More than six years after work began on Wichita's new water treatment plant, work has “ceased” — and it’s not because the plant is finished.
Wichita city officials announced Wednesday that “ongoing issues” with the plant’s clarifiers has caused work to stop at the facility.
It's not clear when it will will resume, or when the plant is expected to be operational.
City leaders signed a contract with Wichita Water Partners in 2019 to construct a new drinking water treatment plant. The company is a group of contractors led by engineering firm Burns and McDonnell and construction company Alberici Construction.
“The City Council and City staff are extremely disappointed with the continued pattern of missed deadlines from WWP for bringing the plant online,” city officials said in a news release Wednesday.
“The City understands and shares residents’ frustration with the continued delays in completing this project.”
The plant at 21st North and Hoover is meant to replace Wichita’s 80-year-old drinking water treatment plant. It’s budgeted at $557 million and is the single largest public works project in the city’s history.
When construction began in April 2020, plans called for a completion date in late 2024. Updates from city staff over the past two years have cataloged a series of mechanical issues at the plant.
Wichita Public Works and Utilities Director Gary Janzen told the City Council in October that the city was on track to take possession of the plant in December.
Wichita communications manager Megan Lovely said city officials ”do not currently have a revised expected timeline from Wichita Water Partners on fixing the clarifiers and being able to hand the building over to the City.”
City officials say the six clarifiers are some of the largest built in the country. They are giant settling tanks that remove suspended solids — like silt, sand, bacteria and algae — from the water being treated. Clarifiers play an important role in multiple parts of the treatment process.
The city’s news release did not specify what went wrong with the clarifiers, but they have been an almost constant headache throughout the project.
In July, Janzen told the city council that there had been "several mechanical issues” with the plant's clarifiers. He added that “those repairs have effectively been completed at this time at no cost to the city.”
Those issues delayed the timeline for testing. Wichita’s contract with Wichita Water Partners requires performance testing to be completed before the city assumes ownership and liability for the plant.
“Ensuring the facility is reliable and there is full confidence in its performance is essential before the City agrees to take ownership,” Wednesday's news release said.
WWP told city staff earlier this month that plant operators needed to drain the clarifiers. Lovely, the city spokeswoman, says company officials told the city late last week that mechanical failures were discovered once the clarifiers were drained.
Staff learned the full extent of the failures Monday afternoon and updated the City Council during an executive session Tuesday afternoon. A city press release said WWP has “accepted responsibility for the missed deadlines and is bringing in a third-party expert to determine the cause of the mechanical failures.”
The release emphasized that there is no expected cost to city water ratepayers for the delay in fully opening the plant.
