Wichita’s Northwest Water Facility is a $500 million water treatment project being led by the design-build team of Alberici and Burns & McDonnell, with major contributions from area engineers, architects and contractors. It is the largest capital investment the city has ever made.
The current 80-year-old water treatment plant serves over 500,000 Kansans in the Wichita area but is approaching the end of its useful life and will fall short of meeting the quality and quantity challenges of future growth. The facility lacks redundancy, endangering the region’s water supply when components fail.
The new facility is being constructed on 40 acres along 21st Street and Hoover Road and when completed can supply 120 million gallons of water daily. Serving Wichita and numerous other communities and water districts, the facility will handle and blend water from wells, Cheney Reservoir and the city’s Aquifer Storage and Recovery Project.
Work on the Northwest Water Facility is crossing the halfway point in 2023, and project is expected to be finished in 2024 and operational in 2025. Construction has commenced on all structures, and the full facility has begun to take shape. Major concrete work on the filter building is complete, and slabs have been poured and walls have risen for the six solids contact clarifiers – each circular structure will hold 2.3 million gallons of water. Construction is well along on the 14,000-square-foot Administration Building that will double as a testing lab for the region. And, in another sign of progress, nearby roads have undergone closures to lay massive pipes connecting the new facility to the existing system.