The St. Cloud Water Treatment Facility is located in beautiful Hester Park. Hester Park is named after Hester (Cronk) Gilman, wife of Charles Andrew Gilman (1833-1868), a distinguished businessman and politician in the late 1800s.

In 1907, 19 wells were sunk in the Hester Park area to service the city water works using a pump house and filtration plant. However, the supply of water was inadequate to service the city. One well that was sunk in 1907 flowed with pressure and continued to flow until the early 1990s when it was capped.

A new water works was constructed in the City of St. Cloud in 1954. The filtration facility was located at the current water treatment facility location. The facility could treat 9 million gallons of water per day.  Since then, the facility has undergone two expansions, in 1994 and 2016, to bring the total capacity to 24 million gallons per day.

Currently, the facility is under construction again.  The Water Treatment Facility Advanced Process Improvements and Upgrades project is expected to be completed in 2023 and will position the Utility to meet future regulatory requirements.  For more information, visit the project page.