As the Merchantville-Pennsauken Water Commission (MPWC) celebrates 100 years of delivering clean and reliable water to our nearly 50,000 customers, we are reminded of the progress we have made, and the people who have helped make it happen.
One employee personifies that progress quite literally: Distribution Superintendent James Garaguso has worked with MPWC for over 41 years. While Jim has witnessed MPWC’s progression over the last four decades, he too has grown with us.
“Water has been the bane of my existence, as well as my sustenance, for over 40 years,” says Jim.
In 1985, he was hired as part of the MPWC maintenance crew, before earning a technician spot fixing underground issues such as main breaks and servicing fire hydrants. Jim was made supervisor and took on a growing number of responsibilities before being named Assistant Superintendent – Distribution in 2013 and ultimately, Distribution Superintendent in 2021.
“To be honest, I really didn’t know what to expect when I started,” Jim says, thinking back to 1985. “I quickly learned that the Commission was serious business. I learned firsthand how important water is and how everyone takes it for granted until it’s not there.”
In four decades overseeing and fixing issues throughout the MPWC service area, Jim has witnessed plenty of changes – all for the better.
“In the 80s, our office maintained a box of house keys to certain customer’s homes so that our meter readers could enter when they weren’t home!” he recalls. Meter reading technology improved, along with all aspects of MPWC’s critical work. When Jim started in 1985, water was tested for contaminants in parts per million. Today, water is tested in parts per trillion, with additional testing and better overall technology incorporated into tests.
As the years went on, MPWC modernized and improved our foundation, always with an eye to the future.
“By the new century, we weren’t just repairing old, outdated systems and equipment,” says Jim. “We were installing infrastructure that would carry us into the next 100 years. By the 2010s, MPWC was firmly thrust into the 21st century at the cutting edge of treatment technology. We are now well ahead of the curve for technology, personnel, and financial health.”
While Jim has seen the number of people on the MPWC team grow over the years, he recognizes that today’s staff is more credentialed, trained and licensed than in decades past. Staff engineers have joined knowledgeable, experienced employees like Jim to form, in his words, “a model water utility. Others now see us as a leader in municipally owned and operated systems in the state.”
Now, after more than 41 years with MPWC, Jim looks back and remembers great colleagues, important work and challenges that kept the job interesting.
“I remember some winters when I was working on the street – there were times where it would be so cold, you put a wrench on the street and by the time you tried to grab it, it was frozen to the ground,” Jim says. But he also remembers impressive moments, such as when the MPWC team worked together over a holiday weekend to quickly fix a main break that closed a portion of Route 130 and grounded Pepsi-Cola trucks at their facility in Pennsauken.
Jim says one reason he found so much fulfillment from working with MPWC was the importance of the work itself. “This is an honorable profession,” he says. “Everyone knows that not only are we providing a crucial service, but we also all benefit from doing it correctly. Being able to provide it is a source of pride.”
As he considers the future and his potential retirement, Jim feels MPWC is in good hands.
“Technology will never stop improving, and with the most important resource to mankind being water, that will need to be the focus moving forward,” he says. “Over the last 40 years, I have seen the treatment technology change several times, and as I near the end of my time here, it is changing once again. We are on top of it, and the Commission is in great hands.”
