Building a New Water Treatment Plant to Support Growth and Meet Future Demand in Southwest Iowa

The Southern Iowa Rural Water Association is committed to providing safe, high-quality potable water to over 11,500 customers across 13 counties in Southwest Iowa. Due to rapid growth, SIRWA was nearing its water supply limit from Creston Waterworks, which supplied about 85% of its capacity. SIRWA also covered 75% of Creston's water treatment plant’s operating costs.

To address this, SIRWA decided to build its own water treatment plant. The new facility, located east of Creston City Waterworks WTP at the Twelve Mile Reservoir site, is designed to treat up to six million gallons of water per day, with room for future expansion by an additional two million gallons per day. The plant will use water from the nearby Three Mile Reservoir through an existing intake and pump station.

Accompanying the new Water Treatment Plant design, several key facilities were built: an administration building, chemical building, two disinfection tanks, two ground storage reservoir tanks, two clearwells with high service pumping, a four-cell sludge dewatering lagoon system, and other support structures. Construction also involved extending a 20-inch raw water pipeline to connect to the existing main and a 24-inch finished water pipeline from the new WTP to the SIRWA distribution system. A new concrete road was built for easy access to the WTP from Highway 34.