The John E. Egan Water Reclamation Plant (WRP) is one of seven wastewater treatment facilities owned and operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD). The MWRD is the wastewater treatment and stormwater management agency for the City of Chicago and 125 Cook County communities. We work every day to mitigate flooding and convert wastewater into valuable resources like clean water, phosphorus, biosolids, and biogas. 

If you live within our service area, the water that goes down your toilet, sinks and drains eventually comes to us to be cleaned. We treat wastewater from homes and businesses throughout our 883-square-mile service area in addition to stormwater from some communities. All of this wastewater and stormwater flow through local sewers into our interceptors before flowing to WRPs where we clean the water and recover resources using a combination of physical, biological, and sometimes chemical treatment processes. 

The MWRD provides this service for over 5 million people. Nearly 450 billion gallons of wastewater is treated by our seven facilities every year. 

Egan WRP serves 185,213 residents in a 44-square-mile-area. In operation since 1975, the Egan WRP cleans an average of 30 million gallons of wastewater per day (mgd) and has the capacity to treat 50 mgd. Wastewater treatment uses the same processes that occur naturally in rivers to clean water, incorporating physical and biological processes with a combination of air, gravity and microorganisms. In a WRP, cleaning is sped up dramatically, so a process that could take weeks in a river happens over the course of hours.