MADISON — The American Council of Engineering Companies of Wisconsin (ACEC WI) announced recently its selection of MSA’s Water Quality Trading Program for the City of Brodhead as the winner of the 2022 Grand Award. The Grand Award is given to one project in the state of Wisconsin that best exemplifies the spirit and criteria of the ACEC WI Engineering Excellence Awards program, as chosen by a panel of judges from a competitive list of Best of State Award recipients.
“What MSA has accomplished for the community of Brodhead is a stunningly successful model of win-win collaboration,” said awards judge Jerry Deschane. “The city was saved from a multimillion-dollar sewer system upgrade and farmers were assisted with land management practices that will improve their efficiency and reduce their environmental footprint. This was truly brilliant work.”
The City of Brodhead Water Quality Trading (WQT) program is a multi-tiered solution for achieving compliance with stringent phosphorus water quality based effluent limits (WQBELs) at the City’s wastewater treatment facility. In lieu of a costly tertiary phosphorus removal upgrade, MSA engineers worked with the community to offset phosphorus loadings by approximately 1,090 pounds per year by stabilizing over 62 severely eroding streambanks and delivering major upgrades and new nutrient management practices at a local dairy.
“MSA is truly honored to receive this recognition,” said Gil Hantzsch, CEO at MSA. “We’re proud to have helped the community an innovative solution that will have a far greater positive impact at a fraction of the cost than a traditional engineering solution. Thank you to the panel of judges for recognizing that great engineering sometimes lies more in creating collaborative win-win partnerships and what we avoided than what we actually designed.”
All 2022 ACEC Wisconsin Engineering Excellence Award winners were recognized April 22 at an awards banquet in Kohler, culminating in the announcement of the Grand Award winner. MSA Senior Team Leader Greg Gunderson, PE, and City of Brodhead Director of Public Works, Rich Vogel, accepted the award on behalf of MSA and the community.