FlowWorks Inc, would like to congratulate their long-time customer, The City of Elkhart, for being recognized by the Indiana Water Environment Association (IWEA) with the 2018 Collection Systems Large Facility Award. This prestigious environmental award recognizes facilities making substantial improvements to the collection system profession.
“I am proud to see Elkhart leading the way in this important public safety and quality of life issue,” said Elkhart Mayor Tim Neese. “What makes this accomplishment even more impressive is that we have been able to do so with a relatively small staff and low residential sewer rate. I want to commend our team at Public Works and Utilities for their pro-active approach to service and encourage them to keep up the great work.”
FlowWorks helped the City of Elkhart develop one of the unique features that made them stand out amongst other communities, a public notification system aimed at alerting residents to combined sewer overflows (CSO). Elkhart is the first Great Lakes Basin community to provide a user-friendly, web-based map to notify the public where to take caution when engaging in recreational activity in local rivers and creeks, during and after a rainfall or snowmelt event. The City’s website can also inform the public if a CSO has occurred in the past seven days. In receiving this award, Elkhart was recognized for achieving and surpassing regulatory requirements to reduce CSOs ahead of schedule, while also working proactively to anticipate future regulatory requirements and develop plans for compliance.
”Our team was challenged with creating a public notification system for CSO events that could provide information on overflow points, start and stop times, and discharge volumes that could be available to the public within two hours of the event,” said Joe Foy, Stormwater Manager for the City of Elkhart. “FlowWorks was already hosting our CSO data for internal uses and, at our request and with our input, quickly and easily developed the map that is now available to the public through the City website.”
Kevin Marsh, FlowWorks VP of Sales, commented, “We’ve worked with The City of Elkhart for years and recognize the city as very proactive in their approach to managing the collection system. We were not surprised to see the city taking the lead on this initiative and hope other communities will follow suit.”