Madison’s Water Utility Workers are More Than a Crew

Image credit: Jody Berndt

In the twenty-two years Jim Garde has been working for the Madison Water Utility, he has been home for his family’s annual Christmas morning celebration seven times.

Winter in Wisconsin is busy season in the water world. Freezing temperatures and frost wreak havoc on the over 900 miles of pipeline running through the city. At any time, day or night, a call may go out for teams of crews to repair burst pipes across the system.

Responding to a call for a water leak is something Madison’s Water Utility crews never take lightly. Restoring water service to schools, hospitals, businesses, and residences as quickly as possible is what gives them the motivation needed to leave warm homes in the middle of the night knowing they may be facing the start of twelve to twenty-eight-hour days wearing soaking wet clothing in frigid weather.

Even in the best of situations when a leak location is pinpointed and repaired, there is always the chance after the street is patched and the crew starts to walk away, a new bubble surfaces further down the road. The repair process begins all over again without pause.

Together, crews of five spend untold hours together in their trucks. The longest stretch Jim Garde and his crewmates remember took 43 straight hours of heavy labor. And when the work is through, they are fortunate to have Jim’s Father-in-Law Mike Maloney, a former water utility worker, at the ready. He’s quick with a massive breakfast of waffles, blueberry pancakes, bacon, fruit, and hot coffee to revive their bodies and minds as they head back home or out in the truck again to start their regularly scheduled workday.

Garde recalls, “No two main breaks are the same. To respond to an emergency call as quickly as possible, I took to sleeping on the floor near my front door with my gear near me. My children went years without seeing me sleeping in my bed at night during the winter season.”

Water in the Garde household is a family endeavor extending across three generations.

Jim’s wife, Colleen, works in the customer service and billing department. Colleen’s father, Mike, retired as a leadworker after forty years with the utility. Their son, Branden, just completed his first year as a seasonal employee serving on the maintenance crew.

Branden, twenty years old, has known most Madison’s Water Utility crew members since he was a baby.

Sitting on the couch in the Christmas tree decorated basement of his grandfather Mike’s quintessential east side home near Warner Park, he has a lot to say about the people he has known his whole life, “They are like one giant family to me. My sister and I spent hours with my father and grandfather’s crew members as children whether we’d see them on Thursday nights at their weekly after work get-togethers or visit them for just a few minutes on site to take them a hot meal or pizza when they were working late.”

“I knew them all as uncles. One time, my sister was working as a cashier in the concession stand at a local movie theater when one of the utility crew came in and said hello to her from another line. She yelled out and waved excitedly. Her coworker later asked her who that man was. She said naturally, ‘That’s my Uncle Kelvin.’ Now Kelvin doesn’t look anything like our family. We still laugh about her coworker’s puzzled look today!”

Although Branden is currently attending college in Milwaukee, the call to Madison Water is strong, “I want to work for the City of Madison. I know my dad would rather me do something else, so I don’t miss all the time away from my future family like he was away from us. Yet, if I can go down in the pit and do some of the heavier work to take the burden off his body while I am young and agile, I want to be able to do that for him. I have a strong work ethic and I know what it takes.”

And for Branden, the willingness to put himself at the ready for his city and family speaks to his dedication and sense of duty when working for the water utility was the one thing that almost took his father away from him indefinitely.

When Branden was in fifth grade, on February 16, 2014, his father was hit by a drunk driver while repairing a main break near Buckeye Road at 11:42 PM. With safety precautions, accidents of this level are rare, but a definite risk when workers are operating in roadways during all hours and conditions.

If it were not for his fellow crew member Franny noticing the vehicle making a direct line for Garde and pulling him out of the way with seconds to spare, he may have been killed. Instead, he ended up with a fractured leg and reminders of that night that remain with him to this day. 

“When my dad came home from the hospital, I didn’t want to go to leave his side,” Branden recalls, “I sat by him and just kept looking him over to see if he was okay. It took me a long time to realize he would still be there if I went away from him. I am forever grateful to my teacher and a friend’s mother who both worked at my school. They helped me through that year following the accident.”

Jim shares in his son’s gratitude, “I couldn’t have made it through the long recovery process without my family and crew. They showed up at the house to shovel the sidewalk and bring by meals.”

“My crewmate Franny who had such a hard exterior on the worksite, would come and just sit with me. I felt like I was letting my crew down by not being back at work right away the next day. He helped me work through that. I realized then how much we support each other. How I genuinely care for them, and they care for me. We are not just coworkers.”

His wife turns to him and adds, “We are lucky.”

-- Written by Jody Berndt, Madison Water Utility