Wichita officials had a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday for the city’s new water treatment plant.
Mayor Lily Wu said the plant won’t be commissioned until next year, but it has reached functional completion. She said it will serve about 20 percent of Kansas residents with clean and safe drinking water. Public Works Director Gary Janzen gave credit to previous director Alan King for his guidance and direction in starting the project. Janzen said the next steps will be to conduct performance testing, which has already begun. He said the facility will be pumping an average of 50 million gallons per day to its customers, with a capacity to supply 120 million gallons per day. The plant will provide water for 500,000 customers in the Wichita area.
The $569-million plant will open in April on a 40-acre site near Zoo Boulevard and Hoover Road. The city will be looking to hire more workers to operate the facility.
The plant represents the largest infrastructure project in Wichita’s history, able to deliver up to 120 million gallons of water a day and better respond to the drought with the ability to better treat ground water. The plant will be able to treat more water from the Equus Beds aquifer to lower the reliance on the Cheney Reservoir, which has been affected by the ongoing drought.
