EEI Wins ACEC-IL Special Achievement Award

EEI Wins ACEC-IL Special Achievement Award

Fifty-four Illinois firms were recognized for excellence in engineering before an audience of over 400 engineers, clients and government officials at an Awards Luncheon held February 9, 2017 at The Hilton Hotel in Naperville, Illinois. (ACEC Award SA-02 Picture Attached: Left to Right – Michele Piotrowski, EEI, John O’Neill, ACEC-IL President; Christa Vant’Hul, EEI, Bart Olson, United City of Yorkville, Jennifer Hughes, Village of Oswego, Eric Dhuse, United City of Yorkville, Joel Frieders, United City of Yorkville, Todd Hoppenstedt, Village of Montgomery, Jeff Freeman, EEI, Pete Wallers, EEI, Chris Funkhouser, United City of Yorkville, Brad Sanderson, EEI, Chris Walton, EEI, Gail Johnson, Village of Oswego, Steve Dennison, EEI, Matt Brolley, Village of Montgomery, Angie Smith, EEI and Janet Wackrow, Engineering Excellence Awards Committee Chair). The firms were recognized for award-winning engineering projects in the American Council of Engineering Companies of Illinois’ Forty-Sixth Annual Engineering Excellence Awards Competition. The competition recognizes outstanding projects designed by private practice engineering firms from the State of Illinois.

Engineering Enterprises, Inc. (EEI) received a Special Achievement Award for the project: ” Sub-Regional Plan for Sustainable Drinking Water” which was completed for the Villages of Montgomery and Oswego and the United City of Yorkville. The Villages of Montgomery and Oswego and the United City of Yorkville currently provide potable water to approximately 83,000 people. The 2050 population projection for the Oswego, Yorkville, Montgomery Sub-Region is approximately 193,000 people. All three of the communities currently depend on the deep sandstone aquifer for a portion of, or all of, their water supply. Given the regional declining water levels within the deep aquifer system, which are declining at the highest rate southeast of the three communities, the three communities embarked on a journey to develop a sustainable sub-regional water supply plan.

The plan included shallow sand and gravel aquifer resource evaluation, deep sandstone aquifer water modeling and Fox River modeling. The plan also included current trends (CT) and less resource intensive (LRI) water demand projection scenarios, along with a cost-effective evaluation of source water, treatment, storage and distribution improvements needed to meet each scenario. The plan also identified the total cost, potential cost distribution per community and potential future water supply and treatment rate for each community. Finally, the plan demonstrated the cost savings the three communities could realize with a minimal amount of additional water conservation within their communities. While the $185M+ plan will require a large investment, the three communities’ future water rates project to be consistent with, or less than, many other surface water supplied communities in the area.

Special Achievement Awards are given for projects worthy of recognition of the engineer and the owner/client for achieving engineering excellence.