Shaping Johnson County Wastewater Services for Decades to Come

Johnson County Wastewater is responsible for providing sanitary sewer services for over 500,000 people in Johnson County, the southeastern portion of the Kansas City metropolitan region. Like most wastewater utilities, JCW faces several utility and regulatory drivers that influence capital and operational expenditures. Aging infrastructure needs, increasingly complex water quality issues, systemwide wet weather capacity concerns and growing service demands will continue to require major capital investments that will impact JCW’s financial and management resources.

JCW partnered with us to develop an Integrated Management Plan using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Integrated Municipal Stormwater and Wastewater Planning Approach Framework, recently codified within the federal Clean Water Act, to inform a long-range program. We identified many near- and long-term programmatic and capital improvement projects that will be needed to address utility and regulatory drivers. Through this effort, approximately US$3 billion in potential projects and solutions will address all currently forecasted systemwide capital and programmatic needs. The team evaluated all potential projects using a Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis. The MCDA scored the relative anticipated environmental and community benefits produced by each project.

Through this planning process, JCW selected approximately US$2.1 billion in priority projects and program investments to be completed in the next 25-year horizon. JCW addressed critical public health and environmental issues first, while appropriately balancing revenue requirements and the ability to effectively and efficiently deliver these capital improvements. The IMP includes a phased, adaptive strategy that addresses near-term compliance needs while allowing enough time to complete more detailed planning studies of future program needs.

The IMP was finalized in September 2019, and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment formally accepted the plan in October 2019. Since acceptance, KDHE and JCW entered into a Consent Order to address wet weather and facility upgrade regulatory obligations and renewed NPDES permits have been released for two of JCW’s key treatment facilities with IMP implementation provisions. We will continue to support JCW in the delivery of the IMP.