CEDAR RAPIDS - Since the floods hit, anything people in Cedar Rapids put down the drain or in the toilet went straight into the Cedar River.

But, by the end of Tuesday, officials at the sewage plant say they'll be treating about 40% of the water before it goes into the river.

Crews have been working on the sewage plant non-stop. Tuesday they were dealing with sludge that hadn't moved since the middle of June.

While they're still cleaning out the plant, they've started partially treating water again.

"The big news today is we're starting up our primary process when is the first level of treatment, which will reduce the amount of solids going to the river by about 40 - 50 percent," said Utilities Operations Manager
Greg Eyerly.

To do that, the Waste Water Treatment Plant is filling giant holding tanks. The tanks take the water straight from the sewer system and let the solids sink to the bottom. It's one of many things they normally do to water sent down the drain, before it goes back into the river.

"This is one state of many as we get different parts of the process started up and different stages of treatment. It's taken a lot of work to get this far, it's going to take more to get back to where we were," said Utilities and Environmental Manager Steve Hershner.

The workers here say about 85% of the plant's processes were affected by the flood.

They figure it will cost $75 million in final, permanent repairs. But, those repairs will make this 30 year old plant, almost like new.

"Yeah, basically we have to build the plant from the inside out. Typically it takes years to built a waste water treatment plant, but we're having to do that in weeks and months," said Eyerly.

Even though the plant is running on a limited basis, workers there say water downstream of Cedar Rapids is still not safe to be in, that's because while they're filtering out solid waste, they still haven't been able to start dis-infecting the water.

Workers figure it will be the middle of October before the plant is working 100%.

And the drinking water supply is just fine- this is concerning what goes down the drain.

Email Justin Foss at Justin.Foss@kcrg.com