American Water Works Company Selects Alton, Illinois for New, National Customer Service Center Location.

Business Editors

VOORHEES, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 2, 2000

American Water Works Company, Inc., (NYSE:AWK) parent company to Illinois-American Water Company and Missouri-American Water Company, announced today that, after an extensive search, its national customer service center will be located in Alton, Illinois.

The customer service center, when fully operational, will have approximately 325 associates serving more than 10 million customers in 23 states. The Center will begin recruiting almost immediately, start training in February 2001, and be fully operational by the second quarter of 2001.

American Water Works representatives worked closely with Andersen Consulting and CB Richard Ellis, a commercial real estate and site selection firm, to select the final site from the 1,300 communities currently served by American. After several months of evaluation, Alton was selected as the preferred site.

Several sites in Alton are in consideration for the new call center.

"Although all of the communities we evaluated had strong potential to support this project, we felt that Alton provided the best combination of available talent, telecommunications infrastructure and facilities," said John Bigelow, Vice President, Business Services for American Water Works. "Quality of life was also a factor," he said. "Alton provides our associates with the benefits of small town living, but is near enough to St. Louis to allow for easy access to the many arts and entertainment opportunities of a large city. The tremendous cooperation of Alton community officials also played a key role in our decision."

Said City of Alton Mayor Don Sandidge, "The City of Alton wants to thank the River Bend Growth Association (regional chamber of commerce) and other businesses and individuals who assisted in the presentation to American Water Works Company, Inc. It is our great pleasure that Alton was chosen as the location for their reorganization of service calls."

"The national service center is one of our company's key initiatives to improve the service we provide to customers throughout the United States," added J. James Barr, President and Chief Executive Officer of American Water Works Company. "We are looking forward to expanding our strong relationship with the City of Alton."

American Water Works Company is the largest and most geographically diverse investor-owned water utility enterprise based in the United States. The company provides water, wastewater and other water resource management services to more than 10 million people in 23 states.

Illinois-American serves more than 760,000 people in 90 Illinois communities and Missouri-American serves more than 1.3 million people in 100 Missouri communities, including much of the suburban area surrounding St. Louis.