SCADA: Eyes & Ears - Case Study

Connecticut town employs managed SCADA to maintain accuracy

The town of Darien is home to 21,000 people on the Gold Coast of Connecticut. Residents pride themselves on being good environmental stewards who work to preserve their pristine waterways and natural habitat. Prior to 2012, the Darien collection system was monitored by programmable logic controllers (PLC) and phone lines. Darien collection system personnel were overwhelmed with false alarms, inaccurate data and downtime, so town officials began to look for a more dependable system.

Fred Micha is the wastewater system supervisor for the town of Darien. He relies on remote oversight of each of its 15 pump stations to make sure the collection system works properly. Pumps, generators and wet well levels are monitored at each of the pump stations. Flow data at four of the stations are used to track the number of gallons of fluid sent to the neighboring town of Stamford for treatment. Micha said the PLCs and phone lines were unreliable and problematic.

“If a phone line went down, it would take a day or two to repair it,” Micha said. “If there was a problem with a PLC, we would go a day, week or sometimes even a month without communications, depending on what the issue was.”