Anchorage Water & Wastewater Utility
Honored With National Competitive Achievement Award

San Francisco, Calif.- Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility received a Gold Award for significant accomplishments in Competitiveness Achievement at the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA) annual meeting.

The Utility was honored for its internal competitive process, designed and driven by employees to make AWWU a world-class utility by stabilizing expenses and increasing revenues, efficiency, customer service and quality. The Utility titled its process “The Excellence Adventure,” and sites AWWU’s improvements as a direct result of employee involvement on teams with specific goals and deadlines.

The strategic planning and competitive efforts grew to include 40 percent of the employees and improved morale and decreased grievances and accidents. Since 1992 net income increased from $203,000 to $10.5 million per year. In the same time, AWWU’s water revenue bond rating increased from A to AA-.

"Consumers and public officials have reason to salute the achievements of the award-winning agencies that serve their communities," said AMWA Executive Director Diane VanDe Hei. "AMWA's Gold Award winners are in the top ranks of the nation's best-operated water systems. They stand as innovative and successful representatives of public owned drinking water suppliers and we are extremely proud of their accomplishments."

"AMWA's 24 Gold Award-winning water agencies are setting the pace for utility management practices to ensure success in an increasingly competitive environment," said VanDe Hei.

"To meet competitive challenges, these municipal water leaders are employing exceptional management practices, creating new financial courses, seeking new growth opportunities and meeting customer needs on every front.

"At the same time, consumers call for better and less costly service, and local government leaders wisely demand the use of best business practices in water system operations. Even in the face of these challenges, well-run public owned water systems compete with the best private companies," she added.

AMWA’s Gold Award judges looked at each utility's benchmarking and competitiveness strategy and assessed competitiveness improvement initiatives in the areas of plant, maintenance, engineering, finance, administration and employee development. Winners met goals for overall efficiency, cost of operation and quality of service. They also had forward-looking plans for systematically replacing and rehabilitating their production and delivery system infrastructure to help ensure adequate future water supplies.

"Publicly owned water systems face unique challenges that are not faced by private water companies, including civil service and procurement laws, as well as other social obligations," VanDe Hei said.

Through strategic thinking and competitive achievements, metropolitan water utility managers across the country are positioning their systems to meet the future needs and high expectations of drinking water consumers and municipal government leaders.

AMWA is a nonprofit organization of the nation's largest publicly owned water systems, represented within the association by their CEOs. Collectively, AMWA member-agencies serve more than 110 million people with clean, safe water.

For more information:

Chris R. Kosinski, AWWU Public Affairs
786-5636

Michael Arceneaux, Association Of Metropolitan Water Agencies
202-331-2820 / michael@amwa.net

Carolyn Peterson, Association Of Metropolitan Water Agencies
202-331-2820 / carolyn@amwa.net