Power outage results in small overflow at West Seattle pump station

King County's sewer utility crews responded quickly to a small wastewater overflow at the Murray Avenue Pump Station in West Seattle after a power failure shut down pumping equipment about 4:30 a.m.

A backup power generator came on about 10 minutes after the initial outage and enabled the pump station to resume normal operations.

It's estimated that between 500 and 1,000 gallons of wastewater overflowed to Puget Sound while power was off at the pump station. Normally, the Murray pump station handles about 2.2 million gallons of wastewater per day.

To protect public health, the county posted the nearby beach area as closed, took water samples, and told health and regulatory agencies about overflow.

The Murray Avenue Pump Station pushes wastewater from homes and businesses in West Seattle to King County's West Point Treatment Plant in the Magnolia neighborhood. King County treats about 170 million gallons of wastewater per day at its two regional treatment plants.

People enjoy clean water and a healthy environment because of King County's wastewater treatment program. The county's Wastewater Treatment Division protects public health and water quality by serving 17 cities, 17 local sewer utilities and more than 1.4 million residents in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. Formerly called Metro, the regional clean-water agency now operated by King County has been preventing water pollution for more than 40 years.