Potomac — Most of the 5 million residents in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area have no idea that their drinking water comes from the Potomac River, said Hedrick Belin, president of the Potomac Conservancy.

“Until last week, the same could have probably been said for 300,000 residents in Charleston, W. Va.,” Belin added.

On Jan. 9, West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin informed the residents of nine counties, an estimated 300,000 people, that their tap water was contaminated. “West Virginians in the affected service areas are urged not to use tap water for drinking, cooking, washing or bathing,” Tomblin said.

A chemical leak just upriver from the water intake on the Elk River made the water suitable only for flushing toilets. For more than a week, schools and businesses were closed and residents lined up to buy bottled water or get water distributed in tanker trucks by the National Guard. Nearly two weeks later, pregnant women were still warned not to drink the water.

THE POTOMAC RIVER Water Filtration Plant on River Road in Potomac, operated by Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, extracts 100 million gallons of water a day from the Potomac River and delivers it to millions of people in the region.

Most of those people take for granted that when they turn on the tap the water that comes out is safe and pure.

“Absolutely. Out of sight, out of mind. That’s how we describe it,” said Jim Neustadt, director of communications and community relations with WSSC.

Could an incident like what happened in West Virginia jeopardize the water supply for millions of people?

“The answer is anything can happen anywhere, but we take many precautions,” said Neustadt. “You have to understand that this is a regional issue, you have Fairfax Water, you have Loudoun water, you have DC water. It is an issue that gets worked on regionally.”

That regional effort includes constant monitoring of the river.

“We can reassure the public that this is not something we haven’t thought about,” Neustadt said. “We take this very seriously.”

People should not take their drinking water for granted, said Curtis Dalpra, with the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin.

“Maybe the utilities make it too easy for us with how they do their work successfully and quietly,” said Dalpra. Perhaps an incident like this will help in getting people to understand how important the river is in their daily lives, he said.

“If there’s any silver lining to the incident in West Virginia, it’s that it keeps people focused on their drinking water,” Dalpra said. “People are accustomed to turning on their tap and expecting a clean safe product coming out, and they don’t think about it very much.”

THE ELK RIVER in West Virginia flows through a far more industrial area than the Potomac River does here.

But chemical spills are far from the only threat to the region’s drinking water.

“The greatest threat to the region’s water quality is polluted runoff,” said Belin. “This growing source of pollution is water that washes off the land after a rain storm, carrying sediment, excess nutrients and other toxins and contaminants directly into streams and rivers.”

Local activists have been pressing for action on water quality for decades, calling for restoration and preservation of the environment in the stream valleys.

Watts Branch is a stream which flows into the Potomac River just above the water filtration plant intake, bringing with it sediment and runoff. West Montgomery County Citizens Association would like to see investment in improving the water quality upstream in the Watts Branch as a way of improving water quality at the intake.

Maintaining a buffer of forest along streams and the river banks provides significant protection and improvement to water quality.

Belin calls forests and trees “nature’s Brita filters.”

MANY OF THE CONTAMINANTS that make their way into the river cannot be fully removed through the treatment process, including some antibiotics, chemicals in personal care products and many other drugs that go down the toilet, said Dalpra.

“A lot is not fully removed by waster water treatment, there are trace water elements,” Dalpra said. “These are substances that are present in parts per million and parts per billion.”

But it’s not safe to say our water sources are impervious to harms, he said.

Overall, the public has embraced the need for conservation, with water consumption and consequently revenue both declining for WSSC, said Neustadt.

But a bigger challenge is connecting citizens to the river so that they understand its importance, and consequently the importance of the environment, trees, forests and stream valleys.

“Polluted runoff can severely degrade water quality, wildlife habitat and fish populations in the Potomac’s tributaries and the main stem,” said Belin. “Too often we think about protecting the environment as something that only benefits trees, wildlife and fish. Keeping our lands and waters safe is most importantly about our right to safe drinking water, clean air and the legacy that we leave for our children and grandchildren.”

The future of water is so very important, agreed Neustadt.

“What do we have to do to keep our waters clean and healthy? There’s only so much water in this world. This is the same water the dinosaurs used,” said Neustadt.