Has the Wichita ASR system proven its worth in production?

Last week the City of Wichita held a town hall meeting on water issues. The issue is ripe because the city has placed a one cent per dollar sales tax on the November ballot. The largest share of the revenue, 63 percent, is earmarked for expansion of the Aquifer Storage and Recovery project, or ASR.

I appeared at the meeting and expressed my concerns regarding things I had recently learned, which is that we’ve cut expectations for ASR production in half. Also, ASR is still in commissioning stage.

Alan King, Director of Public Works for the City of Wichita, said the individual components of the ASR systems have been tested, and that the tests have been successful. He confirmed that the original estimates of production were too high.

We also learned that there have been days where there was sufficient water in the Little Arkansas River to draw from it, but that sometimes the levels of bromide or atrazine have been too high, and the water could not be used.

View a video excerpt of the meeting below, or click here to view at YouTube.