The Kansas City city council was in an infrastructure-improving mood Thursday — some of its very old infrastructure. The city council took several steps toward replacing crumbling sewer and water lines.
The full council gave its approval to rehabilitation of sewer lines around 22nd and Paseo. Infrastructure chair Russ Johnson emphasized how old they were.
"That was constructed in 1890," he said. "It's time to rehab it.”
The other council members agreed, and approved spending $1.48 million in existing bond money to do the job.
Johnson's committee also endorsed spending $23 million to replace water mains and sewers under phase one of the streetcar line under construction. Some of those mains were put in before 1890.
Water department officials displayed a section of pipe dated 1874 that was recently dug up and replaced near City Hall.
Better to fix them now, the committee decided, than to have to disrupt traffic on the streetcar route and possibly uproot some streetcar rails to do the job later.
The full council votes on the sreetcar route infrastructure rehabilitation next week.
