Standing at the public-comment microphone on Tuesday, a Charlotte Hall resident told the Charles County Commissioners that the county is “signing up” for risks that deserve serious scrutiny. David Heidelbach, who raised the county’s groundwater limits at a 2023 commissioners’ meeting, said the county’s reliance on the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, known as WSSC Water, ties it to a Potomac River he described as increasingly strained and less reliable.
The comments came on Oct. 6, near the end of a long public-comment session, and they are one resident’s view, taken from the meeting’s auto-generated transcript. One commissioner said the county should have a say in how WSSC water is managed. Several of Heidelbach’s specific claims can be checked against public records, and some cannot.
Heidelbach said the county’s own messaging describes the WSSC agreement as part of a diversification effort to balance groundwater withdrawal and recharge. That much matches the county’s description. Charles County’s public water supply page lays out a WSSC Water-Waldorf Interconnection Project that would link the Waldorf water system to WSSC’s system in Prince George’s County, with stated goals of strengthening supply, improving water quality and supporting growth. At a March 17 budget work session, planning staff described the same project as a way to deliver treated surface water to Waldorf and reduce dependence on groundwater, alongside a future treatment plant.
Heidelbach argued that the real problem is not that water is running out but that demand will outrun supply “very soon.” The state’s monitoring shows why groundwater is a live question without proving his timeline. The Maryland Geological Survey’s Charles County well network reports gradual declines in the Magothy aquifer, an overall declining trend in the Upper Patapsco, and steady declines in the Patuxent, with some wells in western Charles falling about 5 feet a year. The Maryland Department of the Environment says it is prohibited from allowing drawdown below the 80 percent management level, and reports that Lower Patapsco allocations in Charles have been cut by nearly 5 million gallons per day since 2007, with a declining trend recently resuming. Neither document predicts a shortfall date.
On the Potomac, his account holds up in part. He said the river hit historic lows earlier this year. In June, the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin said flow had fallen to “130-year lows for this time of year” as the region’s Drought Coordination Committee declared a Drought Watch, a status that the commission’s page says remains in effect even though streamflow had returned to the normal range by early September. The Chronicle reported in April that flow at Little Falls was near the lowest on record for the date. Those are lows for a point on the calendar rather than all-time lows, and upstream backup reservoirs were above 99 percent full in June.
His figure for WSSC’s size is off. Heidelbach said WSSC has more than 5 million customers. WSSC says it serves 1.9 million customers. The larger number matches the more than 5 million people across Maryland, Virginia and the District who depend on the Potomac through WSSC, the Washington Aqueduct and Fairfax Water, according to a study announcement by the regional commission. WSSC also does not rely only on the river. It says its Potomac plant supplies about 70 percent of its drinking water and its Patuxent plant about 30 percent, and its capital plan lists about 10.4 billion gallons of usable storage in its two Patuxent reservoirs.
The backup-water claim is better supported. Heidelbach said the region has about one day of backup water and no other source. A WSSC spokesperson told WJLA that “this region has about one day worth of backup water,” and a regional water official said upstream reservoirs are “not as helpful” in a contamination event. WSSC, Fairfax Water and the Army Corps of Engineers have begun a two-year, $25 million Secure the Source study of options that could provide several weeks of backup supply, including quarry storage and treated wastewater from DC Water’s Blue Plains plant. That appears to be what Heidelbach meant when he mentioned heavily treated discharge from “blue planes,” and he attributed the idea to Steve Bieber, whom WJLA also quotes as the water resources director at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
Other claims could not be checked. Heidelbach said an earlier county project report put the water effort a year behind schedule, left out a desalination plan and contained dollar figures that did not match, and he said he wanted commissioners to ask staff about expected billing increases, the cost of WSSC water, pumping and treatment, and contingency plans. The county page lists sections for the interconnection’s timeline and funding, but the Chronicle could not retrieve their contents, and the county’s most recent status report was not available for review. The Chronicle also did not verify a county groundwater program he said he had watched.
One detail is easy to miss. The public system serving Charlotte Hall itself is run by the St. Mary’s County Metropolitan Commission, and its 2025 water-quality report says it draws on wells in the Aquia and Patapsco aquifers. The WSSC interconnection the county describes is for the Waldorf system. Heidelbach did not say during the comment which supply serves his home.
Commissioners responded after the public comments ended. One commissioner said water consumption “is constantly a discussion point” and described touring county wastewater plants, including the Cliffton facility, where treated water is discharged to the river under a state permit; the commissioner asked whether it could be reused for agriculture or fire service. That commissioner said that if the county keeps buying from WSSC, “we should have a seat at the table,” because without one the utility could “dictate our water consumption.” The commissioner said the policy questions would come back in public. A second commissioner told Heidelbach to keep working with county planning staff, called a recent staff presentation on county supply a good one, and said growth outside the town of La Plata is limited.
The timing matters. Only a few meetings remain for this board, and staff said earlier in the meeting that the next board takes its oath Dec. 1, as reported in the Chronicle’s coverage of a separate resident’s comments. Commissioners meet next on Oct. 20 and 21. The same day, the board approved a Waldorf sewer capacity agreement that shows how much of the county’s growth planning runs through shared utility lines, and commissioners also heard residents press the data center question, where water use was one of the concerns raised.
