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.
Community Update for Aqua Customers
September 19, 2024
Neighbors,
As part of our continued commitment to keep residents informed of our progress and improvements in your community, this update will highlight information shared at our most recent Advisory Council Meeting on September 17. As always, more information including meeting minutes and the slide deck presentation can be found in the ‘Helpful Resources’ section below.
Our quarterly meeting focused heavily on the July 19th incident and Aqua’s quick response time. Our new SCADA monitoring system worked as intended, which allowed Aqua to respond in less than 60 minutes. Water trucks were on standby, and customers did not lose water during this event.
There is always room to enhance our services. Our team had a productive discussion about how we can improve communications surrounding water usage, provide quicker updates to the outage map and deliver clearer information surrounding the criteria for a boil order advisory.
Additionally, our water treatment plant is still on schedule and is expected to come online in February 2025, weather permitting. This infrastructure investment includes a 2,250 square foot building and will house the ion exchange water filtration equipment. The construction cost of this project is $3 million with an overall cost and investment of $5 million in the community.
This investment, along with a new water tower, showcases the need for our pending rate case with the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC). Over the summer, we held several public meetings to discuss this case and the ICC is expected to make a decision by the end of the year.
We will continue to provide you with regular updates here on our website, as well as through email and traditional mail.
Thank you,
David C. Carter
President, Aqua Illinois
Helpful Resources
Water Services Advisory Council
Meeting Materials
Additional Information
Questions and Answers
- Submit Questions
- Click here to read our responses to questions from community leaders.
- Click here to read answers to additional questions that were posed during our 7/31 meeting.
Customer Communications
- You can click here to see a full list of our customer communications on this issue.
Claims Process
- Please use the process found here for submitting specific claims related to the Hawthorn Woods water outage incident, which spanned July 2, 2023 through July 9, 2023.
About Your Water System
April 29, 2024 Communication
A Letter to Hawthorn Woods, Kildeer and Lake County Customers
April 29, 2023
Neighbors,
As part of our continued commitment to keep residents informed of our progress and improvements in your community, this update will highlight information shared at our most recent Advisory Council Meeting on April 17. As always, more information including meeting minutes and the slide deck presentation can be found in the ‘Helpful Resources’ section below.
As previously announced, both the Aqua ePortal and disruption map are now available to customers to facilitate your customer experience. The Aqua ePortal App is available for both iPhone and Android users. Customers can pay bills, view their usage and more on the free App. The Disruption Event Viewer is available on the Aqua Illinois website where visitors can view reports of service disruptions in and around their community. View the map here.
With monitoring and response efforts still a priority, we’ve piloted remote monitoring technology with positive results and increased response time. We also conducted a full tabletop exercise on March 13 to recreate the July 2023 outage and test response protocols. These exercises allow us to discover ways to increase efficiency and train staff on required operations and communication during a disruption.
Our water treatment plant is on-schedule to open in November and we expect construction to begin once final permitting is complete. In other infrastructure improvement news, we recently refurbished Well #1 with new pipe, which resulted in a capacity increase of more than 100,000 gallons per day. We also have received a full report on our second soil sample test around the main break last summer. At first glance, the report indicates elevated pipe corrosion. Once our analysis of the report is complete, we will share our plan to address the issue up to and including new pipe or a re-route to avoid areas that may accelerate pipe deterioration.
We will continue to provide you with regular updates here on our website, as well as through email and traditional mail.
Thank you,
David C. Carter