Every morning, thousands of people across Kansas City, Missouri, wake up and, within the first hour of their day, do something that calls for clean water.
For many, it’s reaching for a glass of water on the bedside table or brewing a pot of coffee or some tea. Others depend on it for a morning shower or teeth-brushing. Either way, the cleanliness of that water is thanks to the city’s drinking water treatment facility, on the southern edge of the Briarcliff area.
There, 76 people work around the clock, in rotating crews of 5 to 7, to deliver a safe, drinkable product through complex chemical treatment.
“We are actually public health No.1,” said KC Water operations manager Jarrek Lucke, one of the people who oversees the process. “Every day we're providing water that people are drinking and ingesting. We have to be at a level of proactive response for anything that could harm the public.”
Lucke compared the process to making a cup of tea in reverse. Instead of adding herbs and spices, steeping them in the water to alter color, smell, and taste, employees at the treatment plant do the opposite — adding lime, chlorine, and other chemicals to separate water from the Missouri River from various contaminants.
The result, about 18 hours after it’s pumped from the river, is clean, clear water coming out of the faucet.
But Kansas City’s drinkable water is precariously reliant upon a single facility that is set to celebrate 100 years of operation in 2026.
And, while officials don’t foresee any major interruptions at the current plant, the aging site requires regular maintenance and repairs that are only likely to increase.
That’s why KC Water officials have launched public efforts to garner support for a second water treatment facility, something they’ve been discussing internally for some time.
University of Kansas environmental engineering professor Josh Hutchinson said it's unusual for a municipality the size of Kansas City to rely solely on one treatment facility. Lawrence, for instance, has two facilities and serves about a sixth of the customers.
The situation makes Kansas City more vulnerable to a disaster like the one last year in Minden, Iowa, where a tornado hit the city’s only treatment facility. It may be unlikely, but it’s definitely not impossible.
“Bringing in bottled water, bringing in treatment systems for 500 people in Minden is doable,” Hutchinson said. “Mobilizing the necessary resources to provide potable drinking water for everybody in Kansas City, now, is a very difficult ask.”
One hundred years of clean water
Lucke said KC Water’s public-facing approach to creating a second facility is necessary, but unusual. Employees are much more used to working behind the scenes.
“When you hear nothing (from the public), it means you’re doing your job right,” he said.
In November, Lucke gave KCUR a tour of the city’s drinking treatment plant, guiding a reporter up into giant basins — nearly 10 times the size of an Olympic swimming pool — filled with calm, blue water that flows almost imperceptibly until it cascades off toward the next phase of cleaning.
After Kansas City’s tap water is sourced from the Missouri River, it’s pumped up to the facility, where gravity guides 240 million gallons of water each day through the purification process.
“We’re raising the pH up to oxidize and settle out iron and manganese,” Lucke said. “Once we do, that’s where the magic really starts.”
The water goes through several stops: the massive settling basins where physical particles separate from the water, long channels through which chemicals are piped in, sand filters for final clarification, before ending up in one of two massive underground reservoirs.
There, it sits for a little while, seeping in phosphate, a corrosion inhibitor that protects the plumbing in customer homes, and fluoride, to protect customers’ teeth. Once it’s had sufficient contact time, 7-foot-tall pumps push it out toward the city.
The Northland site also includes a fully-accredited lab to ensure the purification process meets legal guidelines, and to handle any sampling requests KC Water might have.
Finally, the water arrives at the faucets of approximately 87,000 homes and 650,000 people.
“We want to make sure people are educated and understand the utility that they are paying for, and that they are getting their money’s worth,” Lucke said. “This service is the lifeblood of the city.”
According to the most recent consumer confidence report, concerns over changing water quality should be minimal. In fact, you have to go back to 2019 to find the most recent violation of drinking water guidelines.
But there is a difference between what is federally mandated for water quality and what other organizations might consider healthy.
Take nitrates, for example. The federal guideline calls for no more than 10 milligrams per liter of water, which Kansas City meets. But the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, based in Washington, says Kansas City’s water has 10 times as many nitrates, among other contaminants, as what they consider healthy.
Hutchinson said the discrepancy boils down to why regulations exist in the first place. The federal guideline for nitrates, for instance, are based around the dangers associated with blue baby syndrome. When nitrates exceed 10 milligrams per liter, transporting blood through veins and arteries becomes more difficult, and babies who drink too much of it turn blue.
“Where you have differences of opinion is when you start talking about acute exposure versus chronic (exposure),” Hutchinson said. “With acute and blue baby syndrome, when you stop drinking that water, or switch the source, the syndrome goes away.”
By contrast, concerns over chronic exposure center on longer-term effects.
“If you drink water with less nitrates than the federal limit your entire life,” Hutchinson explained, “what happens after 70 years of exposure to those nitrates?”
What about drinking water with unusual smells or tastes? Hutchinson said those don’t always correlate to health concerns, although they might be unpleasant.
For Kansas City residents who are concerned about water quality, the Environmental Working Group has recommendations for additional filters.
Seeking a second site
Construction on the Briarcliff facility started in the early 1920s, with operations ramping up by 1926. After 100 years, the need for repairs is now fairly consistent, Lucke said. Like one of the hulking, cast iron pumps that push water back out into the city.
“The one back over there has cost a significant amount of money for us,” Lucke said at one of the final steps of the tour. “But it’s going to last us another 20 years.”
Because some legacy parts are no longer manufactured, many repairs are made by hand on-site, a laborious and sometimes costly endeavor. And, as with any aging facility, there are certain things KC Water can’t plan for.
Facilities engineering division manager Blake Anderson, who helps lead the public effort for a second facility, said concrete is really only meant to last 100 years before bigger issues can arise.
Then there are the ever-changing water regulations — federal and state — and the fact the city has grown substantially in the past century.
“We're still saving space on this site but that also limits the long-term production,” Anderson said, “over, say — not 20 years — but 50 to 100 years.”
That might seem like a lot of lead time, but Anderson said creating redundancy is critical to fending off unforeseen crises.
KC Water has already identified potential sites for a new facility, including one in the East Bottoms. In October, the department held a town hall with residents, and presented their ideas thus far. The proposal was met with some pushback from business owners nearby, but Hutchinson said that’s exactly the sort of input they want.
It will also take time to raise the necessary money, especially because the intent is to fund the project via external sources, not by raising people’s water bills. It’s all part of what’s called a triple bottom line approach, focused on cost savings but also on reducing social and environmental impacts.
“If it takes 10 years to get the money for this: OK,” Anderson said. “That’s one of the advantages of not having to build a plant for any immediate demands.
“We can just pursue this consistently the right way,” Anderson said.
Still, any major changes are a ways away. So, for those at the plant and out in the field, it's business as usual.
Like the 78,000 letters the city sent out late last month, in the search for lead supply pipes like the kind that caused so many problems in Flint, Michigan. Kansas City has not found any in their review so far, which started early last year, but it's that sort of effort that Anderson and Lucke said defines KC Water.
That proactive approach has led to at least a few fans of the tap water in Kansas City. Hop on the Kansas City subreddit and you’ll find people posting about how “KC has the best water,” or describing the tap water as “pure and delightful.”
Anderson appreciates the praise, but said their goal is to do the work in silence
“When people’s expectations aren’t met, we work on fixing that. And we do that calmly, behind the scenes, so that people can go about their lives, take care of their families, do their job, and not have to worry about where their water is coming from,” said Anderson.
So, Anderson and his coworkers continue to monitor this finely-tuned system day and night. If they get their wish, they may soon be supported by a second treatment plant.
