NESC Redesigns Web Site

The National Environmental Services Center has redesigned its web site, www.nesc.wvu.edu. In development for more than a year, the site features easier access to NESC information as well as water, wastewater and environmental training information, various NESC publications, products and databases.

Hannay Reels Marks 75th Anniversary

Founded by Clifford Hannay in 1933, Hannay Reels marks its 75th anniversary this year. From its first manual-crank reel to the production of about 3,600 reels a year from a new manufacturing facility in 1952, Hannay continues to grow. Today the company, located in Westerlo, N.Y., ships more than 70,000 reels worldwide from its headquarters that was recently expanded to 44,000 square feet, allowing for larger fabrication, assembly and shipping departments.

City of Wausau to Sell Water to Neighboring Village

Wausau Water Works (Wis.) has reached an agreement to sell approximately 30,000 to 50,000 gallons of drinking water per day to the neighboring Village of Brokaw at an annual cost of approximately $37,000. Wausau’s average demand for drinking water is typically less than 5 mgd and has a capacity of 10 mgd.

Contract Land Staff Creates Public Sector Division

Contract Land Staff has launched a Public Sector division for the State of Texas. Based in Austin, the division will focus on right of way regulation and acquisition services to support roadway, sewerage, public use, infrastructure and drainage improvement projects. “As our volume increased, we decided that it was time to create a formal division designed to address the specific challenges faced by those in the public works depart-ment,” said Laurie Markoe, president and COO. The new group will be headed by George L. Schlemeyer, CLS’s vice president for Public Sector.

Gainesville Regional Utilities Receives Excellence Award

Gainesville Regional Utilities, Gainesville, Fla., was awarded the 2008 GITA Excellence Award by the Geospatial Information & Technology Asso-ciation at its conference in Seattle, Wash. The award recognized GRU for its dedication, insight and high degree of initiative in the application of geospatial technology. Gainesville began development of its automated mapping/facilities management in 1985. Twenty-two years later, the system has more than 200 direct and indirect users, with information relating to GRU’s distributed utility network facilities readily available in various formats.

LMK Receives Patent for No-Dig CIPP Lateral Lining

LMK Enterprises Inc. has received a U.S. patent for its CIPP lateral lining through a cleanout without the need for digging or cutting. Lining is positioned within a translucent bladder and vacuum impregnated, inverted through the cleanout and directed by a guide shoe. The process includes the use of a camera port, which allows a lateral push camera to be inserted inside the translucent bladder, providing visual verification of liner placement prior to curing. The system allows for installation from one access point, typically from a cleanout. The liner can be cured at ambient temperatures or acceler-ated with steam, and remains inflated throughout the curing process. When cured, the bladder is re-inverted and removed from the pipe. For more information on the process, call 888/433-1275 or visit www.performanceliner.com.

Keith Huber was ­Vacuum Truck Pioneer

Keith L. Huber, a vacuum truck pioneer who played an integral role in growing the efficiency of the liquid waste industry, died May 29 in a tractor ­accident on his family farm in LaFayette, Ill. He was 67.

Huber’s Gulfport, Miss., company, Keith Huber Inc., was started in 1982 with its first product, the Dominator vacuum truck, still a mainstay of the industry. The company would rise to be known as the largest independent manufacturer of vacuum loading equipment in the U.S.

Huber was killed when a tractor he was operating overturned on the farm where he grew up in northwestern Illinois. At the time of the accident, Huber was restoring the farm to its appearance in the 1950s, according to Al Klaser, vice president of Keith Huber Inc.

“He was doing what he loved to do. It was his passion,’’ Klaser said of Huber’s restoration of the farm and a number of vintage Plymouths.

After growing up in Galva, Ill., Huber moved to the Gulf Coast and made his lasting mark in business. In addition to the vacuum truck business, Huber had extensive real estate holdings around Gulfport, including the 45-acre industrial park where the truck-building company is located, Klaser said.

One of Huber’s innovations, the King Vac, became a go-to tool for pumpers in the late 1980s. In a 2004 interview with COLE Publishing, Huber said the King Vac “revolutionized vacuum equipment by producing both high air flow and deep vacuum. It was totally different from anything that had been done before.’’

The reputation of the King Vac was cemented in 1989 when it was discovered to be the perfect tool to unload skimmers that cleaned oil pulled from Alaska’s Prince William Sound following the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

In 2004, Huber was recognized as one of a number of industry pioneers in a series of feature stories in COLE’s Pumper and Cleaner. In the story, he recalled how his father released him from an obligation to work the family farm after one of Huber’s tinkering projects yielded a popular snowmobile design.

Huber had taken his snowmobile to the Minnesota State Fair, and quickly received more orders for the product than he could produce. So he sold the design and his inventory to Mallard Coach, which manufactured the snowmobile under the Sno-Wing brand.

“My father said, ‘Son, you made more money with that one sale than your dad has in his entire life of farming, so I guess I’m going to have to let you do what you love to do,’’’ Huber recalled. He would say that he started tinkering with machinery as a child, then somewhere along the line figured out, “it came incredibly easy for me. I guess Beethoven was born with his innate ability and I was born with mine in machinery design.’’

Before he turned his attention to vacuum trucks, Huber was credited with creating the first production model electronically controlled four-wheel golf car.

Klaser said the company is poised to move forward to build on its founder’s legacy. He credited Huber for putting capable people in place to carry the company forward.

“We’re certainly going to miss him, but we’re well-prepared to move forward,’’ Klaser said. “We really don’t expect to skip a beat, and that’s the way he would have wanted it.’’

Memorials in Huber’s name may be made to the Maxine Huber Memorial Summer Camp Fund at Messiah Lutheran Church, 317 SW Third St., Galva, IL 61434, or Palmer College of Chiropractic, 1000 Brady St., Davenport, IA 52803.