Water is Life.  Our friends and neighbors, the Kickapoos in Kansas have been great allies in reminding us that all too importance of water.  And while many of us take for granted the flushing of the toilet or the turning of the dishwasher knob, there is a great deal of work, infrastructure, and capital invested in ensuring that each resident of the City of Horton and City of Willis receive the highest quality of water. 

Water is pumped from a total of six (6) wells, four of which are new wells, drilled in 2001 after the listing of Mission Lake as an unsuitable supply of water due to exceeding total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) set by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment under the Clean Water Act. 

The water is pumped from six wells to the water plant at a rate of 225 gallons per minute, the deepest well is 105 feet. The plant was built for the treatment of surface water, but has been used for gound water since November 2000. The treatment for ground water is simplier and less exspensive to produce than surface water. The plant operators have to add only two chemicals to the water, because it is ground water. When the plant was using surface water the operators had to add up to seven different chemicals to keep the water clean and safe. The plant operators add chlorine and a phophate. The chlorine kills any harmful bacteria and the phophate helps from build up of calcium distribution on the pipes.

After the water is pumped from the wells to the water plant it is sent to the Rapid Mix which is where the chlorine is added. The state mininum for chlorine residual is 0.2 and no more than 4.0 and the plant operators keep the plant chlorine level at an average of around 2.0. After going through the rapid mix it moves on to the solids contact basin or the (SCB). Which is a round basin that is designed to remove any of the solids that have got into the water. The SCB has a cover over it to help keep debris and sunlight out of the water. The SCB hold an average of 1300,00 gallons of water.

After the water goes through the SCB it moves onto the filters. The filters are where the phosphate is added into the water. There are two filters, but you can not have water going throught both at the same time, so everytime water comes into the plant the filters switch so that not one filters does all the work and it is used as a back up if one of the filters fails they can manually turn the other filter one to keep the plant running. The operators at the plant clean the filters every two or three weeks. They do this by closing that one filter and turn on the the air tank to force any dirt to come to the top of the filter, then to open the back wash valve to push all the water out to the Water Pollution Control.

After the water has been mixed and filtered it moves on to the heart of the plant, the clear well. The clear well hold 200,000 gallons of water. It is under that ground and it is right in front of the plant, you will never see the clear well. If you see the blue pipe coming out of the ground that is the vent for the clear well. The clear well is the heart of the plant, because it uses a float system to tell the rest of the plant when it is getting low on water and turns the wells and the high service pumps on to get send more water to the plant.

When the water tower needs water it sends a signal to the Clear Well to start pumping water to the Tower. Then the Clear Well kicks on the high service pump to the Water Tower. After the Tower is full or the Clear Well gets low the Clear Well will shut off the wells or the high service pumps. The Water Tower can hold 200,000 gallons of water. The water is sent from the Tower to the resident by pumps and gravity. The city is required to keep the water pressure at the minimum at 20 psi at any given place in the city, any less than that could let in backwash and make the water unsafe to drink.