The investigation resulted in a water-use and control plan including the construction of reservoirs and the use of available water as a regulated supply for the city of Wichita, Kansas.

The water of the Arkansas River was of poor quality and too polluted to use, leaving the Ninnescah as the next closest potential source.

The Bureau of Reclamation issued a report in 1957, and the U.S. Congress authorized the construction of Cheney Dam and Reservoir in 1960.

It has an uncontrolled spillway that leads to a conduit and stilling basin as well as two sets of outlet works: one for the river and one for Wichita's municipal water supply.

[5] The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation owns and operates the dam and reservoir for flood control and municipal water supply purposes as part of its Wichita Project.

[13] The KDWP operates Cheney State Park located on both shores of the reservoir's southern end.

[1] Game animals living around the reservoir include doves, pheasants, quail, rabbits, and wild turkeys.

Other land animals in the area include beavers, bobcats, muskrats, opossums, raccoons, red foxes, and skunks.

[15] In 2016, geolocation company MaxMind announced that its default locations for various countries would be manually changed to point to bodies of water instead of pointing to places on land; this included setting the middle of Cheney Reservoir as the default location for the United States.

Before the 2016 change, MaxMind's default location for the United States was a farmhouse in nearby Potwin, Kansas, but this caused significant legal trouble for its residents due to various people and organizations assuming that the farmhouse was the actual source of certain malicious IP addresses.