ETC Facilities

In 1975, Kirkwood received the first EPA 109b appropriation to help fund the building of a state wastewater training facility and this allowed the programs to expand. The Center was opened in 1976 as the first 109b funded wastewater training center in the nation. In 1980, and again in 1990 additions that nearly doubled the size of the facility were added. The Center contains three general purpose classrooms, with a seating capacity of 40, 20 and 16; an analytical lab with 24 work stations; a chemical prep room; an instrument room; offices for sixteen staff members; a maintenance lab with 18 work stations; a tool room; and a pilot scale 15,000 gallon per day wastewater treatment plant.


The facilities maintenance lab includes pumps, motors, valves and meters for hands-on training. Training units compliment instruction on everything from packing a pump to repairing a fire hydrant. The analytical chemistry lab is completely equipped for water and wastewater monitoring and analysis.

Adjacent to the training center is the Kirkwood/HMTRI hazardous materials training grounds. This three-acre site was developed in 1986 and provides a safe and controlled site to deliver many forms of industrial hazardous materials training. These include fire control techniques, corrosive spill response procedures, confined space entry and rescue, flammable liquid spill response, compressed gas release response, pipe and valve leak response, and loading dock spill response. The basic grounds consists of 100 x 150 ft. concrete pad, an equipment storage building, a simulations lab building, and a fully instrumented burn building. All runoff from the facility is controlled and sent to the college's wastewater treatment facility and from there, after treatment, is discharged into the city's sanitary sewer system. Adjacent to the grounds is a field, stream, wood lot, and drum storage site used in both spill response and 40 hour waste site training programs.