Hundreds of thousands of gallons of partially treated sewage spilled into the Russian River County Sanitation District Treatment Plant property last Friday as a storm rolled through the area and knocked out power for a few hours. 

Starting late Friday night and continuing into the early morning hours of Saturday, the power outage combined with a large influx of stormwater into the treatment plant to produce a 277,000-gallon spill of “secondary treated wastewater,” according to officials with Sonoma Water, which owns and operates the plant.

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Kiley Russell writes primarily for Local News Matters on issues related to equity and the environment. A Bay Area native, he has lived most of his life in Oakland. He studied journalism at San Francisco State University, worked for the Associated Press and the former Contra Costa Times, among other outlets. He has covered everything from state legislatures, local governments, federal and state courts, crime, growth and development, political campaigns of various stripes, wildfires and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.