ISELIN, NJ — (Marketwire) — 10/19/11 — Middlesex Water Company (NASDAQ: MSEX) has been named a 2011 Management Innovation Award Winner by the National Association of Water Companies (NAWC). The NAWC Management Innovation Awards have been recognizing groundbreaking ideas at the forefront of the water industry for over 35 years. The award offers a unique opportunity for NAWC members to be recognized for new and innovative programs that have benefitted their organization, their customers, the communities they serve or the water industry as a whole. Winners were announced at the 2011 NAWC Water Summit in La Jolla, California in early October. Middlesex Water tied for First Prize with Baton Rouge Water Company in the Regulated Utility category.
Middlesex Water Company took honors for its unique engineering approach to replacing a century-old water main beneath the Raritan River in New Jersey. The 104-year old main water main had served as a critical transmission main for customers in the southernmost portion of its distribution system but had faced repeated failures, despite various forms of rehabilitation, due to age, corrosivity and the unstable nature of the underwater environment. The Company explored various options including pipe jacking and micro-tunneling to install the mile-long 24-inch diameter pipeline, 70 feet under a river through tough marshland conditions and in a largely urban area. It ultimately decided on horizontal directional drilling due to project conditions and cost effectiveness. It next had to string out 5,400 ft. of pipe end to end and fuse sections of PVC pipe together so the pipe could be pulled as one continuous length beneath the river. The entire pull back of pipe took 23 hours and holds the world record for the longest pull of its kind. Teamwork, contingency planning, nimble management of logistics and innovative horizontal directional drilling are to be credited for delivering this multi-million dollar infrastructure project on time, on budget and in time to meet peak summer demands.
“We were thrilled for our team and this project to be recognized for technical achievement and innovative project management on a national level,” said Dennis W. Doll, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer for Middlesex Water Company. “We, along with our project partners CDM, Northeast Remsco Construction, Mears Group and Underground Solutions, Inc., collaborated to find a permanent and sustainable solution and the result of this engineering effort is a new pipeline that will allow us to continue delivering high quality utility service to our customers because of greater reliability and greater redundancy throughout our system.”
Middlesex Water Company, organized in 1897, provides regulated and unregulated water and wastewater utility services in New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania through various subsidiary companies. For additional information regarding Middlesex Water Company, visit our website at or call (732) 634-1500.
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