How Kansas City, Kan., Is Fixing Its Sewers
Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City Kansas
The local government is under a September 2016 federal deadline to come up with a plan to stop unlawful raw sewage overflows into the Kansas and Missouri rivers.
Kansas City, Kansas, like so many other cities that have aging infrastructure, has been working to fix a big problem: its combined sewer system. Such systems carry both stormwater runoff and raw sewage to water treatment plants.
But during times of heavy rainfall, when the combined sewer system can’t handle the amount of water, overflows will send untreated sewage into local waterways— in this case, the Kansas and Missouri rivers, which meet at Kansas City.
Such overflows are unauthorized under federal rules and in March 2013, the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take action to prevent such unauthorized overflows.
There had been more than 450 reported overflows events since 2004.
The Unified Government, under the terms of the federal settlement, has until September 2016 to develop a long-term plan to expand its separated sewer network, which carries rainwater and untreated sewage through separate pipe infrastructure. Such separated sewer systems prevent raw sewage overflows into local waterways.
(Images via Unified Government)
The Unified Government has been working with Burns McDonnell, an engineering, architecture, construction, environmental and consulting services firm that helped water authorities in Omaha, St. Louis and other cities plan similar separated sewer upgrades, to help figure out how to address its infrastructure challenges.
At this point for the Unified Government, with the planning process continuing, it's unclear how much the total separated sewer infrastructure investment will cost in the end. Under the agreement, federal authorities would have to sign off on the Unified Government’s long-term plan for the necessary sewer infrastructure upgrades.
The Unified Government recently uploaded this video on explaining the needs to improve its sewer infrastructure and stormwater runoff management system:
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly cited an estimated amount of funding Kansas City, Kansas, might need to make for the infrastructure investment for its separated sewer upgrades. With planning continuing, a representative for the Unified Government tells us that it's too early to estimate the amount but a more clear figure would come into focus in the next few months.
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