Letter from Dave Koster
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In this 2017 Year in Review, we’ve explored the idea that Holland is a community like no other. Part of what makes us unique is the quality and innovation delivered through our utility services.
Holland appreciates forward thinking and a willingness to lead; it’s part of who we are as a community. At the same time, our community also demands strong reliability and cost affordability in all of the services we provide. So we know we can never sacrifice one for the other. We have to be innovative and forward thinking at the same time we’re reliable and affordable.
I think this idea shines through in the examples of three of our biggest stories…the completion of Holland Energy Park (HEP), our expansion of high speed fiber broadband and the completion of the work at our Water Reclamation facility.
Through 2017 we pushed toward the completion of the award-winning Holland Energy Park to have it ready for its grand opening early in our 2018 fiscal year. It is a remarkable thing to see a community’s vision realized in an undertaking so ambitious, and I think HEP certainly fits that description.
HEP is something we’ve talked and written about for the better part of a decade, and now it sits complete at the eastern end of our city as a gateway, a resource and a destination. It’s part of an energy future our community envisioned as possible, and it will serve us well in the decades ahead.
Thinking of the future, it’s clear that the demand for high-speed broadband connectivity will continue to grow. It is now an essential service for managing our lives and our businesses.
Through our expansion of high speed broadband services to the downtown corridor, we’ve begun our response to this demand. As our community grows in size and diversity, we’ll look back at this program and see it as an important first step in realizing our full potential.
The work on our Water Reclamation facility was a thorough upgrade to many of the East Plant treatment systems including aeration, oxidation and clarification equipment. Much of the equipment was over 40 years old and upgrading the equipment allowed HBPW to address growing demand from our residential and business customers. The important investments we have made in water collection and treatment give us a more sustainable footprint and make Holland a better place to live and work.
In the pages of this Annual Report you’ll find stories about those topics and others, all centered around the idea that a community like no other requires services and infrastructure like no other. We’re very pleased to share with you some of the highlights we saw in 2017.
Sincerely,
Dave Koster, HBPW General Manager
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