GET THE APPPower Outage Triggered Water Alert For 1.9M
An electrical failure at WSSC Water's largest treatment plant triggered an essential-water-only request for 1.9 million people. The alert ended after service stabilized, but the plant was still using a temporary internal electrical configuration.
A power outage at WSSC Water's Potomac Water Filtration Plant triggered an essential-water-only request for all 1.9 million customers in Montgomery and Prince George's counties. The utility asked people to shorten showers, stop outdoor watering, limit toilet flushing and delay dishwashing or laundry while crews worked to restore the plant.
The scale of the alert came from the plant's role in the system. WSSC says the Potomac facility supplies roughly 75% of its customers and normally produces between 100 million and 120 million gallons of drinking water per day. Its other plant remained operational, but WSSC said its output was not enough to meet average system demand by itself.
WSSC lifted the conservation request at 5 p.m. on September 30 after the distribution system returned to normal storage levels and power delivery stabilized. The utility said the plant was still operating under a temporary internal electrical configuration while crews worked toward a permanent repair. That makes this a resolved alert with an infrastructure lesson, not a current water restriction.
Throughout the incident, WSSC said the water remained safe and no boil-water advisory was issued. Customer conservation helped preserve stored water, protect firefighting capacity and avoid the need for a boil advisory while the treatment system recovered.
The practical takeaway is calm preparedness. Keep a reasonable supply of drinking water, know where your local utility posts alerts, and respond quickly when officials ask for conservation. A community can have water at the source and still lose treatment capacity when the power system behind the plant fails.