Photos: Iowa City water plant opens its doors for a public tour

On July 21, Little Village graphic designer Kellan Doolittle toured the City of Iowa City’s municipal water treatment plant, located at 80 Stephen Atkins Dr. The facility treats around 6 million gallons of water a day for use by Iowa City and University Heights residents. (However, most University of Iowa campus buildings, including UIHC, are supplied by the UI Water Plant right on the Iowa River, behind the Stanley Museum of Art. While UI uses water towers to maintain pressure, Iowa City relies on high-pressure water pumps.)

The public tour was offered for free as part of the Iowa City Public Library’s Adult Summer Reading Program. Senior Water Treatment Plant Operator Sam Fosse walked residents through the entire water treatment process, from clarification to carbon filtration.⁠

Iowa City’s tap water is sourced primarily from the alluvial aquifer through wells in the sandy riverbed of the Iowa River. (Coralville, meanwhile, sources most of its water from the much-deeper Silurian aquifer. When nitrates are high in the Iowa River, more deep-well water is pumped by the IC plant to dilute the contamination.)
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The facility doesn’t have nitrate removal equipment — an upgrade that would cost roughly $30 million — but maintaining nitrate levels in accordance with federal safety guidelines is currently not an issue, unlike the beleaguered Central Iowa Water Works. The current facility was completed in 2003, but Iowa City has been treating and distributing water to residents since 1882.