Three million gallons of sewage leak into Kansas River

TOPEKA – Topeka officials are encouraging anyone using the Kansas River to take precautions after an equipment failure allowed 3 million of gallons of raw sewage to seep into the waterway.

Water Pollution Control general manager Bob Sample says the leak began about 1 p.m. Friday when the South Kansas River pump station had a power outage. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports it wasn’t discovered until noon Sunday when an operator noticed unusually low flows at a wastewater treatment plant.

Sample says the leak went unnoticed because it was the weekend, and because a backup generator also failed and didn’t send notification to a monitoring system.

The city on Tuesday said it still didn’t know what caused the malfunction. Sample says it’s the largest Topeka overflow he has seen.

This story was originally published April 29, 2015 at 7:11 AM with the headline "Three million gallons of sewage leak into Kansas River."