The Missourian ran one of my pictures and a story about construction resuming on a new floculator settling basin at the city’s water plant on East Cape Rock Drive. The caption said Missouri Utilities planned to build an additional clarifier,similar to the basin at top right. Water mixed with chemicals was pumped into tanks and the mud settled to the bottom.
Preparing for population of 50,000
The July 8, 1967, story said the expansion was to prepare for the day when Cape’s population would reach 50,000. [The 2011 Census pegged Cape at 38,402. It still has a ways to go.]
The expansion was going to increase the city’s water output by 150 per cent. The original water plant was designed to hand about 3 million gallons of water a day, enough for about 31,500 persons. During the previous summer’s heat wave, the plant hit a peak of 3,880,000 gallons a day, exceeding its theoretical capacity. The improvements were to boost capacity to 4-1/2 million gallons a day.
Water comes from Mississippi River
Production engineer Fred N. LaBruyere said a pump used to pull water 1,900 feet from the river to the treatment plant would be replaced. The last major construction work took place in 1954, he said, and it was to improve the quality of the water, not the quantity.
[I hate to think what it tasted like before 1954. Cape water used to taste like chlorine with a few drops of water added.] I believe I read recently that all of Cape’s water comes from wells, not the river, these days.
Over the years, I got to cover the whole range of Cape liquids from the water treatment plant at the head end to the sewage treatment plant at the —uhhhh— other end.
Here are a few of the posts:
- Water plant goldfish pond
- Sewage treatment plant
- Dad’s scrapbook pictures of 1940-41 sewer project
- Under Cape’s streets
This is definitely one to show engineer Don. He is fascinated by anything related to infrastructure.
Cool…I love looking at Big cranes and stuff…reminds me I have NO talent for building anything. Looks like they just finish a new project at the water plant.
Hey Ken. the population numbers you quoted caught my eye. I have been highly upset for the last five years or so as the city population seems to have suddenly sky rocketed. Cape on the main streets is like driving in St Louis now.
So I finally went down to city hall last summer and told the woman who is the city engineer that it seemed to me that Cape was closer to one hundred thousand than forty thousand people. She laughed and told me that all of their calculations and measurements indicated that during the day there were around two hundred thousand people in Cape for various reasons. That was quite a bit more than I had guesses. So I guess it is reasonable to believe that the number of people shopping here, going to the doctors, sight seeing and other things is somewhere on an order of magnitude of one hundred to two hundred thousand people. It’s really difficult to take ones eyes off the road even for a second or two to look around now.