John G. Reutter
Mr. Reutter featured on the cover of Engineering News Record, May 1968.
A 1939 graduate of Drexel University, Mr. Reutter began his fifty year long civil engineering career with Hungerford and Terry, a wastewater treatment equipment manufacturer in Clayton, NJ, where he served as chief engineer. In 1951, Mr. Reutter founded John G. Reutter Associates, a civil engineering firm that grew to be one of the nation’s largest by completing a number of regionally significant projects. These included the feasibility study and planning for the Camden County regional wastewater system, and the feasibility studies, planning, design, and construction management of the regional wastewater systems in Atlantic County, Gloucester County, and Cumberland County. The Atlantic County system alone was a hundred and thirty million dollar project when it was completed in 1980. At that time, Reutter was responsible for the wastewater treatment planning for over 1,600 square miles of Southern New Jersey.
The firm was the municipal engineer to over thirty municipalities at one time, and you can still find the firm’s name on the tax maps of many of these towns. The firm also performed several very large land surveys including surveys of Valley Forge National Park, Tinicum Wildlife Refuge, the Delaware and Raritan Canal, the Atlantic City Expressway, over 250 miles of electric power line right-of-way for PSE&G, and the Salem nuclear facility Artificial Island where the boundary between New Jersey and the state of Delaware had to be reestablished.
Mr. Reutter went on to achieve a similar expertise in the field of solid waste engineering, designing and permitting several of the regions largest landfills and transfer stations. Mr. Reutter was an innovator who developed a waste-to-energy bio-gasification process for blended solid waste and sewage sludge, and a patented wind turbine technology called the Unified Wind Dynamo. He started the region’s first modern analytical laboratory.
New Jersey Monthly magazine summarized his influence by saying, “For years, John Reutter has harnessed the winds of change in South Jersey, often being one step ahead of everyone else in predicting the region’s needs and acting to solve them. The Reutter firm has been a leader in nearly every facet of South Jersey’s growth since World War II.”
Mr. Reutter was licensed as a professional engineer, land surveyor, and planner, a triple certification that is much less frequently attained today. He was very active in many professional engineering trade organizations. He was the founder and president of the New Jersey chapter of the Consulting Engineers Council, and president of the American Consulting Engineers Council. In these capacities, he frequently testified before congress on environmental and energy issues, and had a chance to travel behind the iron curtain as an international delegate for the Consulting Engineers Council. Mr. Reutter was a life member in the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Water Works Association, and the Water Pollution Control Federation. Mr. Reutter also served as the President of the New Jersey State Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors.
Mr. Reutter passed away at age 91 on February 26, 2002. He is survived by his two daughters, Judy Reutter Klotzbach & Elizabeth Reutter Martin, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Perhaps his greatest legacy is the standard of engineering excellence and innovation that he set for the thousands of employees who worked for his firm over the years. Indeed, the principals of many of today’s most prominent engineering firms received their training at John G. Reutter Associates.