EPA rolls back a premature celebration of Wichita’s delayed water plant

The EPA prematurely celebrated the completion of Wichita’s new Wichita Water Works water plant in a 2024 annual report — even though it wasn’t finished and likely won’t be until 2027 — then scrubbed its website when The Eagle reached out with questions.

The questions remain unanswered.

Wichita’s new water plant, funded in part by a $280 million federal WIFIA loan, is now two years behind schedule after contractors discovered a design flaw late in 2025 while testing the plant. It has yet to deliver any clean drinking water to Wichita’s 500,000 water customers.

The EPA’s 2024 annual report on the WIFIA program painted a different picture.

“In 2024, the city certified to the WIFIA program that the project had reached completion,” the report said as of last week. “Customers now have a brand-new water treatment plant that is providing reliable delivery of 120 million gallons of water per day.”

That’s not true. After an Eagle reporter asked about the inaccuracy last week, the report was changed without explanation. The new report says “Revised January 2026” but does not have any corrections section saying what was changed or why.

“In 2024, the city certified to the WIFIA program that the project had reached completion,” the new report says. “Customers will have a brand-new water treatment plant that will provide reliable delivery of 120 million gallons of water per day once operational.”

The EPA’s press office did not provide its correspondence with the city or requested documents. Several days after scrubbing its website, the EPA provided a one-sentence statement confirming the change.

“As part of WIFIA’s post-monitoring duties, we discussed the project status with the City and have updated our annual report to share the latest information,” the statement says.

The WIFIA report wasn’t the only premature celebration of the project’s completion. Wichita Water Partners held a ribbon cutting ceremony for state and local elected officials and others on Oct. 4, 2024.

The EPA’s inaccurate report appears to be a result of a City Council decision on Sept. 17, 2024, to grant “Substantial Completion” status to the project, even though Wichita Water Partners had not met the terms spelled out in the original contract.

Substantial completion is a construction milestone in a project when the project is functionally complete, save for a few minor punchlist items that don’t typically affect how the project works. The water plant’s original contract defined it as “the point where it is sufficiently complete ... so that the Construction (or the specified part thereof) can be utilized for the purposes for which it is intended.”

On Sept. 17, 2024, the Wichita City Council voted to move the goal posts, allowing Wichita Water Partners to appear to reach the milestone on time. The decision was motivated, at least in part, to free up funds so that contractors could be paid for their work up to that point, city officials said at the time.

The council granted Wichita Water Partners substantial completion status by changing the definition. The new milestone for substantial completion included all the work that had been completed as of Sept. 17, 2024.

Under the new terms, the plant wouldn’t be ready for its intended use until “Final Completion” on April 1, 2025. That deadline came and went without further council action and without a completed water plant. The contract has yet to be amended to account for the missed deadline.

City Hall provided a copy of its certificate of substantial completion and its quarterly construction reports submitted to the EPA.

It appears the city planned to change the substantial completion date after the first quarter of 2024, listing an estimated substantial completion date of February 2025 in its construction report. It appears the Kansas Department of Health and Environment was a driving force behind the requirement to increase performance testing water volumes from 30 MGD to 60 MGD.

“The substantial completion date has been moved back to February 2025 to allow for proper testing of the new treatment plant at the volumes recently agreed to between the City and KDHE,” the report says. “To meet the original substantial completion date in September 2024 would have required testing during peak seasonal demands. It was originally estimated that a sufficient amount of water could be made available at that time, but after further discussions with KDHE it was deemed best to delay so testing could be conducted at a greater volume than originally planned.”

By mid-year 2024, the city planned to push back the substantial completion date to May 2025, a Q2 construction report submitted by the city to the EPA says.

“The Q1 2024 report stated the substantial completion date had been delayed to February 2025 to allow for proper testing of the new treatment plant at the volumes recently agreed to between the City and KDHE,” the report says. “The substantial completion date has again been moved back to May 2025. The revised date is due to a refined plan, not any new or additional issues. The contractual completion date has not yet been changed. A change order is expected in the coming months to make the delay official in the contract.”

Then the city changed its mind.

In its Q3 report for 2024, the city reported its decision to grant substantial completion to the project — saying it was related to project costs.

“The substantial completion date was previously anticipated to change to account for additional water availability to allow additional testing,” the report says. “To reduce the impact to project costs, substantial completion was achieved September 17, 2024, per the original contract date and performance testing is now a requirement for final completion which has been delayed to April 1, 2025.”

The Q4 report for 2024 says, “Substantial completion was achieved September 17, 2024. Final completion is expected by April 1, 2025. This is the final construction report for this project.” It lists overall construction progress on all the plant’s systems at 100%, including the clarifiers that are currently being redesigned.

No further construction reports have been submitted for ongoing issues in 2025 or 2026.