JOHNSON COUNTY GOVERNMENT
STATE OF KANSAS
NEWS RELEASE
For immediate release: July 21, 2011
Contact: John O’Neil, general manager at Johnson County Wastewater, at (913) 715-8570
OLATHE, KS (Johnson County Square) — A public hearing has been scheduled on August 22 regarding a decades-old issue of providing sewers to Gardner Lake.
On Thursday, July 21, the Johnson County Board of Commissioners approved the hearing date to allow public comments on the proposed enlargement of the Consolidated Main Sewer District and the Consolidated Lateral Sewer District and the proposed creation of Lateral Sewer District No. 1 of Kill Creek No. 2 to provide sewers to the Gardner Lake area. The public hearing begins 6:30 p.m. at the Sunset Drive Office Building, 11811 South Sunset Drive, Olathe.
Construction of a sewer system to serve the small lakeside neighborhood, located north of the city of Gardner, has been discussed and debated since at least the 1970s, perhaps even longer.
“This is a very good step forward for Gardner Lake and for the people of Gardner Lake,” Sixth District Commissioner Calvin Hayden said.
Informational meetings in March and April were conducted by Johnson County Wastewater regarding the possibility of the sewer project. Since then, a petition signed by owners of 66 percent of the land area within the proposed district has been submitted to the county requesting creation of the sewer district, which consists of residential neighborhood with 279 homes served by septic tanks. It is the largest septic-tanks-to-sewers project for the Wastewater Department in more than three decades.
The project will include construction of low pressure sewer mains for the entire district as well as grinder pumps for property owners who decide to connect to the system. The proposed enlargement area, totaling about 84 acres, is located between 151st and 162nd streets in the vicinity of Gardner Road. The sewers would connect to the Kill Creek Pump Station on 159th Street just east of Gardner Lake.
The project is estimated to cost slightly more than $8.7 million, including approximately $6.6 million from special assessments to property owners and approximately $2.1 million by Johnson County Wastewater’s Capital Improvement Fund of the Consolidated Main Sewer District.
It is likely a key factor in the increase in support for sewers in this area is the availability of a new funding source. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has offered a State Revolving Fund Loan with 40 percent principle forgiveness (effectively a grant) for the project. The principle forgiveness applies to the portion of the project funded by the property owners and Johnson County Wastewater.
If authorized by the Board of County Commissioners, construction of the sewers would likely begin in the summer of 2013 with completion expected by summer of 2014.
Gardner Lake dates back to the mid-1930s when it was created as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) as a response to the massive unemployment caused by the stock market crash in 1929.
The WPA was established in 1935 to provide basic work for the high number of unemployed. In 1938, the WPA was reorganized and renamed the Works Projects Administration. More than five million Americans found work between July 1935 and December 1938 as a result of WPA projects.
The overall Gardner Lake project began in 1935 and ended three years later at a cost of $567,245. It included not only the construction of the lake, but the creation of an earthen dam, beach, shelter houses, toilets, outdoor ovens, picnic tables, athletic fields, and a boat dock. It was the largest of a dozen WPA projects commissioned in Johnson County during the 1930s.
The project also involved construction of the Gardner Lake Beach House, a one-story building of Kansas limestone that was built in 1938 on the west side of the lake. It is one of the only remaining structures in Johnson County resulting from Depression era relief projects.
The Gardner Lake Beach House was in use from 1938 until 1989 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.