Be honest. How many Hutchinson residents think about how their city provides safe drinking water and handles its wastewater? Probably not very many.

Most Americans don’t give a second thought to the safety of the water coming out of their home’s faucets. That’s due to the generally high standards met by most water treatment plants, including at Hutchinson’s new $15 million plant.

If few Americans think about their tap water, it is likely even fewer think about what happens to it once it heads down the drain or is flushed down the toilet. But just like the ever-increasing high standards that must be met by water treatment plants, government regulations for handling wastewater also have been tightened.

Hutchinson officials, including Water and Wastewater Manager Randy DeVries and Brian Mehr, the wastewater superintendent, think about wastewater all the time. Faced with stricter state and federal rules regulating water discharged from the city’s plant into Crow River, they began working with consultants from Donohue & Associates almost three years ago on plans for a plant expansion. That almost $11.2 million project is now essentially complete and running.

Read about how the plant works in the Leader’s July 10 print edition.

(Terry Davis is a Hutchinson Leader staff writer. E-mail him at davis@hutchinsonleader.com [2].)