Homewood's New Water Supply Project Complete, In Full Flow

HOMEWOOD, IL — A years-long plan to create a new water supply for the Village of Homewood has come to fruition, with officials marking the occasion with a ribbon cutting ceremony Tuesday.

Village of Homewood leaders joined Burns & McDonnell project team members on Tuesday to celebrate the completion of a $12.25 million design-build project to transition the community's water to a new supplier. This allows the Village to continue providing safe and sustainable water service for residents and businesses at a more predictable water rate, the Village said in a release.

With the end of its current water supply agreement drawing near, Homewood initiated a new agreement with the City of Chicago Heights, who purchases Lake Michigan water from nearby Hammond, Ind. Using a progressive design-build approach, the Village partnered with Burns & McDonnell to design and construct 2.5 miles of 30-inch transmission main and an 11 million-gallon-per-day booster pump station.

"This is the largest Public Works project in Homewood's history," said Homewood Village President Richard Hofeld. "Because we began planning for this project over 17 years ago with the Village's Water Fund, this project creates no additional costs to our residents and businesses."
The Village started building up its water fund reserve in 2005. The goal was to avoid borrowing additional funding through the issuance of bonds.

"Providing a secure source of clean drinking water for the residents and businesses at a competitive rate has been our goal from day one," said Napoleon Haney, Homewood Village Manager.

The project began in 2019, with construction starting in early 2021. Homewood completed the transition to the new supplier on time and within budget in September 2022.

“Our complete team consisting of elected officials, Public Works staff, Burns & McDonnell, and stakeholders worked in conjunction to make this transition seamless with little to no impact to our residents,” said John Schaefer, Homewood Public Works Director.

Throughout the design-build process, the team collaborated and created value engineering ideas that reduced the project's overall cost by over a million dollars. By creating a plan to receive the 2.5 miles of pipe for the project early, the Village avoided $600,000 of additional costs.

"With the Village of Homewood taking a design-build approach for this project, we were able to identify changes to the design to save the Village money while not diminishing the functionality of the system," said Patrick Clifford, Burns & McDonnell Water Leader for the Chicago region.

"This approach paid off for the Village, and our design and construction teams are pleased to have helped build this reliable water source for the residents of Homewood for many years to come."

The project team and contractors worked closely with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies on permitting and easement requirements and completed soil borings, surveys, wetland analysis and hydraulic and geotechnical analyses of the transmission main route.