About the Plan
Why It's Important
The Integrated Plan provides an affordable and strategic plan to enhance our community, protect water quality, and ensure long-term viability of our system. The Integrated Plan prioritizes capital improvements over a 25-year schedule to optimize wastewater treatment, maintain the integrity of our collection system, and comply with Clean Water Act requirements.
Wastewater Treatment is Essential to Johnson County
Wastewater treatment is the first defense against prevention of disease outbreaks and is essential to stream health and protection of the environment. Imagine how different your life would be if you didn’t have sanitary sewer services. In your home, the shower, kitchen sink, washing machine and toilets – all send flow to an interconnected, reliable wastewater treatment system.
Wastewater Sources (residential)
The everyday appliances we use in our homes, schools and businesses produce the wastewater that JCW collects and processes. In our homes, wastewater flows into the main sanitary sewer drain under your house, which connects to JCW’s sanitary sewer system at the edge of your property. The JCW sanitary sewer system directs all wastewater to the closest wastewater treatment facility. The volume of water used by plumbing fixtures, appliances, toilets, baths, laundry machines and dishwashers results in wastewater being 99 percent liquid.
Renewing Life’s Essential Resource:
Wastewater Collections and Treatment System
Wastewater is collected from
Commercial Properties: Including malls, grocery stores, retail shops, offices and other businesses.
Residential Properties: From standalone single-family homes to large, multi-unit apartment buildings.
Industrial Facilities: Such as manufacturing, warehousing and production.
And sent to the
Wastewater Treatment Facilities: Collect and treat wastewater, extracting contaminants and disaffecting the flow before it is discharged back into the environment.
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Manholes: grant access for cleaning and inspecting sewer lines. They can join pipelines that would otherwise not connect due to elevation differences.
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Sewer laterals connect properties to the JCW system. These lines are the property owner’s responsibility.
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Sewer mains receive flow from lateral lines and use gravity to channel the flow toward the treatment facility. These are also referred to as gravity mains.
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Lateral clean-outs give access to the lateral lines and can be found in yards, basements and crawl spaces.
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Interceptor mains receive the contents of the sewer mains, carrying the flows to the treatment facility. These are generally the largest lines within a collection system.
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Pump stations move wastewater to a forcemain when gravity conveyance is not an option.
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Forcemains connect the flow from the pump station to an interceptor main.
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At the treatment facility, wastewater is filtered and screened as it enters the treatment process.
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Treated, disinfected water is discharged back into the environment.
Various Wastewater Treatments Used at JCW
Biological Nutrient Removal Basins
Air is circulated and bacteria remove dissolved pollutants, phosphorus and nitrates.
Liquid and small particles
Secondary Clarifier
Additional biosolids are separated from the liquid and piped back to the digester.
Effluent Filtration
Liquid is filtered to remove any remaining small particles.
Disinfection
Effluent is disinfected with either ultraviolet light or chlorine before being discharged to a stream or river.
Wastewater from home or business enters sanitary sewer
Primary treatment
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Grit removal: gravity pulls larger particles to the bottom
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Primary clarifier: solids are separated from water by settling to the bottom of the clarifier
Sludge (biosolids) sent to the digester
Digester
A biological process that reduces the volume of organic materials and destroys pathogenic bacteria to convert the sludge to recyclable biosolids. Also produces methane gas for energy recovery.
Dewatering
Water is removed from the digested biosolids to produce a semi-solid byproduct that is loaded into trucks.
Biosolids
Biosolids are used as a soil amendment and fertilizer for crops not destined for human consumption.
Our Residential, Industrial & Commercial Customers
In Johnson County, KS, more than 500,000 residential, industrial, and commercial customers rely on JCW for the safe collection, transport, and treatment of their wastewater. To provide top-level customer and system service, JCW continually manages, maintains, and improves an extensive resource network, including:
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6 Major Wastewater Treatment Facilities (WWTFs)
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32 Pump Stations
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56 Million Gallons per Day (MGD) of Wastewater Treated
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72 Miles of Forcemains
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2,400 Miles of Gravity Sanitary Sewer Lines
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58,000 Manholes
JCW works in partnership with residential and commercial customers, the Johnson County Board of Commissioners, and county management to ensure the highest level of service. The organization’s aim is to modernize and improve JCW processes and enhance the utility's mission of:
Protecting our Environment
Serving our Customers
Enhancing our Communities
Financial Stability
JCW is committed to developing an affordable and strategic plan that enhances our community, protects our water quality, and ensures the long-term viability of our system.
In years past, before Integrated Planning (IP) was endorsed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and included in the Clean Water Act, utility managers had fewer resources at their disposal. Without IP, they struggled to meet regulatory requirements that didn’t consider the utility’s financial obligations or unique circumstances facing the community it served. As a result, utility managers were often forced to satisfy those requirements by drastically increasing service rates over a short timeframe in order to fund the completion of projects over a short period of time. With Integrated Planning, utility managers can better manage community resources by prioritizing critical infrastructure, environmental, and public health issues.
JCW will need to make major capital investments in the coming years to address priority infrastructure needs and regulatory demands. Thanks to its investment in the IP process, JCW has avoided significant, short-term rate increases by establishing a balanced, long-term investment strategy. This allows JCW to identify and prioritize engineering alternatives and new technologies that deliver customer savings.
Address Priorities
Areas of Immediate Need
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Wastewater Treatment Facilities Improvements
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Collection System Maintenance and Renewal
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Wet Weather Management Strategies
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Pumping Facility Performance
Areas of Continuous Need
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Aging Infrastructure
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Complex Water Quality Issues
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System-Wide Wet Weather Capacity
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Community Growth and Redevelopment
Phase 1 - Completed in 2019
JCW identified approximately $2.1 Billion (in 2018 dollars) in potential projects and solutions over the next 25 years.
Phase 2 - Updated Plan - Completed in 2024
JCW identified approximately $2.9 billion (in 2024 dollars) in potential projects that are needed over the next 25 years. The majority of these initiatives, approximately 54 percent, are major wastewater treatment facility upgrades that will provide additional capacity, renew aging facilities and continue JCW’s commitment to existing and future regulatory requirements.
JCW's Five-Year Action Plan
While JCW’s 25-year IP is designed to guide its investments and activities for the next quarter century, an increased focus is required for its most immediate needs. To this end, JCW created a five-year action plan to help ensure the last year of its IP is just as successful as the first.
The schedule below reflects JCW’s understanding of infrastructure and regulation needs over the next 5 years.
As JCW continues to implement the Integrated Plan, it will also develop new information that helps to better characterize system needs, solutions, and resources. Using the principles of adaptive management, JCW will update the Integrated Plan every five years to ensure investments are prioritized in a manner that optimizes their benefits to the community.
Integrated Plan 25-Year Schedule
The 25-year year schedule is used for long-range planning and demonstrates to the regulators our intention to meet the requirements in a way that avoids burdening our customers with rate spikes.
After quantifying potential project benefits, JCW worked with its engineering and financial consultants to develop the Phase 2 Integrated Plan’s implementation schedule. The schedule prioritized high-benefit projects while also considering project delivery, staff workload, and funding needs. The updated prioritization incorporated JCW’s improved understanding of system improvement needs with other factors that affect scheduling such as population growth rates. This effort helped JCW define a balanced implementation schedule for improvements over the next 25 years.
Interactive Map
Want to learn where projects will take place? You can use the interactive map link below to see where projects are taking place and learn more about the specifics details.
