Consultant urges Coffey County to fund design work for regional water upgrade as plant nears capacity

Ben Coultering, a project engineer with Midwest Engineering Group, told the Coffey County Board the region’s Wholesale 12 water system is at or near its practical capacity and at risk of supply stress during droughts and extreme weather. He said a modular expansion that would add a 3-million-gallons-per-day treatment train alongside the existing 1.2–1.3 MGD capability would provide capacity and resilience while allowing phased construction to limit immediate rate shocks to customers.

The consultant framed the immediate ask as a design-and-permitting step: “to do the permitting and the design right now … it would cost about $1.3 million,” Ben said in presenting an approach intended to preserve regional grant eligibility and the county’s pending water-purchase application. He said building an entire, end-state system all at once could be far more expensive — earlier estimates in the briefing ranged from tens of millions of dollars for full buildout — and stressed the value of a phased, modular plan that a formal design would make implementable.

Why it matters: county staff and commissioners said water capacity underpins any serious economic development along the interstate corridor and affects long-term planning for housing and industry. Ben warned that without a funded design the county risks losing application priority and potential water allocations to other applicants.

Funding and rate concerns dominated the discussion. Presenters reviewed possible funding sources — the Kansas State Revolving Fund, USDA rural programs, state technical assistance and federal grant pools — and noted availability limits: Ben said the USDA program at the time had roughly $10 million in loan and $2 million in grant funding for the entire state, making smaller projects difficult to finance from that source alone. Commissioners asked what the cost would mean to customers; presenters cautioned that costs passed to wholesale providers would amplify downstream and could increase retail rates unless spread regionally.

Next steps: the consultant and county staff encouraged a work session with regional partners and directed staff to continue grant searches and pursue the immediate design/permitting step as the most feasible first move. The board did not take an immediate funding vote; members asked staff to return with cost-share scenarios and a proposed timeline for a follow-up meeting.

All attributions above come from the county meeting presentation and exchange with Ben Coultering, as recorded in the public transcript.