LEONARDTOWN, Md. — The Potomac Riverkeeper says he is now confident that oysters farmed in St. Mary's County waters will be completely safe to consume, now that a lawsuit over a 2021 sewage spill linked to an illness outbreak is settled.
The spill incident in October 2021 left at least 20 people in Northern Virginia sick after eating oysters harvested from St. George's Creek.
MetCom, the utility that operates the wastewater system in St. Mary's County, notified Maryland’s Department of Environment of the 2021 spill after heavy rain and high tides overwhelmed pumps. But the state environmental agency failed to shut down oyster harvesting until it was too late.
The spills continued, despite scrutiny in the wake of the incident, according to a lawsuit filed by the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, state regulators and oyster harvesters. Seventy-six thousand gallons were released between December 2022 and June 10, 2024, according to the lawsuit.
Harvesters were forced to shut down their businesses twice during that period.
MetCom is now agreeing to a pending court order to complete $37 million in improvements already underway and to create a public alert system if it happens again. Also, MetCom will pay a quarter of a million in penalties, which includes a $125,000 to fund oyster restoration.
“The good thing about this lawsuit is it's fixing a lot of the protocols that happened that led to this incident," said Potomac Riverkeeper Dean Naujoks. "More importantly, it's fixing the sewage issue. MetCom is going to have to correct, and fix this sewage problem in their collection system, and update it so that it can handle sea level rise incidents, and then also put $125,000 of oysters back into the Potomac River."
Naujoks added that he would feel "very confident" about eating oysters again.
"I just did it recently out of the Potomac River, personally," he said.
Oyster harvesters in St. Mary’s are still pressing a separate lawsuit to compensate them for the financial harm that’s been done to their businesses in the wake of the illnesses in 2021 and subsequent shutdowns.