Blog · Public office
waterisprecious.org: a public office site that takes you three hundred feet down
The site of a water reclamation commissioner serving Chicago and 128 suburbs: a scrolling story that follows water from Lake Michigan to the treatment tunnels, plus the practical things — events, a volunteer sign-up, a press kit.
Precious Brady-Davis is a Commissioner at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, which serves the city and 128 suburban communities across Cook County. A public office site has a different job from a business site: it has to explain, invite and inform, and it has to look like it belongs to the people it serves.
A story you scroll
The home page is a scroll narrative. A depth readout on the right starts at the surface of Lake Michigan and runs to three hundred feet as you move down the page, following the water through the district's work. It is the kind of thing that makes an abstract public agency concrete — and it is built in ordinary web code, so it loads fast and works on a phone.
The practical pages
Around the story are the pages an office actually needs: events, a newsletter, an eleven-question FAQ, a volunteer sign-up, a contact page — and a media kit with five files ready for reporters, so a journalist on deadline never has to email for a headshot.
What we would point out
- A scrolling story with a live depth readout, in plain web code
- Events, newsletter, FAQ, volunteer sign-up and a press kit — all first-class pages
- Every form submission caught and waiting in one place
- Accessible and fast on a phone, which is where most constituents read it