Wichita turning sewage into drinking water will cost nearly 10 million dollars, with the pilot plant running by late 2027

Wichita turning sewage into drinking water

Wichita turning sewage into drinking water is now funded. On July 7, 2026, the City Council voted unanimously to spend nearly 10 million dollars building a small pilot plant that will treat wastewater until it is clean enough to drink, then send it straight into the drinking water system, a process called direct potable reuse, instead of first passing it through a river or reservoir. Wichita Public Works and Utilities Director Gary Janzen ties the project to a wider effort the city calls its Water Reuse Master Plan.

This is going to be a proving ground.

Gary Janzen, Wichita Public Works and Utilities Director. Source 5.

Wichita already runs a smaller version of the same idea. Since 2016 the city has piped up to 2 million gallons a day of recycled water, clean enough for irrigation and industrial use but not for drinking, to the Spirit AeroSystems plant, through a separate pipe system built just for that water, the City of Wichita states. Wichita currently discharges 25 million gallons a day of treated wastewater into the Arkansas River, water this new project is meant to keep and reuse instead of send downstream.

How the nearly 10 million dollar price tag adds up

The KWCH television station itemizes how the nearly 10 million dollar total is built. The engineering contract for the master plan started at 1,188,095 dollars and was later increased by 742,253 dollars, for a new contract total of 1,930,348 dollars. The city separately estimates 7 million dollars to build and run the small pilot plant itself. Adding money for the city own project management and public engagement brings the revised project budget to 9.2 million dollars.

The city states an extra financing cushion of about 8% applies if it borrows the money by issuing bonds. Applying that 8% to the 9.2 million dollar budget lands within rounding of the nearly 10 million dollars the Council approved, so the 2 figures most likely describe the underlying project budget and the total cost of borrowing it, not 2 competing counts of the same spending.

How the Wichita pilot plant compares in scale

The pilot plant Wichita is planning is tiny next to a full scale plant already under construction elsewhere. The pilot is designed to purify 70,000 gallons of wastewater a day and is expected running by late 2027, the Wichita Eagle reports. Council members already compare the project to 3 places doing this at larger scale, El Paso, Texas, Big Spring, Texas, and Windhoek, Namibia, the newspaper states. El Paso Water own Pure Water Center will treat 10 million gallons a day once complete, at a current estimated cost of 300 million dollars, and is planned to open in 2029.

Whether the water will be safe, and what happens next

Kansas only made this legal in 2026. House Bill 2462 was signed by Governor Laura Kelly in April 2026 with bipartisan support, and requires the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the state agency that sets drinking water safety rules, to write rules allowing both direct and indirect potable reuse of treated wastewater, something the state had no rules covering before. Those rules are due no later than July 1, 2028, so the Wichita pilot plant will likely switch on before the state finishes writing the full safety rulebook it depends on.

This becomes a locally controlled, sustainable water supply.

Gary Janzen, Wichita Public Works and Utilities Director. Source 4.

The same Council also approved 3 years of rate hikes in December 2025 that are expected to raise water bills 23%, the Wichita Eagle reports, though the newspaper does not report those increases as a direct result of this specific project.