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Small Towns, Big Pipes
You turn on the tap and clean water comes out. You flush and it goes away. Rain falls and the street drains. Three systems, all buried, all older than most of us, all wearing out at the same time.
We present here a plain-language series on what that means for small towns like ours across Illinois, why it costs so much to fix and what a village our size can actually do about it. Every fact comes with a source you can check yourself.
None of this is exclusive to Kansas Illinois. Small municipalities across Illinois and the Country are experiencing the exact same failing infrastructure. Understanding how these systems reached this point will hopefully help us figure out how to find a solution.
The House Nobody Can Afford to Tear Down
Every small town has one. Usually more than one. The house with the sagging porch roof and the tree growing out of the gutter, windows sheeted over with plywood that went gray years ago. Everybody [...]
What Actually Worked
If you've read the whole series, you could be forgiven for feeling like the situation is hopeless. Failing pipes, unfunded mandates, debt-only "help," retiring operators, volunteer governments stretched to the breaking point. Article after article [...]
The Volunteer Government
Every article in this series has described enormous, complicated jobs. Borrow millions for a treatment plant. Meet an EPA lead-line mandate. Run a competitive grant application with engineering reports attached. File the compliance paperwork. Manage [...]
Construction of the new Water Tower for the Village of Kansas Illinois is financed by the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (SRF). The SRF program is administered by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and receives a portion of its money to fund these types of projects from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
This project includes a new water tower. Once complete, it will improve water quality for area residents and businesses in Kansas Illinois by replacing the aging water tower. SRF programs operate in each state to provide communities the resources necessary to build, maintain, and improve the infrastructure that protects one of our most valuable resources: water.
