Water System Honored for Management Excellence

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA) announced that it will honor Madison Water Utility with one of its top management achievement awards, the 2007 Gold Award for Competitiveness Achievement.  The award recognizes the utility’s accomplishments in implementing a process to apply competitive business strategies to meet the expectations of drinking water consumers and municipal leaders.   Presentation of the award will take place October 23 at AMWA’s annual meeting in Seattle.

“Meeting competitive goals for efficiency, cost of operations and quality of service are hallmarks of AMWA’s Gold Award-winning water systems,” said AMWA President Mark Premo, General Manager of Anchorage Water & Wastewater Utility.  “They are forward looking in their plans to maintain their infrastructure and ensure high quality drinking water,” he said.

Madison Water Utility pursues the mission of providing and maintaining an adequate supply of safe water for consumption and fire protection, with quality service and at a reasonable price, for present and future generations.  Earlier this year, the utility conducted a competitive assessment in which every employee had an opportunity to participate in a facilitated self-assessment of the organization and to identity opportunities for improvement.  Following the assessment process, the utility embarked on a strategic plan to make improvements within six key business strategies, involving design teams made up of employees throughout the organization.

Madison Water Utility is actively involved in all areas of conservation of resources from their new "green" office building, to materials recycling, to providing safe, quality water while working with the community to manage this resource responsibly.  The water system is also replacing its lead service lines to improve service to its customers.

AMWA is the voice for the largest publicly owned drinking water systems in the United States on regulatory, legislative and security issues, as well as a leadership resource for senior water executives.  Member-utilities collectively serve more than 127 million people with safe drinking water.