WSSC Water plans $11.8 million in electrical upgrades at the Potomac Filtration Plant after a power failure forced nearly two million customers to restrict water use.

The utility's leaders testified before the Montgomery County Council on Monday, Oct. 12, detailing the scope of the problem at the River Road facility, Fox 5 reported. The plant supplies drinking water to about 75% of WSSC's customers across Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

WSSC General Manager and CEO Kishia Powell told council members the Sept. 29 outage confirmed what the utility already knew about the plant's aging electrical systems. Powell said the team has identified specific issues but that the broader power system is as old as the plant itself.

"We're dealing with original equipment," Powell testified, according to Fox 5.

The incident proved the plant has fragile power systems and needs more redundancy, Powell said. She called for a shift in spending priorities, saying WSSC has focused too heavily on water main reconstruction and not enough on its facilities.

WSSC's preliminary fiscal year 2028 budget includes $585.5 million for water infrastructure, according to Fox 5.

Rate increases likely

Council President Natali Fani-González said rate hikes will likely be unavoidable to pay for the upgrades. She called infrastructure investment a "must," not a choice, and said the council does not have the luxury of ruling out future rate increases.

The cost will strain ratepayers, Fani-González acknowledged. But the alternative is worse.

Transportation and Energy Committee Chairman Evan Glass said the outage revealed vulnerabilities beyond what residents might expect from a water utility. An electrical failure, not a broken pipe, triggered a crisis that lasted two days.

Officials at the hearing also called on the federal government to increase funding for water infrastructure rather than leaving the full cost to local ratepayers.

What happened Sept. 29

The Potomac Filtration Plant draws water from the Potomac River and produces 100 to 120 million gallons of drinking water per day. One of the plant's two electrical feeds was offline for scheduled Pepco maintenance when the second feed experienced what Powell called a "power blip" on the morning of Sept. 29, Bethesda Magazine reported.

External power was restored around noon that day. But internal electrical problems inside the plant prevented a full restart until about 3:45 p.m. The essential-water-use advisory remained in effect for all 1.9 million WSSC customers until the evening of Sept. 30.

Pepco said the ongoing issue was due to WSSC equipment, not the external power supply, according to Bethesda Magazine.

The plant's backup, the Patuxent Water Filtration Plant, produces about 90 to 95 million gallons per day. That falls well short of the system's average daily demand of roughly 170 million gallons.

Broader infrastructure concerns

The Sept. 29 failure was not the first warning. At the 2026 Potomac River Conference in Poolesville on Sept. 11, speaker Katie Foreman said the region has neglected water infrastructure for decades.

"We saw a lot of infrastructure investment about 40, 50, 60 years ago, but we really haven't seen substantial investment since," Foreman said at the conference, as Bethesda Magazine reported.

The council hearing took place as members review WSSC's upcoming budget. No date for a council vote on the budget or rate changes has been announced.