11/17/2025
Roughly 1.7 million gallons of untreated sewage flowed into theJones Falls last week , according to the Maryland Department of the Environment. That’s more than 300,000 gallons over the initial estimate.
DPW confirmed the overflow event around noon Wednesday near the 2200 block of Huntingdon Avenue, an area in Re*****on north of the Streetcar Museum on Falls Road. Officials said hundreds of thousands of gallons of untreated sewage escaped through a manhole and travelled down a storm drain, which emptied the waste into the Jones Falls.
Under a state and federal consent decree, Baltimore public works officials anticipate that they will have to spent $2 billion to fix these overflows by the end of the decade, but millions of gallons of sewage still escape the system each year. The city’s Department of Public Works wants to extend the deadline for compliance with its sewage consent decree by 16 years, until 2046.
MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said Friday that city officials had constructed a bypass that has prevented more sewage from escaping. The city believes a broken pipe may have resulted in the overflow, according to Apperson, but the cause of the break remains under investigation.
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Reporting by Adam Willis.
Video by Krishna Sharma.
