MILWAUKIE, Ore. -- Power outages caused 2.5 million gallons of raw sewage to leak into the Willamette River from a treatment plant over the weekend, officials said.

The sewage treatment plant, located on the north end of Oregon City, lost both its primary electric supply and backup power Sunday afternoon after a storm damaged Portland General Electric transmission lines.

The plant was unable to treat waste water for six hours because of the outage and sewage entered the Willamette River through a pipe near Clackamette Park.

Michael Trent, the plant's operations supervisor, said the waste water was directed into the river to prevent sewage backups in homes and businesses.

"If the sewage builds up in the pipe, we have storage capacity only for so long. Once that pipe fills up, we don't want it going on the ground," said Michael Trent, the plant's operations supervisor.

Power was restored to the plant at 5:20 p.m. Sunday.

"Everything that we've done, we feel that we've done correctly. And we did it for the public health," Trent said.

The plant's supervisor will meet with a PGE representative Tuesday and send a report to the state's Department of Environmental Quality.

Some people along the river said they could smell the difference in the river water while others could not. Warning signs advised people to stay out of the water for 48 hours.

"It sounds awful, but the water carries it pretty fast," said Leonard Larson.

2.5M Gallons Of Sewage Flows Into Willamette