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The spill was caused by a 72-inch (183-centimeter) diameter sewer pipe that collapsed late Monday, shooting sewage out of the ground and into the river. DC Water spokesperson John Lisle said the utility estimates the overflow at about 40 million gallons (about 150 million liters) each day — enough to fill about 66 Olympic-size swimming pools — but it's not clear exactly how much has spilled into the river since the overflow began.

“Oh, my god, the smell is horrific,” said Dean Naujoks, the Potomac Riverkeeper and part of an environmental nonprofit. “It’s such high concentrations of sewage that just grabbing a sample is a public health risk."

Associated Press video from the scene showed signs posted near the river that read “DANGER” and “Raw Sewage” and warned people not to enter the area. Naujoks and another man donned protective gloves to take samples of water from the river to test for E. coli and other bacteria. Small bits of debris could be seen floating in some of the sample bottles.

The spill occurred in Montgomery County, Maryland, along Clara Barton Parkway, which hugs the northern edge of the Potomac River near Chesapeake and Ohio Canal ��ɫtv Historic Park.

Crews are removing lock gates on the C & O Canal and will set up pumps to divert the sewage into the canal, rerouting it away from the river and back into the sewage system downstream. The pumps have enough capacity to capture all of the sewage flow in dry weather, said Lisle, but they could be overwhelmed by a surge in stormwater. Crews will work through the weekend, when a bad winter storms is expected, Lisle said, and they hope to have the bypass set up by Monday.

The spill does not impact drinking water, which is a separate system, DC Water said.

Naujoks said the spill is happening at time when the river is low. He went out to look at it Wednesday and was “kind of stunned.”

“Sewage is just bubbling up like a small geyser, maybe 2, 3 feet into the air,” he said. “Sewage water is running in every direction.”

The District of Columbia Department of the Environment did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including whether it is testing the river’s water.

DC Water knew the pipeline was deteriorating, and rehabilitation work on the section surrounding the break began in September. It was expected to be completed in April. Repair work on additional “high priority” sections of the pipeline is expected to start later this year.

The pipeline, called the Potomac Interceptor, was first installed in the 1960s.

There's a huge funding gap for water infrastructure in the U.S., said Gary Belan, a senior director with American Rivers, an environmental organization that advocates for clean waterways.

“I know a lot of the wastewater folks are trying to catch up as best they can, but this is something we see and will continue to see, where these pipes fail and these massive sewage dumps occur," Belan said. “This is why we can't defer maintenance of our wastewater infrastructure. Too often, we're dependent on these disasters to prod us forward.”

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, speaking at a press conference declaring a snow emergency for the impending storm, said authorities there were aware of the sewage spill “but I can’t give you an intelligent response right now.” She said D.C. officials would be more forthcoming as soon as they could.

��ɫtvly, hundreds of billions in infrastructure investment is needed over the next two decades for clean water problems like aging sewer pipes. , it can lead to backups into homes and regular flooding.

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Associated Press journalist Gary Fields contributed to this report.

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