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Installing Pipe & Confidence

North Carolina’s largest water and sewer utility needed to upgrade a major sewer line built decades ago through one of the city’s most urban and upscale areas. CharlotteWater.org
Results

Robust engagement of residents, businesses and institutions for input and understanding about sewer line route. Intensive grassroots communications to limit disruptions to businesses, schools, residents and traffic during multi-year project.

Objective

Help the community cope with the multi-year, $42 million construction project by deploying an intensive grassroots communication campaign.

Strategy

Engage with affected residents in real-time and provide updates on progress and opportunities for their feedback as the project was being designed and built. Engineers were able to adapt the project design based on the feedback.

Tactics

Meetings with neighborhood associations, merchants and individual residents; on-going direct mail; e-mail alerts; resident help phone line; quarterly newsletters to update people on progress.

Challenging Obstacles

Sewer line construction cut through the heart of Charlotte. This section ran underneath Myers Park High School, one of the city’s largest public school properties.