Here’s why part of northeast Wichita got its water restored before everyone else

While the rest of the city is still boiling water, an area in northeast Wichita was given the go-ahead to use tap water normally just after 10 p.m. Tuesday.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment rescinded the boil advisory for a 4-square-mile area from 21st to 53rd Street and from Rock to Webb.

Alan King, Wichita director of public works and utilities, said public works crews were able to isolate the one northeast Wichita system because of the area’s unique water infrastructure.

“It’s fed by a pump station, and we just shut the pump stations off so they’re not introducing new water into the area,” King said at a news conference Wednesday morning.

“But it’s not enough to simply shut the area off. You have to provide water in the meantime and we have to have storage in that particular area — big underground water tanks that can feed that for a couple of days. And so that combination of being able to isolate it and still provide service was unique to that area.”

King said public works crews were unable to isolate any other water systems, despite their best efforts.

“We don’t have that kind of condition elsewhere. We looked really hard to see if we could replicate that but that was the only one that really met the KDHE requirements,” King said.

A KDHE spokesperson confirmed that the northeast Wichita area was unique in its ability to be isolated from the rest of the city’s water system.

“The area that we rescinded is an area that the city of Wichita was able to isolate and maintain pressure before the high-turbidity water reached the customers’ connections,” Philip Harris told The Eagle Wednesday.

At 12:15 p.m. Wednesday, KDHE also rescinded the boil advisory for Sedgwick County’s Rural Water District 1, which serves a sprawling area in north central Sedgwick County. The district’s distribution system, which receives its water from the city , was isolated before high-turbidity water reached its system, KDHE said in a release.

Once a boil advisory has been issued, only KDHE can rescind it. The agency is currently testing 180 samples of city water for potential bacteria. The testing process takes at least 24 hours, and King said the last samples were collected around 11:45 p.m. Tuesday.

Wichita is the largest regional water provider in Kansas, serving more than 500,000 people across the state.

This story was originally published June 8, 2022 at 1:42 PM.