OAKBROOK, Ill. - James Holzapfel, P.E., joins the midwest office of planning, engineering and program management firm Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, Inc. (LAN) as a senior project manager. In this role, Holzapfel will manage the firm’s municipal infrastructure projects in the Midwest region.
Holzapfel has more than 35 years of design and management experience in the utility industry. For the past eight years, he served the City of Naperville, Ill., as its water and wastewater utility director. In this role, he was responsible for the management and operation of water and wastewater utilities serving a population of more than 162,000 in two communities. Prior to that, he served Naperville’s public utilities department in other roles, including assistant director and environmental engineering manager.
Some of his notable accomplishments as director include adding more than $11 million annually in new rate revenue to replace aging infrastructure while keeping Naperville's water and sewer rates amongst the lowest in the area, completing the first water main lining project in the United States, developing a financial plan to create a long-term capital improvement fund for future improvements to the city’s regional wastewater treatment facility, stabilizing utility rates and reducing future debt. He also implemented proactive sanitary sewer rehabilitation programs that reduced wastewater flows in the city to 1993 levels despite a population growth of 60,000.
Holzapfel is actively involved in several water and wastewater infrastructure organizations such as the American Water Works Association, American Public Works Association, and the Illinois Association of Wastewater Agencies, where he was an executive board member at-large. He is also a past president of the Lower DuPage River Watershed Coalition.
Holzapfel received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is registered as a professional engineer in Illinois.