4 celebration of the country’s semiquincentennial that Trump has been planning since returning to office.
“He is worried about that. Which is why the federal government wants to fix it, and we hope that the local authorities will cooperate with us in doing so,” Leavitt said in response to a reporter’s question during the White House press briefing.
It’s not the first time Trump has turned poop into a political weapon. In fact, the president who complains regularly about low-flow toilet standards has a long list of scatological gripes that have become one of the few areas where his administration is seeking additional environmental protections as it aggressively rolls back dozens of climate, air and water pollution rules.
It was on the sewage-fouled beaches of San Diego that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin marked his first Earth Day as the nation’s top environmental regulator. The administration has put concerted effort into pressuring Mexico to do more to stem the tide of raw sewage pollution flowing across the border from Tijuana, which for years has dirtied beaches and sickened residents and Navy SEALs who train nearby.
And during Trump’s first term, it was San Francisco’s long-running sewer overflow problem that EPA targeted for enforcement after the president groused about the city’s large homeless population — a move that California leaders saw as politically charged.
Now as Trump feuds with Moore, the nation’s only Black governor, less than two weeks after excluding him from a White House dinner for the National Governor’s Association, the image of millions of gallons of raw sewage flowing into the nation’s capital offered another level of political punch altogether. The situation comes as Moore is pushing to redraw Maryland’s congressional lines to counter Trump’s red-state redistricting.
“It’s a great political issue. Nobody wants sewage in the water — that is true of Democrats and Republicans,” said Mae Stevens, a water infrastructure lobbyist who previously served as an environment staffer for Democratic former Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.
Asked about the president’s longstanding interest in sewage pollution, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said the administration would not allow “the failures of local and state Democrats to diminish the quality of life for millions of Americans.”
The source of the spill is the Potomac Interceptor sewer line, which partially collapsed Jan. 19 near Cabin John, Maryland, amid frigid winter temperatures, releasing nearly 200 million gallons of untreated wastewater in the first five days. Operating since constructed in 1964, the 54-mile line carries wastewater from D.C. suburbs as far away as Dulles Airport to a treatment plant in southern Washington.
DC Water, the utility that operates the line, has been making emergency repairs to the broken interceptor, but the effort will take four to six more weeks. After that, crews will need to get to work on an already-planned rehabilitation project, which could take a further nine or 10 months, DC Water spokesperson Sherri Lewis said.
Though the spill captured the nation’s attention only this week, local environmentalists have been sounding the alarm from the beginning.
“It’s certainly a big ecological problem and an incredible threat to public health to have raw sewage splashing around and on shorelines,” said Hedrick Belin, president of the Potomac Conservancy, a conservation group. “We don’t need partisan politics getting in the way. This crisis is just too serious.”
Officials in Maryland, which is technically responsible for the Potomac River, responded “within hours” of the initial spill, said Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Moore. But the interceptor falls under EPA’s regulatory purview, according to the governor’s office, accusing the agency that’s lost thousands of staff under Trump of failing to take action.
“For the last four weeks, the Trump Administration has failed to act, shirking its responsibility and putting people’s health at risk,” Moussa said in a statement. “Notably, the president’s own EPA explicitly refused to participate in the major legislative hearing about the cleanup last Friday.”
Zeldin shot back at that accusation on Tuesday afternoon.
“At no point in the lead up to today had DC Water or the state of Maryland requested EPA to take over their responsibilities, and EPA has continued to offer its full support to state and local leaders from the onset,” Zeldin said in a post on X.
Funding woes and ‘really poor infrastructure’
Water experts say the sewage spill is a symptom of a larger problem: Aging sewer pipes and water lines nationwide are in desperate need of repairs, but cash-strapped local governments are struggling to pay for them.
The Trump administration has repeatedly pushed to slash federal funding for water projects. Last year, the White House proposed a 90 percent cut to EPA’s State Revolving Funds, the water sector’s largest source of federal dollars. The Senate ultimately rejected the cut in a spending bill that Trump signed into law last month.
But extra water funding from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law is set to run out this fall, and experts warn of a coming funding cliff at the same time as extreme weather and AI data centers put more pressure on existing pipes, sewers and treatment plants.
“We’ve got really poor infrastructure. A lot of these pipes, especially on the East Coast, were built decades ago,” said Jon Mueller, a visiting associate law professor at the University of Maryland. “I think it’s unfortunate that it takes a disaster like this to get people to focus on the problem.”
It’s not yet clear how much the Potomac spill will cost, but the broader rehabilitation project for the interceptor sewer system’s “most vulnerable sections” is $625 million, said DC Water spokesperson Sherri Lewis. The utility has been coordinating with EPA, she added.
“Just last week, we hosted the Assistant Administrator for Water for a tour of the site and briefing on the project and the progress made to date,” Lewis said in a statement.
Although officials say the worst of the spill has been contained and that it has not impacted drinking water supplies, 243.5 million gallons of sewage overflows have been reported thus far.
Environmental advocates are worried about long-term implications for the river, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary and the subject of decades of cleanup efforts.
Earlier this month, University of Maryland researchers recorded extremely high concentrations of bacteria, including a strain that resists antibiotics, tied to the spill. By springtime, that could render parts of the water unsafe for boating, canoeing and fishing.
Dean Naujoks, who leads the environmental group Potomac Riverkeeper, said he hopes Trump’s involvement could improve what he described as a “botched” cleanup process by DC Water. But he cast blame as well on EPA, describing the agency as essentially missing in action.
“We can’t get a hold of [EPA]. I have no idea what they’re doing,” Naujoks said. “The squabble between Trump and Gov. Moore has focused more of the attention on accountability, which I think is a good thing.”
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