Columbia Falls sewage treatment plant back up and running

The Columbia Falls wastewater treatment plant is fully back online, the city said Wednesday.

The power was restored at 11 a.m. Tuesday, the city said in a release.

During the power outage the plant had a little over a half-day of storage for effluent. The plant also had power to its ultraviolet light for disinfectant of bacteria such as e-coli as it was powered by a different breaker.

The city said previously that no solids were discharged into the river, but water that was not treated for phosphorous and nitrates.

The power went out Monday morning, so the plant was without power for about 24 hours.

The cause of the outage remains under investigation.

The backup generator that is designed to run the plant in the event of an emergency also runs power through the same circuit that failed, so the plant couldn’t be run with backup generator power, city manager Susan Nicosia told city council Monday night.

River users were urged to avoid the river near the plant during the outage.