The mission of Washington Aqueduct is to collect, purify, and pump an adequate supply of portable water to the distribution system managed by the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water), Arlington County, and Fairfax Water Authority, in Virginia.
The agency plans to fulfill its mission by achieving the following strategic goals:
- Provide an adequate supply of high quality potable water;
- Provide potable water at an equitable, economical rate that covers all costs; and
- Protect the drinking water consumer from both microbial risk and adverse health effects due to chemicals in the drinking water.
Washington Aqueduct owns and operates intake facilities on the Potomac River at Great Falls and Little Falls, Maryland. Washington Aqueduct also owns and operates two 10-mile gravity conduit systems with a combined 200 million gallon per day (mgd) capacity, a 525-mgd raw water pumping station and transmission system, two major treatment plants with 320-mgd capacity, three booster pumping stations, a 480-mgd finished water pumping station, seven finished storage reservoirs, and many large diameter transmission mains.
Washington Aqueduct is owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is governed by a Wholesale Customer Board. It sells water to three wholesale customers: DC Water, Arlington County, Virginia, and Fairfax Water Authority, in Virginia.
In FY 2014, Washington Aqueduct pumped 47.9 billion gallons of purified water to its customers, a decrease of 0.6 percent from FY 2013. In Fiscal Years 2015 and 2016, Washington Aqueduct projects the production and supply of water to its customers to continue the trend of decreasing by approximately one half to three percent per year.