BENTON HARBOR, Mich. - Engineering firm Abonmarche won the American Council of Engineering Companies "Honorable Conceptor Award" on March 11, in recognition for its work to replace the city of Benton Harbor's aging lead water service lines.

Joelle Regovich with Abonmarche states the work all started about two years ago, when the firm got a grant to start off replacing the lines of 200 homes.

"Abonmarche was tasked with creating the strategy for figuring out how we were going to do this in 18 months, providing the bid information, advertising it, selecting contractors, awarding contractors, and then providing the construction oversight while everybody was in town.”, Regovich said.

The replacement of the lines is at around 99.5% complete according to officials.

Regovich went on to say, “The contractors were so great. They just powered through everything, and it wrapped up very quickly, well ahead of schedule. So, now we’re down to essentially just a handful of homes.”.

Those only remain because their owners can’t be reached according to Regovich.

Regovich stated it was tough at first but after getting everything in place the work flew by with residents relieved to know the water going to their homes is now safe.