Work stops — again — at new Wichita water plant amid continued mechanical failures

Work has halted on Wichita’s new $574 million water treatment plant amid continuing struggles to deliver safe drinking water by the Wichita Water Partners, contractors for the job more than five years ago.

The project is now further delayed until 2026 at the earliest, according to a news release from the city.

No new deadline for the project has been set. Wichita Water Partners is preparing to hire a third-party inspector to figure out what’s wrong with the plant’s clarifiers, which remove solids from water before it is filtered and disinfected, Gary Janzen, director of public works and utilities for Wichita, said.

“This is not ideal,” Janzen said. “It’s extremely disappointing. It’s frustrating. It’s frustrating for us. It’s extremely disappointing for our staff.”

The original contract — signed in 2019 despite warnings from staff about Wichita Water Partners’ experience and plan to commission the plant — called for a completion date in late 2024, but the City Council has approved multiple extensions over the past year. The latest extension called for the plant to be handed over by the end of the year. Wichita Water Partners held a ribbon cutting event Oct. 4, 2024.

Janzen is not optimistic that the project can be completed within the next several weeks.

“It doesn’t look good, as far as being a quick fix,” he said. “Until we can get through the next 30 days even, it’s going to be really hard to say what the timeframe looks like.”

Wichita Water Partners is a joint venture between Burns & McDonnell and Alberici, along with several local firms. Former Mayor Jeff Longwell steered the contract to the group in 2019 after the city’s selection committee voted unanimously to award the contract to Jacobs Engineering.

The city news release follows an executive session on Tuesday where the council and the city’s lawyers discussed the contract behind closed doors without taking any binding action.

“The City Council and City staff are extremely disappointed with the continued pattern of missed deadlines from WWP for bringing the plant online,” the news release says.

“At this time, there is no expected cost to ratepayers for the delay in commissioning the plant,” the city’s release says. “Wichita Water Partners has accepted responsibility for the missed deadlines and is bringing in a third-party expert to determine the cause of the mechanical failures in the clarifiers.”

Wichita will not accept water plant until problems are resolved

Janzen said the latest problem is separate from an issue detected in the clarifiers earlier this year. He said he became aware of the issue earlier this week.

“It’s hard to say if what happened this summer may have been a precursor of what’s going on now, but maybe,” Janzen said. “Who knows? Either way, we don’t know the extent of the issues yet. It’s going to take several weeks to really analyze everything and start developing a plan going forward.”

Ownership of the plant remains in the hands of the Wichita Water Partners. Janzen said the city will not accept responsibility for the plant and its equipment until the job is finished as outlined in the contract.

“We will not take ownership of the plant until the plant meets its intended purpose and it operates the way we need it to and it can provide safe and reliable drinking water to the community.”

Janzen said the Wichita Water Partners contract will need to be amended by the City Council at some point in the future to reflect the delays and additional work.

“There will be more council action at some point to amend the contract, to talk about cost responsibilities, to talk about extending the correction period and the warranties and things like that, because we’re considerably past (the deadline), needless to say, and now we don’t know what the end date looks like,” Janzen said.

Delays should not affect Wichita water customers, city says

The city said in its news release — and Janzen repeated — that the delays would not have any cost impact on the city or its water customers. Janzen said Wichita Water Partners have agreed to pay for the issues surrounding the clarifiers.

“Through our discussions with Wichita Water Partners since April 1, they’ve committed to covering the costs, and that’s the discussion we have to continue with them now, with this now extended delay of an unknown period of time. All the costs to repair the clarifiers, everything that goes into that, is their responsibility.”

A spokesperson for Wichita Water Partners said the group notified the city more than a week ago, on Nov. 17, that testing would need to pause for an inspection, “based on an observed issue with one of the internal structural supports in two of the clarifiers.”

“Upon inspection of the clarifiers, repairs or modifications will be proposed to the city,” Jessica James, spokesperson for Wichita Water Partners who works at Burns & McDonnell, said in a statement.

In May, James said clarifier issues arose as the contractors were trying to start up the plant.

“Solids contact clarifiers are the first unit process in treating water at the City’s new treatment facility and are an important component in the lime-softening process designed for the new plant,” James said in May, when the city first announced a delay due to clarifier problems. “WWP has been actively working with the equipment vendor for these facilities to address the performance challenges observed.”

James said at the time that repairs to the clarifiers were expected to be handled over the summer. They must be completed before further testing of the plant’s operations — beyond the first step in the treatment process — can continue.

Wichita will continue to rely on old water plant for now

Janzen, the city’s public works director, said the existing water treatment plant — which is more than 85 years old and was on the brink of failure when the city moved to construct a new plant — is expected to continue delivering safe drinking water while the new plant is down.

“We did a really good job of strategic investments in that facility, knowing we have a new plant coming,” Janzen said. “We didn’t want to overinvest and have brand-new equipment in there that wasn’t going to serve our needs, but I think we did a really good job of making sure that plant’s operational. Right now, everything is running fine. We don’t expect to have any issues to keep that plant running as we work through the challenges here with the new plant.”

Wichita won’t know how long the old plant will continue operating until the full extent of the issues at the new plant is known.

“None of us want to be here where we’re at,” Janzen said. “But it’s a lot better to have this happen now then at some point later when we’re fully operational. So it’s good to work these things out.”

This story was originally published November 26, 2025 at 11:14 AM.