City Of Collinsville Opens New Water Treatment Plant

The City of Collinsville recently held a ribbon cutting for its new water treatment plant. The new plant replaces the old plant which had been in use for over 40 years.

While the plant has been in operation since May 2022, the ribbon cutting was more about celebrating and tying up some odds and ends at the plant.

The new plant took 3 and a half years to complete, from the designs all the way down to getting it up and running. The new plant can produce better quality water as well as serve more customers to account for Collinsville's growing population.

"It will serve a bigger population. This gives us a double size portion on our plant to make sure that we have looked towards the future and growing the plant to meet that need in the future," Craig Stokes, Collinsville's assistant city manager of operations, said.

Stokes said that there were discussions to potentially refurbish the old plant, but the city decided that building a new plant would be a better investment.

"The previous plant was done back in 1979. It was over 40 years old. To refurbish that plant would’ve cost a couple million dollars less than building a new plant, and you would only have another maybe 10 years of the refurbishing," Stokes said.

The plant cost roughly $8.6 million to build, and Stokes said that so far the feedback from the public has been pretty positive.