05-28-2002 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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L REQUEST FOR COUNCIL ACTION roiiMoii meeting may 2 8 2002 Cl IY Uh ORONO DATE: May 28.2001 ITEM NO.: IH Department Approval: Name Gregory A. Gappa Title Director of Public Services Adminbtrator Reviewed:Agenda Section: Public Services Director’s Report Item Description: Award Contract for Sewer and Water Utilities SCADA System Introduction The year 2002 Capital Outlay budget includes funding for the installation of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system for the water and sanitary sewer systems. This item was approved at a Council work session last year during the annual budget approval process. Below is a summary of information that was presented at the work session describing this project. The purpose of the SCADA system is to monitor the City’s two water plants and 45 sanitary sewer lift stations. This would be a radio-based system with a main control unit located in the Public Works building and a secondary control unit at the Navarre Water plant The system would detect alarms at the water plants and lift stations and then send a signal to the main control unit which would then call the public works standby employees’s pager and alert them of the alarm. This system will require repeaters at the two water towers to pick up the signals from the remote units at the lift stations, and then relay them to the main control unit. A radio frequency license w ill be required to install the SCADA system. The current warning system consists of a horn and flashing light at each facility. We are dependant on the neighbors or police department to report an alarm to the public works standby person. This system is problematic because of the dependance on people to report the alarms and the number of steps to get the message to public works. A resident calls 911, or the county dispatch center in Golden Valley, to report an alarm. The dispatch center then radios the police department of the alarm. The police officer then has to notify the public work’s standby person of the alarm. The main problem w ith this system is that many times no one hears or sees the alarm signal right aw ay and by the time the alarm is reported we have lost valuable time in correcting the problem. Delays in reporting of alarms can result in sew age backups in homes. For the Highway 12 water system many alarms go unreported until the systcni ains out of water or the tower overflows. Several times in the past, large amounts of water were wasted when the Highway 12 water tower overflowed all weekend. There have also been occasional problems with messages getting from the police to public works if the officers aiC involved in other more serious matters. The City of Orono has a large number of lift stations in the system which greatly increases the chances of lift station alarms. Page 1 of 4