Millions of gallons of raw sewage taints Missouri waters, state agency data show

A couple of weeks ago, 3 million gallons of raw sewage poured into a south Kansas City stream, and it made news across Missouri.

But those may just be drops in a sea of bacteria flowing into the state’s rivers and lakes.

While a lot of attention has turned to the way a state agency handled E. coli problems in the summer at the Lake of the Ozarks, several other recreational lakes have been forced to close beaches.

Hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage have spilled into Missouri’s waterways in the past year, according to data from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

“We consider this to be a serious problem,” said Travis Ford, spokesman for the DNR, which is conducting an internal investigation into its own procedures because of concerns about the risk to human health.

Consider: In St. Joseph last December, more than 31 million gallons of raw sewage poured into the Missouri River during a rainstorm. Just a couple of weeks before that, 8.9 million gallons flowed in, and a month later, 8.5 million gallons more.

In Independence, 14 million gallons ran into streams there during rainstorms last April.

Kansas City annually fights millions of gallons of sewer overflows during rainstorms.

Many spills and overflows occur when rains flood decaying sewer systems; others occur when old pipes break.

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