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Aqua Illinois Water Service Updates

Hawthorn Woods, Kildeer & Lake County Public Works Water Systems

Welcome to the Water Service Update page for the communities of Hawthorn Woods, Kildeer and Lake County.

In conjunction with the newly launched Water Service Advisory council, Aqua Illinois will share timely updates about your service and planned improvements to your water system. We will also keep you informed of the progress made to improve our emergency response and bolster the water system following the outage this July. This is just the start of our commitment to better communication and a more trusted partnership with our customers.

A Letter to Hawthorn Woods, Kildeer and Lake County Customers

November 15, 2023

Neighbors,

I’m pleased to share another update on the progress we’ve made on your water system since we last communicated with you in October. Your feedback has helped us to better address your concerns and we remain committed to working with your community to provide you the best water service and customer experience we can.

This update also follows the second meeting of the Water Service Advisory Council. This council, which met for the first time in September, is composed of Hawthorn Woods, Kildeer and Lake County customers as well as Aqua Illinois staff who are committed to maintaining a valuable dialogue between our company and your community.  

In summary, here are the most noteworthy service updates discussed at the November 13th Advisory Council meeting:

System Monitoring:

  • Enhanced our system monitoring software to allow for 24-7 surveillance.
  • Established additional water tank tower alarms: 
    • .9 feet water drop in 15 minutes or less. 
    • Static or declining tank level when booster pumps engaged for 30+ minutes. 
  • Updated our alarm contact tree to escalate until a response is acknowledged by an Aqua employee.
  • Began piloting additional remote monitoring with Aquarius technology.

Emergency Response:

  • Immediately hold conference calls with all operations staff for any questionable system performance
  • Incident Command automatically triggered with any sustained water loss
  • Tabletop exercises scheduled for Q1 2024

Infrastructure:

  • Pipe condition assessment proposal expected
  • July main break assessment results inconclusive, will harvest additional pipe in the area of the July main break for further analysis.
  • One shutoff valve was added to the water distribution system to allow for complete isolation of the section of pipe associated with the main break, if needed in the future. The valve would allow the pipe to be disconnected from the water system while continuing to supply water to the school.
  • During the addition of the new valve and while relocating another water main in the area of the July main break, pipe was uncovered and visually found to be in good shape.
  • System Capacity Improvements underway, including new water treatment facility

Communications:

  • Launched Advisory Council on Sept 29
  • Updated Hawthorn Woods, Kildeer and Lake County webpage to include progress updates on Oct 11
  • Sent a letter to all area customers impacted by outage week of Oct 16
  • Several communication points during service disruption Oct 31-Nov 3, including multiple WaterSmart Alerts and webpage updates
  • New disruption map tool coming soon – employee pilot program underway

We will continue to provide you with regular updates here on our website. We thank your for your commitment to build a trusted partnership and we look forward to continuing to provide you with transparency and exceptional customer service.

Thank you,

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David C. Carter

President, Aqua Illinois