As public health officials declared the end of a sewage contamination emergency in the Potomac River last month, scientists feared the waterway was still in distress.

More than 240 million gallons of human waste had poured into the river from a broken sewer main. Researchers went out in early March to sample the water, trying to see what damage had been done.

“The color is not good,” said Judy O’Neil, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, as she looked into churning brown water from the deck of the research vessel Rachel Carson.

Read more in the New York Times here.

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