Storms cause outage at Stockton wastewater plant

Thunderstorms that moved through southwest Missouri over the weekend caused a power outage at Stockton's wastewater treatment plant, allowing 350,000 gallons of partially treated wastewater to bypass the facility.

The city notified the Missouri Department of Natural Resources about the incident Monday morning, according to a DNR news release. The bypass started at around 7 p.m. Saturday and lasted until about 7:30 a.m. Monday, with the partially treated water flowing into the Town Branch.

Staff from the DNR regional office in Springfield were sent to the site Monday to take water samples from the Town Branch. State regulations require a city to notify DNR within 24 hours of the knowledge of a wastewater release and send a report on the incident within five days.

Further enforcement actions are possible, according to the release, but those actions - along with any necessary cleanup efforts - will be based on the city's report.