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Maintaining a safe, reliable water system takes more than just replacing aging infrastructure - it's planning, designing and managing the water mains that serve customers throughout the Greater Lansing region. The BWL's water and steam engineers are the experts behind our systems and are instrumental in making sure everything runs smoothly.   

BWL owns approximately 800 miles of water mains throughout our service territory, with a goal to replace six miles of water main each year. Our engineers are the backbone of this work, overseeing the investigations, budgeting, design, reporting and more for our water transmission and distribution system. Their busy season starts in January – when they’re planning for the new construction season like bidding out projects, getting them permitted through state and local government, preparing for frost laws to lift and designing for the entire pre-construction phase of the year. Then, once the weather warms from April to Thanksgiving, engineers are busy coordinating ongoing construction with crew chiefs and planners until road paving occurs. 

There are three types of water projects that the crews and engineering team assist with. The first is Customer Choice projects, which expand our water distribution system for new builds and are funded by the developer. The second is Streets projects, where we partner with the city and counties when they’re already repairing roads to replace the water main underneath while the road is open, like the city sewer replacement program. The last are System Integrity projects, which include replacing aging water mains and are often done by BWL crews. Across all three project categories, the engineers oversee budgeting and design for each project.  

A large project that the water engineering and distribution team were a part of was the completion of the Michigan Avenue project. Since the City of Lansing was repaving the road, the BWL was able to replace the small diameter 100-year-old water main that existed underneath with a larger diameter, more modern main material. This will provide additional support, reliability and improved water quality for customers on the east side, including the Frandor area.  

There are so many facets to water and steam engineering, and the team collaborates with many departments across the BWL to keep our system running. Made up of mechanical, civil and environmental engineers, their expertise helps deliver safe, reliable and affordable water to our community every day.