What a River Can’t Invoice You For

The Anacostia River has a history that makes what Gilbane did feel personal. For decades, the Anacostia was one of the most polluted urban rivers in America. Communities along its banks, predominantly Black and low-income neighborhoods in Southeast D.C. and Prince George’s County, Maryland, fought for generations to clean it up. They organized, lobbied, held government agencies accountable, and slowly, painfully, began to see results. Sediment loads fell. Fish returned. Kids started being able to touch the water again without health advisories blaring in the background.

Then a company with $6 billion in annual revenue, incorporated in Rhode Island, took on a high-profile public redevelopment contract for a historic D.C. landmark and let construction debris, sediment, and concrete washout drain toward that same river. The silt fencing was torn. The concrete bins were full and leaking. The gravel pads at the site exits were so degraded that bare soil was exposed, meaning every truck leaving the site was carrying sediment onto the surrounding streets, where rain would eventually carry it into the storm drain, and from there, into the Anacostia.

Nobody in the neighborhoods downstream voted on this. Nobody downstream got a check. The $39,500 fine Gilbane agreed to pay does not go to the Anacostia watershed. It goes to the federal government. The river gets nothing. The communities who spent decades winning those slow, hard environmental gains get nothing. The damage to sediment ecology, to macroinvertebrates, to fish spawning habitat, to water clarity, does not come with a receipt that the legal system can process.

There is also something specific about what the McMillan site is. The McMillan Slow Sand Filtration Site was built in the early 1900s as one of the first public water treatment facilities in American history. It was the reason D.C. had clean drinking water. It was a feat of civic engineering that literally saved lives. The site is surrounded by communities that have lived next to it for generations. When you take a project at a place like that and let it become a source of water pollution through negligence, you are not just violating a permit. You are inverting the entire reason the site exists.

The people most harmed by stormwater pollution are never the ones who ran the construction site. They are the people who fish the Anacostia. The people who use the riverbanks for recreation. The children who grew up hearing that the river was finally getting better. For them, there is no consent agreement. There is no 30-day payment window. There is just the river, still carrying whatever got through.

Seven Violations, Seven Ways They Failed the Permit

These are direct quotes and factual statements from the EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Docket No. CWA-03-2026-0002, filed with the EPA Region 3 Regional Hearing Clerk on January 26, 2026. Nothing below is paraphrased.

Who Actually Pays for This

Environmental Degradation

Stormwater from the McMillan site discharged into the D.C. MS4, which feeds directly into the Anacostia River. The documented violations created multiple pathways for construction pollutants to reach that waterway.

• Collapsed and torn silt fencing along Channing Street NW and the corner of North Capitol Street NW left exposed construction soil with no effective barrier between it and the storm drain system during any rain event.
• Erosion channels were physically observed by EPA inspectors at the corner of First Street NW and Channing Street NW, documenting that sediment-laden water was already actively moving off the site through inadequately stabilized slopes.
• A leaking concrete washout bin released highly alkaline concrete washout material, which is toxic to aquatic invertebrates and fish, into the surrounding ground with a direct pathway to stormwater runoff.
• Degraded gravel pads with no underlying filter fabric at both site exits allowed construction sediment to be tracked onto public roads, where subsequent rain events carry it into the MS4 and onward to the Anacostia.
• The Anacostia River is listed as a federally designated “waters of the United States,” a designation that carries legal protections the permit violations directly undermined. The river has been subject to long-term restoration efforts because of its documented history of sediment pollution and contamination.

Public Health

Construction stormwater pollution carries documented public health consequences for communities that rely on urban waterways for recreation, subsistence fishing, and psychological wellbeing.

• Sediment runoff from construction sites carries heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, and biological contaminants that bind to fine particles and accumulate in river sediment, where they enter the food chain through bottom-feeding organisms and the fish that consume them.
• Concrete washout material is highly alkaline (pH 11-13) and lethal to fish and aquatic insects at low concentrations. A leaking washout bin, documented at the McMillan site, is a direct toxicity pathway to any downstream water body.
• The Anacostia River corridor serves communities that have historically had limited access to other green recreation spaces. Degraded water quality in the Anacostia translates directly into degraded health outcomes for those communities, including reduced access to safe recreation and increased stress from environmental degradation.
• Subsistence fishing on the Anacostia is documented among low-income residents and immigrant communities in the D.C. region. Increased sediment and pollutant loads from construction runoff contribute to fish tissue contamination, meaning those communities bear a direct dietary health risk.

Economic Inequality

The financial penalty Gilbane paid is so small relative to the scale of the company and the project that it functions as a cost of doing business, not a deterrent. The economic burden of the violations falls elsewhere.

• The $39,500 fine is the entirety of Gilbane’s financial accountability for seven Clean Water Act violations covering a 29.75-acre site over more than two years. There is no restitution to the Anacostia watershed, no remediation fund, and no payment to affected downstream communities.
• Gilbane Building Company operates at a multi-billion-dollar scale. A fine of $39,500 represents a fraction of a fraction of a single project’s budget and has no structural deterrent effect on future compliance decisions at sites of this size.
• The communities along the Anacostia, which are disproportionately Black and lower-income, bear the environmental and health costs of degraded water quality without any financial compensation. The fine money goes to the federal government, not to a watershed restoration fund or a community health program.
• The McMillan Slow Sand Filtration Site redevelopment is a publicly contracted project. D.C. taxpayers are the client. They paid for a construction manager that violated federal environmental law throughout the project, and they receive no refund or penalty rebate when that contractor is fined by a separate federal agency.
• Small contractors and individual operators in D.C. face the same NPDES permit requirements as Gilbane. A $39,500 fine would be financially devastating to a small firm. For a company of Gilbane’s scale, it is an accounting entry.

All Seven Violations at a Glance

Seven counts under the 2022 Construction General Permit, all identified at a single inspection on November 9, 2023, all violations of the Clean Water Act.

What the Permit Required vs. What Gilbane Delivered

The 2022 Construction General Permit is not ambiguous. It specifies exactly what must be installed, maintained, and documented. Here is what the permit required at the McMillan site, and what the EPA found instead.

The Price of Poisoning a River, According to the EPA

The People Who Signed Off and the Steps You Can Take

Gilbane Building Company is headquartered at 1100 North Glebe Road, #1000, Arlington, Virginia. The following individuals were named in the EPA’s enforcement documents and were served with the Consent Agreement and Final Order directly.

• Tyler Swartzwelder, SVP and D.C. Business Leader, Gilbane Building Company. He was served with the consent agreement at TSwartzwelder@GilbaneCo.com.
• Kristin E. Protas, VP and Deputy General Counsel, Gilbane Building Company. She was served at KProtas@GilbaneCo.com and is listed as the respondent’s legal contact for penalty payment and final order service.
• The consent agreement was signed on behalf of the EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division by Acting Director Andrea Bain on January 21, 2026, and by Assistant Regional Counsel Ryan Stephens on January 23, 2026.
• The Final Order was issued by Regional Judicial Officer Jeffrey Nast on January 26, 2026.

Regulatory Watchlist

• EPA Region 3 The enforcement authority for this case. EPA Region 3 covers D.C., Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. This is the body that conducted the inspection and issued the penalty. Their Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division can be contacted directly to ask about ongoing permit compliance at Gilbane-managed sites.
• EPA National The NPDES Construction General Permit program is a federal program. The EPA’s enforcement tracking database (ECHO: Enforcement and Compliance History Online) is publicly searchable and shows permit violations and penalty histories for any facility. Search Gilbane Building Company or permit number DCR10009U.
• D.C. DOEE The Washington, D.C. Department of Energy and the Environment was given prior notice of this EPA action on July 24, 2025, under CWA Section 309(g)(l). DOEE has its own stormwater and construction permit oversight authority and can be asked to conduct independent monitoring of Gilbane’s active D.C. project sites.
• DOJ The EPA’s consent agreement explicitly reserves the right for the Attorney General to bring civil action in federal court if Gilbane fails to pay or if new information reveals false representations were made during the settlement process.

What You Can Do Right Now

• Search the EPA ECHO database at echo.epa.gov for Gilbane Building Company to see the full compliance history across all of their active construction sites. Share what you find with local watershed organizations and elected officials.
• Contact the Anacostia Riverkeeper, a D.C.-based organization that monitors the Anacostia River for illegal discharges and pollutant sources. They operate a hotline and can act on reported violations faster than federal agencies. Report any construction site runoff you observe near D.C. waterways directly to them.
• File public comments with the D.C. DOEE and EPA Region 3 any time Gilbane applies for a new construction permit or Notice of Intent in the D.C. area. The CWA requires public notice before final permit coverage is granted. Comments from community members are part of the legal record.
• Support local environmental justice organizations in the Anacostia watershed, including Washington Interfaith Network, Earth Conservation Corps, and community groups in Ward 7 and Ward 8, which bear the greatest environmental burden from Anacostia River degradation. They do the on-the-ground work that no federal agency has the capacity or incentive to do.
• Ask the D.C. Council to include environmental compliance history as a mandatory evaluation criterion in any future public construction contracts. A contractor that violated federal clean water law on a D.C. public project should face contract consequences, not just an EPA accounting entry.