The Washington Aqueduct produces drinking water for
approximately one million citizens living, working, or visiting
in the District of Columbia, Arlington County, Virginia, and the
City of Falls Church, Virginia, and its service area. A division
of the Baltimore District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the
Aqueduct is a federally owned and operated public water supply
agency that produces an average of 180 million gallons of water
per day at two treatment plants located in the District of
Columbia. All funding for operations, maintenance, and capital
improvements comes from revenue generated by selling drinking
water to the three jurisdictions. The Corps of Engineers
designed, built, and, in 1859, began operating the Aqueduct.
Since then, the Corps has substantially expanded and improved
the capacity and function of the Aqueduct from its original
mission of supplying raw river water to a sparsely populated
District of Columbia to today’s mission of providing safe
drinking water to a much larger and more populo