Water plant in Cape Girardeau facing capacity issues

Casey Brunke, the Public Works Director in Cape Girardeau says that population has increased which means water demand has also increased.

“We’ve had a lot of development recently and you know any business needs water right and so, which is a great thing, and we want to continue to invite businesses here to come to the city of Cape Girardeau we need to do some sort of expansion at our plant to be able to produce the amount of water that our city needs.”

Brunke says the additional funding is important to be able to keep water running and if not, they could potentially tell people they cannot water their lawns, fill their pools, or wash their cars.

“We know what we need to do we are currently looking for some additional funding to help us complete some of the other projects our first two most critical ones I would say are already on their way and funded.”

JJ Ridings, The System Manager with Alliance Water Resources says it’s not the water that’s a problem but the amount of water.

“We don’t have a quality issue we have a quantity issue. All of it is part of an expansion so we can add a fourth clarifier and get 10 and a half to 11 gallons a day.”

Some improvements with the Water Plant will include SCADA improvements, a new lime system, and filter gallery piping as well as the growth of an extra half a million gallons.

“Be able to produce more water next year probably up to like 8 and a half million like right now the max we can do is 8 million a day, but we can’t keep that up you know for so many days in a row before things start messing up but I’m expecting to be able to get another half million gallon a day next summer and that will help our tremendously.”

Alliance Water Resources is still continuing to request more funding for even a further expansion.