Implementation, Testing and Cost Savings of SCADA Santa Cruz County Sanitation District's Experience

The Santa Cruz County Sanitation District (SCCSD) encompasses over 13 square miles of area with over 200 miles of sanitary sewer pipelines to maintain. In order to carry the sewage from Aptos, Capitola, Soquel and the unincorporated areas of Santa Cruz to the regional treatment plant in Santa Cruz, the SCCSD operates and maintains 37 pump stations. Most of these pump stations are located near creeks and streams that flow to the Monterey Bay National Sanctuary or are adjacent to the beaches of Santa Cruz County. The SCCSD had been using 30 year old alarm technology to monitor these pump stations and finding replacement parts for the archaic alarm system was becoming difficult. In 2003, the SCCSD Board of Director's approved implementing a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to remotely operate and monitor the pump stations.This paper provides the SCCSD's experience in developing, designing and implementing a computerized electronic control system that allows remote, real time monitoring and control of SCCSD pump station equipment. It will also provide updated results of our analysis that show that SCADA can reduce personnel overtime hours. In addition, future improvements to the system, such as adding a historian, will be discussed.