Lansdale Man Honored For 60 Years Of Service To Borough (VIDEO)

By BOROUGH OF LANSDALE for Patch

This Fall, Anthony J. Bellitto, Jr., P.E., Executive Director of the North Penn Water Authority (NPWA), recognized Owen Kratz of Lansdale for 60 years of dedicated service to providing the North Penn region with safe, reliable and economical drinking water. Kratz is currently the longest serving NPWA employee.

In 1955, Kratz began working for Lansdale Municipal Authority until NPWA bought the Lansdale water system in 1965. While at NPWA, Kratz performed several jobs such as printing bills, reading meters, collecting payments, and maintaining the pump stations as Pump Supervisor until 1994 when he started working on a part time basis.

“Owen’s long career and dedication to his work is truly admirable and it’s people like him who we are proud to employ here at NPWA,” said Anthony Bellitto Jr., P.E., executive director of NPWA. “We are fortunate to have Owen on our staff.”

2015 marks NPWA’s 50th anniversary.

They invited the community to an Open House event in September to celebrate this momentous occasion. A video of highlights from the last 50 years can be found here.

Established in 1965, North Penn Water Authority (NPWA) is a municipally owned, nonprofit Authority with a dedicated, professional workforce committed to providing the community with a safe, reliable, and economical water supply. Water supplied to their customers comes from both a surface water supply that is treated at the state of the art Forest Park Water Treatment Plant (FPWTP) and from 17 groundwater wells located throughout the service area. To provide the highest quality water, the Authority has in place a main replacement program and performs annual flushing of its 567 miles of water main which serves their 33,500 customers. NPWA also owns and maintains all fire hydrants in the service area to ensure hydrants are in working order in case of fire emergencies. NPWA employees, many of whom are NPWA customers themselves, take pride in being able to provide this service to the community.

Image courtesy Borough of Lansdale.