Municipal water plants measure and control their performance via the use of a system called SCADA, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. Our state-of-the-art SCADA system allows us to monitor 198 different points of our water supply system, including flow rates, storage tank levels and running equipment.
We simply click on that piece of equipment or operation and view more detail about that specific monitoring point. For example, at a glance we can see how much water we have on hand in the clear-well (the storage at the water plant), how much water we have coming into the plant, and also control the operation of 6 of our 12 wells. As an early warning system it is a valuable tool, and enables us to be the best water managers possible.
SCADA's control functions are especially important to us as well. We are able to control pumping rates, chemical feed rates and a variety of other factors in this manner. When preset standards for these elements do not get met, an alarm occurs on the system which the operators respond to immediately.