LCA Employees Bring Home The Gold, Again

Accounting, water plant teams recognized for continuing excellence

LCA’s hardworking employees have been recognized for their dedication to providing clean, high-quality water for the 19th year in a row and transparent accounting practices for 42 years in a row!

The team has been presented with the 2024 Area Wide Optimization Program (AWOP) Award and the 2024 Excellence in Financial Reporting Award.

“This recognition reflects the consistency and commitment our team brings to their work every single day,” said CEO Liesel Gross. “Providing safe, high-quality water and maintaining strong financial practices are core to how we serve our community, and this team continues to deliver on both.”

A True Dedication to Safe Water

The prestigious AWOP award is presented only to participants that meet the American Water Works Association Partnership for Safe Water program’s stringent water quality standards, which are more demanding than state and federal requirements. Even more impressive, however, is the consistency with which LCA’s Allentown Water Filtration Plant team has received the accolade. The team has continually met these standards every year for almost two decades.

“What makes this milestone even more meaningful is how rare it truly is,” says water plant manager Steve Lettko. “Across the entire program, only 17 water plants have ever achieved 10 consecutive years, and only four water plants—including ours—have reached 19 years in a row. That places this team in a very small group operating at the highest level of sustained performance in the water industry.”

LCA crews have been steadily identifying and implementing advancements to the treatment plant and process that have helped us continually meet the AWOP requirements—including adjusting our operating procedures, investing more work hours, and purchasing and repairing equipment.

For instance, treating water during storms historically has been challenging. However, it has helped our team to become more proficient at reacting to changing water conditions, with new standard operating procedures in place to manage water quality during storms. In addition, the team has developed new maintenance protocols to remove solids that have settled out of the water during the treatment process. By removing this material more often, the plant can produce a higher volume of excellent quality water on a more consistent basis.

Transparent Accounting

The second is an award for Excellence in Financial Reporting, presented to Lehigh County Authority and our Chief Financial Officer Edward Klein by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) of the United States and Canada for their work on the 2024 financial report. Our team has won this award, which recognizes Klein and the accounting team for their detail-oriented approach to our finances, every year since 1984!

“This award speaks to the discipline and transparency our team prioritizes throughout the year,” Klein said. “It is about more than meeting requirements. It is about making sure our customers and stakeholders can clearly understand how we manage and invest in the system.”

In a press release announcing the honor, GFOA says LCA’s 2024 report “satisfied the high standards of the program,” including demonstrating a “spirit of transparency and full disclosure” to communicate its financial story.

The release says the GFOA launched the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Program in 1945 “to encourage and assist state and local governments to go beyond the minimum requirements of generally accepted accounting principles to prepare annual comprehensive financial reports that evidence the spirit of transparency and full disclosure and then to recognize individual governments that succeed in achieving that goal. The Certificate of Achievement is the highest form of recognition in governmental accounting and financial reporting. Congratulations, again, for having satisfied the high standards of the program.”

You can read more about LCA’s finances and capital plans here.