Roy Blunt Reservoir to provide vital water supply to northern Missouri

SULLIVAN COUNTY, Mo — The Roy Blunt Reservoir, currently under construction in Sullivan County, is set to become a crucial water resource for a 10-county region in northern Missouri.

Once completed, the reservoir will supply seven million gallons of water per day.

The project, which began in 2023, includes the construction of roads, bridges, a dam, and water lines.

Chad Sayre, the owner’s engineer, explained the project’s progress and future steps.

“The next step for us, we just completed the next step in the bidding process, which in our case was prequalification’s of contractors from across the country,” said Sayre.

He noted that the prequalification was based on past project experience with reservoirs and specialty items such as subsurface work, deep cutoff trenches, large concrete spillways, and over a million and a half yards of earthen work needed to build the 80-foot-tall dam.

Sayre detailed that the reservoir’s depth will vary, reaching about 70 feet at its deepest point.

The roadwork and bridges have cost approximately $55 million, and specialty bids are expected to be awarded in late fall or early winter, with construction slated to begin in spring 2026.

“This is such a large project that just the dam itself takes three to five years to build because of all the technical restrictions that we have and all the different complicated items with the subsurface treatments all the earthen work, and the large spillway,” said Sayre.

He added that filling the reservoir could take another three to five years, depending on normal rainfall.

The timeline for completion is contingent on weather and final approvals, but Sayre anticipates the reservoir could be fully operational in six to eight years.

He emphasized the significance of the project, noting it is the largest reservoir constructed in Missouri in over 40 years, with more than 85 miles of shoreline.

“Anytime you can take a rural county and a group of rural counties like this and invest in a permanent long-term water resource where there has been a scarcity of water for really generations here,” said Sayre. “We can’t drill wells like other areas of the state; we have to have reservoirs. This is going to secure primary water and even supplementary water for those regions so they can grow and they can continue to have jobs and they can continue to get rid of the fear of not having enough water.”