Sewer Separation in Downtown Kansas City: A Balancing Act

Kansas City Water Services (KC Water Services) owns and operates a collection system consisting of approximately 2,200 miles of sanitary sewers and 600 miles of combined sewers. The City is under a Consent Decree (CD) and is in its 13th year of implementing a long-term overflow control plan (LTCP) to reduce the volume of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) city wide. This paper focuses on the design and construction of a sewer separation project to eliminate a combined sewer outfall in one of the oldest combined sewer systems in Kansas City. The project team identified three key takeaways from the project including the importance of system characterization to accurately define the combined sewershed boundaries, ways to costeffectively address private property sewer separation, and the impact that level of service improvements can have on stakeholder acceptance of the project. The accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned during this project are applicable to CSO communities looking for a straightforward, practical, cost-effective approach to public and private sewer separation.