About The Waterworks

Keokuk Municipal Waterworks is a board-run utility and a subsidiary of the City of Keokuk.  The Waterworks is entirely revenue-funded.  The Board of Directors consists of 5 members of the Keokuk community.

The Mississippi River is the source of potable water for Keokuk, and has been since the Waterworks became a municipal utility in 1939.  The production capacity of the Keokuk plant is 14 million gallons per day (MGD), expandable to 21 MGD.  The current plant was put in service in 1999.  The process consists of Claricone separation, followed by recarbination, filtration, and then chlorine contact time and Chloramination before pumping the water into the distribution system.  The distribution system consists of nearly 100 miles of pipe and 3 elevated towers with a combined 6 million gallons storage capacity.  Our system contains approximately 4,000 meters.

The Waterworks employs 21 people in 3 departments:  office, plant, and distribution.  We are very proud of our systems and have been chosen as the best tasting water in Iowa on 4 occasions:  2005, 2015, 2019, and 2021.  Keokuk is the only surface water treatment plant to have won this award. 

The Board of Directors and Employees of the Waterworks are committed to providing safe, abundant, affordable and great-tasting water to the people and business owners of Keokuk with a long-term view.  We do our work and make our decisions with the intention of serving our customers to the best of our abilities.