From Smart Sewers to First of Its Kind Infrastructure: How KC Water and Jacobs are Shaping Kansas City’s Future

By 2050, 89% of the U.S. population and 68% of the world population is projected to live in urban areas. While cities offer greater economic opportunities and vibrant places to connect, keeping up with demands and dealing with aging infrastructure, as populations increase, creates a critical need for infrastructure owners and utilities around the world to focus on the future.

Take for example the Kansas City metropolitan area. Straddling two states with often-competing interests poses a greater need for inter-community communication and stakeholder engagement. The local water utility for the Kansas City, Missouri side, KC Water, has a service area that spans over 300 square miles with a population of just over 500,000, meaning officials are tasked with maintaining and improving an infrastructure network that is incredibly spread out. Like other metro areas around the world, the community includes a section of people that are at poverty level and in underserved neighborhoods, challenging city officials to improve service without increasing their financial burden.

Jacobs has worked in tandem with KC Water for close to 20 years to address these challenges head on and help enhance their level of service to the local community. One such effort is the Middle Blue River I/I (Inflow and Infiltration) project.

Completed earlier this year, the project was a $6.5 million investment to restore the aging separate sewer system infrastructure in the historic Waldo neighborhood. The residential neighborhoods and commercial properties experienced significant utility and public works construction in the years leading up to this project, along with local waterbodies receiving sewer overflows. Jacobs provided design and construction phase services for over 33,000 linear feet of sewer main and over 300 manholes, improving capacity of the collection system and preserving the local environment by reducing the volume of sewer overflows. 

The project, named by the Kansas City Industrial Council as its 2024 Sustainability Award winner, is part of a larger programmatic effort to meet the goals set out by KC Water’s Smart Sewer program – a 30-year multi-billion dollar program that we’ve been supporting via projects such as Middle Blue since our local Kansas City office opened in 2005. 

Another key example of our work with KC Water to tackle its pressing challenges is at KC Water’s Blue River Wastewater Treatment Plant. The plant treats 75 million gallons of wastewater per day and processes all of KC Water’s biosolids. Led by our Director Emeritus for Global Wastewater Solutions & Kansas City local Julian Sandino, we’ve served on the Owner’s Agent team for KC Water as they work to convert the facility into a Thermal Hydrolysis Process (THP) facility – upon completion, it will be the first of its kind in the U.S. Midwest. 

The Blue River Biosolids project is a piece of the larger puzzle that KC Water has trusted us with. Additional, recent examples of where we’re making an impact locally include: 

• We’re currently partnering with KC Water as guides on their journey to a fully-digital utility, exploring ways to integrate our Digital OneWater suite of solutions to support their digital transformation. 
• Our project team is embarking to locate and eliminate sources of odor in KC Water’s sanitary system, which will use proprietary models to reduce piloting costs. 
• We’ve been a design consultant on the Smart Sewer Program’s Keep Out the Rain (Private I/I) project, a public-facing project aimed at eliminating private stormwater connections into the sanitary sewer. The Smart Sewer Program is one of the first in the U.S. to implement a Private I/I project, highlighting KC Water’s commitment to their ratepayers through innovation and forward-thinking solutions. 

“Above all else, our work in Kansas City – and around the globe – wouldn’t be possible without the trust and support from our incredible clients,” says Jacobs Client Service Leader Shashi Kambhampati. “KC Water’s trust in us to help them with their most challenging projects helps us put our best and brightest, regardless of if they sit in Kansas City or halfway around the globe, in front of them to help bring our best solutions to the table and deliver the promise of a more connected, sustainable world.”

Addressing challenges like climate change, water scarcity, aging infrastructure and emerging contaminants, managing this essential resource has never been more complex. From drinking water treatment and reuse to water resource recovery and resilience, we’re working with our clients to protect communities, industries and the environment, and provide them with the water resources they need to thrive.