City Water, Light & Power provides water service to a population of nearly 150,000 people in and around Springfield. This includes retail service to Springfield as well as Southern View, Leland Grove and certain unincorporated areas around the city. Wholesale service is provided to Grandview, Jerome, Loami, Rochester, Sugar Creek Public Water District, Williamsville-Sherman Water Commission and Round Prairie Water Cooperative. Retail water customers within the City of Springfield pay the second lowest rates in the state outside of Chicago.
The Water Division is responsible for planning, constructing and maintaining the city's integrated water supply, purification, and distribution system—which includes Lake Springfield, the lakeside Water Purification Plant, three water storage tanks, and approximately 750 miles of water mains. The Division's primary mission is to ensure that all utility customers will have a safe and plentiful water supply in both the immediate and long-term future. Toward this end, the Division operates a 24-hour laboratory where chemists and plant operators consistently and continually check drinking water quality. Division employees are also actively involved in searching out the best options for protecting our current supply source and planning for long-range needs.
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In recent years, CWLP's Water Division has undertaken a number of infrastructure improvements, including replacing all five of the original Spaulding Dam gates that dated back to the
building of Lake Springfield in the mid-1930s; replacing the three original Spaulding clarifiers, dating to 1935, with state-of-the-art Helical Flow models that significantly increase
both the quality and quantity of water that can be treated each day, while reducing the Water Purification Plant's energy consumption; construction of a new six-million gallon clear well,
built in conjunction with new low- and high-service water pumping stations to replace a smaller 1930s-era clear well and the antiquated pump stations previously located in the basement of
the decommisioned Lakeside Power Station; upgrading the water intake structure; and commencement of the installation of high-tech Automated Meter Reading (AMR) meters that allow meters to be
read remotely and more accurately. In the past six years, CWLP has spent in excess of $65 million to modernize its drinking water treatment and transmission and distribution capabilities.
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But producing and distributing treated water is only part of the Water Division's function. The Division is also responsible for managing and protecting the City's primary water supply source,
Lake Springfield, and for seeking means by which to ensure the water supply will be sufficient in quantity and quality to meet the needs of our growing community and the nearby communities that
rely on CWLP for their drinking water. For decades, the utility has worked with agricultural fertilizer companies and farmers within Lake Springfield's watershed to reduce erosion and chemical
runoff into the lake and is currently involved in a project with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the Sangamon County Soil and Water Conservation District to implement a watershed
best management program to further these goals. In 2014, CWLP won top honors in the Source Water Protection–Large System Category from the Illinois Section of the
American Water Works Association for developing and implementing exemplary source water protection programs for Lake Springfield.
Lake Water Quality
The water Division also continues to actively pursue options for developing a long-term supplementary water source that will ensure the city will have a sufficient water supply in the event of a major drought.