Kansas City Boasts 5 Billion Overflow Prevention Program
1. Kansas City Boasts $5 Billion Overflow Prevention Program
By Laura Martin
@LauraOnWater
Sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) and combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are an
increasing public health, environmental, and regulatory concern for U.S.
municipalities. Seven hundred seventytwo cities in the U.S. have combined sewer
systems, which are designed to discharge a mix of stormwater and untreated
wastewater directly into nearby water bodies when the system exceeds capacity.
In addition, the EPA estimates that there are at least 40,000 SSOs each year,
which occur due to severe weather, improper system maintenance, and
vandalism. The amount of CSOs and SSOs will likely continue to grow as
urbanization and population increase.
The city of Kansas City, MO, is taking action now to prevent the problem from
getting worse. They’ve committed to spending between $4.5 billion and 5 billion
— the largest infrastructure investment in Kansas City history — on a 25year overflow control program.
The city has 58 square miles of combined sewers and another 260 square miles of a separate sewer system. The collection system also
includes six wastewater treatment plants and 46 pumping stations. But Kansas City’s system is out of date — sections were built before
the Civil War — and the result is over 6.4 billion gallons of sewer overflow per year.
“PreCivil War they really didn’t anticipate the volume of stormwater and wetweather flow that would be coming in,” said Andy Shively,
engineering officer for Kansas City Water Services. “The sewers were not sized for that volume, and the stormwater has to go somewhere,
so raw sewage gets into our local streams. It is critical that we solve this problem.”
The overflow control program is structured to reduce CSOs by 88 percent. It is the result of an EPA consent decree lodged in 2010, and is
one of only a handful of federal consent decrees that mandate green infrastructure as part of overflow control measures. Municipalities in
Washington, D.C.; Maryland; Ohio; and Kentucky agreed to take similar overflow prevention measures after EPA action, but none to the
scale and expense of the Kansas City project.
From The Editor | February 28, 2014