History of KsAWWA

For over a century, waterworks professionals have turned to the American Water Works Association to share their experiences and work out their problems. There are only three older scientific societies ahead of AWWA. They are the American Society of Civil Engineers organized in 1852, the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers in 1871, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1880.

In response to a letter sent out by W. C. Stripe, superintendent of the Keokuk, Iowa, Water Works, 22 waterworks men met in Engineers Hall at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri on March 29, 1881, to organize the American Water Works Association.

By 1910 AWWA had 1,000 members, and at this point, the annual meetings were divided into separate discussion groups on a specialized subject. By 1913 geographical sections or regional meetings were proposed, and in 1914 the creation of sections was authorized.

The Iowa Section was chartered in April 1915. In 1927 Earnest Boyce of the Kansas State Board of Health expressed the desire of a number of Kansas waterworks men to affiliate with the Iowa Section since Kansas did not have enough members to organize its own section. In 1928 Kansas was admitted to the Iowa Section, and this Section then included Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota, and eastern Nebraska and remained unchanged until the conclusion of World War II. In 1928 the name of the section was changed from the Iowa Section to the Missouri Valley Section. The last meeting of the Missouri Valley Section was October 1945.

In 1946 the Missouri Valley Section was divided into separate state sections. The year 2021 marks 75 years for Kansas Section as a standalone section.

Information taken from History of the Iowa Section American Water Works Association 1914-1945, copyrighted 2007