Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Wichita Water Utilities is taking advantage of the wet weather by firing up its Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) operations today.

ASR takes excess flow out of the Little Arkansas River, treats it to meet drinking-water standards and pumps it underground into the Equus Beds aquifer. City staff plan on taking water out of the Little Arkansas River until it returns to normal levels.

The City’s ASR site is located northwest of Wichita between Bentley and Halstead. The Equus Beds aquifer, along with Cheney Reservoir, is a source of Wichita's water supply.

ASR is a critical part of the City's plan to ensure Wichita has enough water to meet demand through the year 2050. When all four phases of the ASR project are completed at a projected cost of nearly $400 million, the project will be capable of producing up to 100 million gallons of water a day.

The ASR project is expected to add 65 billion gallons of water to the Equus Beds – the same amount of water found in Cheney Reservoir.

Water pumped underground into the aquifer will be stored there until it is needed by Wichita and its customers. This marks the third time this year that the Little Arkansas River has been high enough for Water Utilities staff to initiate ASR.

The equipment and infrastructure currently being used can process up to 10 million gallons of water a day and was completed during ASR's first phase of development.

By the end of 2008, 628 million gallons of water had been added to the Equus Beds through the ASR Phase I project.

Phase II has already begun to increase the amount of water that can be taken out of the Little Arkansas River to up to 30 million gallons a day.
Last week, the Wichita City Council approved a contract with ABC Joint Venture to complete the design and construction of a Phase II water treatment plant and intake structure. The water treatment plant will utilize membrane technology to remove even the smallest of contaminants from the water, and its design allows for expansion to up to 60 million gallons a day.

ABC Joint Venture is a partnership of three companies: Alberici Constructors, St. Louis; Burns & McDonnell, Kansas City, Mo.; and CAS Construction, Topeka. The team was awarded up to $74 million for the project, and construction is expected to begin this summer. The anticipated completion date is September 2011.

The intake structure/water treatment plant contract is the second largest of the five Phase II projects. The other four projects are: pipelines; recharge and recovery wells; Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems; and overhead power lines. In July 2008, the City Council approved contracts totaling more than $5.7 million to complete the initial 30 percent design for these projects.