If you didn't like the water ... now you know whom to blame.

Leavenworth has gone through a lot of water since 1937.
It was in this year that residents voted to establish the water department as a separate entity from the city’s responsibilities.
Millions and millions of gallons later — along with the installation of thousands of underground pipes and hundreds of fire hydrants — the Leavenworth Water Department is still responsible for all that water.
But while it has gone through so much water in 70 years, the city has seen only three water department managers during that span.
“If this place does not continue to run well when I leave, then I haven’t done my job. Somehow I kept too much knowledge to myself or I’ve ignored certain things. I’m confident that things will continue to go very well,” said current manager Don Murphy, who upon his retirement in March will make way for a fourth manager. According to Murphy, though, it hasn’t just been the managers who have been consistent over the years.
“I guess I like to think I’m a little important, but I’m just one person out of 34. There’s 33 other people who carry this water department every bit as much as I do. They’re good employees,” he said. “Several of them have been here 25 years or more, so they know what it’s all about and will do a good job.”
Murphy graduated from West Point Military Academy and served in the Army for 23 years before attending the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. He retired from the military in 1989, only to hear of an available position at the Leavenworth Water Department. In October of that year, Murphy beat out seven other candidates for an engineering and assistant manager job. In 2001, he took over as manager of production and distribution upon the retirement of Beau Kansteiner (LHS Class of 1952).

“He was interviewed by the board and selected, and I think they made the right decision. He’s an extremely good man,” said Kansteiner, who took over as manager in 1971 after his father retired. “I enjoyed coming back here very much. I stayed with it for 30 years. We did some improvements to the system, and they’re continuing to do that. We’ve got a good crew.”
Kansteiner’s father, H.H. Kansteiner, worked as manager for the longest term — taking the job on Oct. 15, 1937, and retiring on Sept. 1, 1972. The Leavenworth Waterworks Board, which was established in 1937 as well, designated the North Water Plant along the Missouri River as the Kansteiner Water Plant in honor of the water system improvement and community service that the father and son exhibited during their combined 64 years as managers — much to the chagrin of Beau.

“That was a bad joke. It really was. This never was a one-man operation. These are teamwork operations,” he said. “But you get some pride in it, and I get a lot of kidding. Various people will say, ‘Well we drove over the bridge and we saw you got your name on the plant.’ I tell them that it was my dad’s plant and my plant is down south.”
Beau served in the Navy before working for Boeing and teaching at a reserve school in Wichita. Following the Robert McNamara hearings that caused cutbacks in the school and the continual pursuit of the Leavenworth Water Department to have him work, Beau took a position as an assistant. Beau said that although the city has gone through so many changes — from the steam-powered water system of the 1930s to the many adjustments caused by a 1993 flood — one thing that has never changed in the Leavenworth Water Department is the employees.
“We’ve been able to count on persistence and reliability. And with the crews that we’ve had — all hired off the street and brought up within the system — there’s not one of them I wouldn’t tell you is a good man and knows his job extremely well,” said Beau, who visits the water department when he can. “I’ll go down there and give them the frets when I get a chance. They always cringe to see me coming.”
Starting in April, Beau should be able to tease a new water department manager — only the fourth in more than 70 years. “You just have to come in with a positive attitude and listen to the people who know what’s going on, and you’ll come out all right. You get a good feeling from being able to provide a service like water. Everybody needs it, and if it wasn’t there the city wouldn’t be there either,” he said. “This kind of job is a 24-hour-a-day job. You’re always on call. If I’ve enjoyed anything about retirement, it’s going to bed at night and not having to keep an ear cocked for the phone to see where the break was you had to go to or the intake that was iced up.”
Murphy was confident that his replacement will enjoy the job as much as he did. “I truly feel that I’ve been blessed to work for great people on the Waterworks Board and have been blessed to have wonderful employees to work with. It’s been a great second career for me,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for anything better in that regard than to be able to stay right here in Leavenworth and finish raising our family here.”
By HANK LAYTON, Leavenworth Times Staff Writer

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Note from The Old Man: In the old days it used to be said that the Missouri River was "too thick to drink, but too thin to plow."