Wichita City Council Workshop: Water Treatment Plant, 2025 Rates, and Public Art – October 22, 2024
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Wichita City Council Workshop – October 22, 2024
On October 22, 2024, the Wichita City Council held a workshop at 455 N. Main Street, Wichita, KS, starting at 9:00 a.m. The agenda included three presentations: the future of the current water treatment plant, proposed 2025 water and sewer rate adjustments, and a 10-year overview of the public art program. No formal votes were taken; council members offered feedback and direction for future action.
Future of Current Water Treatment Plant
- Laura Quick (Utilities Optimization Manager) and Gary Janssen (Public Works and Utilities) presented options from Burns & McDonald.
- The new Wichita Waterworks plant is expected online in April 2025; both plants would operate 8–12 months, with the existing Main Water Treatment Plant (MWTP) likely offline around 2026.
- Demand projections: using 2023 data, the projected highest single-day demand in 2045 is 86 million gallons per day (MGD), below the new plant's 120 MGD capacity; no capacity expansion is warranted.
- The plant dates to 1939; condition assessment found corrosion, deferred maintenance, and chemical storage that does not meet current safety codes.
- Eight options were considered; a capacity-expansion option was dropped early. Key options included: full demolition ($50–75M); mothballing ($8–9M over 20 years); raw-water emergency use (rejected by KDHE); groundwater emergency disinfection with a new building (45 MGD, 1–2 day startup, $24–29M capital, $28–33M 20-year lifecycle); groundwater emergency disinfection with temporary chemicals (45 MGD, 1–2 day startup, $11–16M capital plus $3–4M O&M over 20 years); surface/groundwater blend with disinfection building (45 MGD, ~1 week startup, $14–19M capital, $22–28M lifecycle); blend with temporary disinfection (45 MGD, ~1 week startup, $8–9M lifecycle).
- Staff and the steering committee recommended Option 5 as first choice and Option 4 as alternate, both emergency-only, groundwater-only, with 1–2 day startup.
- Council discussion covered risk tolerance, the 1993 Des Moines flood (11 days without water, another 8 days until safe), economic impacts of prolonged outages, the new plant's redundancy vs. a single point of failure, hard vs. soft water quality, and Option 7's slower one-week startup.
- Existing $27M in CIP and $300,000/year in pro forma are budgeted for the MWTP; staff said the recommended emergency-use options would not require a rate increase.
- Council requested additional information on demolition costs, the cost/benefit of emergency use, El Dorado Lake pipeline feasibility, and cyber/terrorism separation between plants.
Water and Sewer Rate Adjustments for 2025
- Gary Janssen presented the 2025 rate outlook, saying the 2019 rate plan is no longer sustainable due to record inflation and known operating costs.
- Actual average O&M increases over the past three years were 10% for water and 7% for sewer, versus a 3% assumption in the 2019 model.
- Notable cost increases cited: chemicals up $2M in three years; bank fees +156%; energy +12%; technology +20%; facility insurance +47%.
- New water plant O&M estimates changed substantially: chemicals from $269,000 to $721,000 in 2025; energy from $600,000 to $900,000; staffing/contract services from $600,000–$1.2M to $1.5M in 2024 and over $2M in 2025, ongoing.
- BNR project additions: staffing/benefits $500,000 (2026) and $1M (2027); chemicals $864,000 (2025) and $1.7M (2026); energy $150,000 (2026) and $300,000 (2027).
- The 2025–2034 CIP includes almost $800M in water/sewer improvements; debt service within the current rate structure is almost $2B.
- Recommended combined 2025 rate increase: 6.14%, compared to 5.03% in the 2019 plan. It includes the adopted CIP (with staff deferrals), existing debt, BNR loans, new plant transition costs, and $300,000/year MWTP maintenance. It excludes lead/copper/PFAS costs, revenue losses from Derby/Valley Center building their own plants, and drought-related revenue losses.
- The revised plan meets the minimum 120% debt coverage but leaves little contingency.
- Customer bill impacts: low-volume user +$3.21/month; mid-volume user +$4.79/month. Low users would pay about $0.70/month more than under the 2019 projection; most residential users fall in the low category, with an estimated monthly bill of $73.54; mid-user bill would be $109.29.
- Peer city comparison: Wichita's $92 total bill is 17% less than the next closest (Fort Worth). EPA affordability: 1.7% of median household income, well below the 4.5% threshold.
- Assistance: 0.1% of water/sewer revenues earmarked for customer assistance — about $190,000 in 2024 and $202,000 in 2025; customer donations doubled to about $9,000; 2024 assistance projected at $55,000.
- User fees are reviewed every two years; examples include new accounts (+~$20), non-payment shutoff (+$12), grease maintenance (+$20/year), and backflow testing (+$4/year).
- Staff recommended raising the late payment fee from 1.5% to 5% of the unpaid balance. Council discussed waivers, hardships, and the fact that 87% of 10,000+ annual payment arrangements were broken; more data on waiver cases was requested.
- Conservation tier restructuring was revisited: NewGen estimated tier 2/3 increases could save 1.4 billion gallons annually while remaining revenue-neutral, but could add about $3M/year to large commercial users like Spirit AeroSystems for non-discretionary process water. Council directed further study, including options for commercial irrigation meters and tier designs; this would not be part of the December action.
- Next steps: staff will refine 2025 rate/fee recommendations based on feedback and return to Council in December for formal action.
Public Art Overview
- Lindsay Banaka, Director of Arts and Cultural Services, presented a 10-year review of the public art program since the 2019 percent-for-art ordinance.
- The city's collection spans 132 years, dating to 1892, with more than 300 accessioned works; about 205 are listed on publicartarchive.org.
- The Design Council is an 11-member appointed board with a current vacancy for a landscape architect.
- The percent-for-art ordinance sets aside at least 2% of eligible CIP budgets for art; an iconic-project provision allowing up to 2% additional has never been used.
- Estimated public art spending by district over the past 10 years: District 1 ~$1.8M; District 2 $225,000; District 3 $225,000; District 4 ~$1.8M; District 5 $280,000; District 6 ~$3M; pools (across districts) ~$1.2M.
- Commissioning now uses open calls via callforentry.org, with design council review at 30% and 90% design.
- Maintenance: $160,000/year in the CIP beginning in 2024; artists now provide maintenance plans; 2024 is the first year of implementation.
- Council discussion: desire for more art in South Wichita, especially District 3; donation/gift processes; displaying museum collection pieces in public buildings; and the $1.2M Wichita Waterworks art budget, with one piece not visible yet and a final sculpture delayed to January 2025. Staff noted art can be re-sited and that public art is primarily tied to CIP projects.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes were taken during the workshop.
- Water plant: Council feedback generally supported an emergency-use approach; staff will refine Option 5/Option 4 details, answer follow-up questions, and return with a formal concept and delivery method after the MWTP is offline (around 2026).
- Rates: Staff will prepare final 2025 rate, fee, and late-fee recommendations for Council action in December; council directed further study of conservation tier changes and commercial irrigation metering.
- Public art: Council received the overview and encouraged continued investment, with particular interest in more South Wichita art and robust maintenance funding; staff will provide additional information (e.g., storage list, re-siting options) without committing to a new ordinance change.
Meeting Transcript
You today, uh two of them are related and they discuss um uh future plans for our uh water uh delivery system or treatment and delivery system. The first one is a discussion about the future of the existing water plant. And so I'd like staff uh to present um the work that has been done to this point assessing the condition and the uh options for that plant and recommendations from not just staff but a working advisory board as well. So with that, I'll turn it over to Gary Jackson. Good morning, Mayor, uh council members. I'm just gonna be very brief here and introduce this, and then manager gave you a head start. So, you know, as we move towards uh bringing our new water treatment plant online sometime next spring, there's gonna be a period of time where we'll be operating both plants, but it's likely by early 2026, we'll be uh bringing our current water treatment plant offline. Um, and so we've spent the last 12 months or more evaluating options for for what to do next with that facility. Um Laura Quick, our utilities optimization manager and expert in a lot of other areas has led this effort for us. And so I'm gonna turn it over to her and let her walk you through the options that we've looked at. We focused on uh that really started to move towards wanting to use this facility uh in an emergency situation. So you'll see that most of the options she's gonna discuss with you and we discuss with the steering committee, uh kind of look to that. But we also looked at other options too, uh, what future growth might look like and some of those needs. So I'm gonna turn it over to Laura. Thank you. All right, thank you. I'm Laura Quick with the City of Wichita uh Public Works and Utilities Utilities Optimization program. Um so just a brief agenda for today. Um, gonna be going over each of these things with you, a purpose, a history, um, brief summary of our current water demands, um, some example condition assessment findings that we have found, um, alternatives that we've looked at, and um high-level cost estimates associated with those. I have a steering committee and staff recommendation to go over with you, and then we'll talk about some next steps. Um so to give you some context for why we're here today, um, as Gary mentioned, the new Wichita Waterworks project is nearing completion and should be coming online in April of 2025. Uh, from that point, both plants are expected to operate simultaneously for about eight to twelve months. We don't want to take the current plant offline until we've put the new plant through its paces, given it a chance to operate in all seasons, high demand, low demand, things like that. Um so we do need to start talking about what are we going to do with the current water treatment plant, or you'll often heard it referred to as main water treatment plant, MWTP. We're gonna have to stop calling it that at some point. But um, these are the questions that we are trying to answer. What function will it serve? Um, what budget do we need for it to serve that function, and what staff resources are we going to need. Um, so really today this falls into the category of things that you guys mentioned earlier where we don't have a specific item we're ready to bring you yet. We're not ready for a decision. Um, this today is about are we on the right path or is there a different path that you'd like us to explore? Um so earlier this year we contracted with Burns and McDonald to develop options and high-level cost estimates, and this presentation today is the result of that work. Uh brief history of the current water treatment plant. Um, the initial part of the plant was constructed in 1939, so we're now 85 years old for the oldest parts of the plant. It was expanded in 1953. Um 1992, we had a partial rehab. Um, and then skip forward to 2011 through 2016. The plants now around at that time was around 75 years old. Age was starting to become apparent. We um it was clear that trying to maintain it was becoming more costly, so we started looking at options um for rehabilitating the current plant or replacing it with a new one. Uh back in 2016 is when we ultimately decided to construct the new Wichita waterworks plant after determining that rehab wouldn't be enough to reduce the overall risk associated with continuing to rely on the old water plant as our water source for around half a million people. Um so 2017 to present has taken us through design um construction, expected now to complete in April of 2025, and as Gary mentioned, should be taking the um current plant offline probably around 2026. So we wanted to know how much water do we need and how long will the capacity at our new plant be enough. So we looked at some historical trends. We looked at trends in both the daily average water use as well as the highest single day for any given year. What you see on this chart, I know it's kind of hard to read, but the break in the middle is 2024, so that's present. So everything to the left of that would be our historical actual usage. Everything to the right would be our future projections. The bottom line reflects our average consumption. The top line reflects our single highest day for any given year.
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