The Powder Mountain job: getting sewer ponds onto a legacy SCADA, wireless.

What a mountain does to a sewer system

A sewer system on a mountain has problems a flatland system never meets: spring runoff that finds its way into the sanitary line, evaporative ponds that have to be watched, and a control room that expects every reading to arrive on a wire. The fix isn’t a new SCADA. It’s getting new eyes to report into the old one. That’s this job.

Pond level into a SCADA built for wired transmitters

The first pond got a 15 ft submerged pressure sensor. The reading travels wirelessly to the Meterra bridge, which hands it to the existing legacy SCADA looking exactly like the hardwired transmitter that system has always expected. That is the whole trick: no trench cut, no new signal wire pulled, no SCADA replaced.

It went in on July 15, 2026 and has read correctly ever since. The part that earns its keep is not the number on the screen, it is what the numbers show over time. They can see how much runoff a storm actually puts into the pond, and how far the water comes up afterward. They had never been able to see either one before.

165 ft of cable for a pond a few feet deep

The second evaporative pond is getting a 165 ft cable, and that number has nothing to do with how deep the water is. The pond is only a few feet deep at its deepest point. The cable is long because the sensor needs to sit nearer the middle of the pond, which is where the reading is most accurate for them, with enough cable left over to run back to the shoreline where the communication box sits on dry ground. 165 ft is one of our stocked lengths, so reaching the middle of that pond takes a longer cable, not a special build.

That is worth knowing before you spec a submerged sensor anywhere. Cable length buys reach, not just depth. These sensors are rated to about 330 ft (100 m) of water column, so depth is rarely what decides the order. More often the question is how far the sensor has to sit from the bank: a hard-to-reach spot, a problem area, the middle of open water. You put the sensor where the water actually needs watching, and the cable gets you back to shore. We build that cable to any length up to about 330 ft (100 m).

The line study comes with it

The same job includes finding where spring runoff gets into the sanitary line: ultrasonic sensors at multiple points, a dry-season baseline first, then point-to-point comparison during runoff to localize the infiltration. That method, and exactly where it stands, is laid out on Sewer Inflow & Infiltration Monitoring, with its own video from this job.

Where it stands, stated plainly

The first pond’s sensor went in on July 15, 2026 and has been reporting into the legacy SCADA ever since, giving them runoff and storm-response numbers they had never had. The second pond is next, and the plan runs to four ponds in total. The sanitary line study is part of the same job, and it gets its own status on Sewer Inflow & Infiltration Monitoring.

What we will not do is call the rest of it early. There are no savings figures and no repair outcome on this page, because the runoff season that produces them hasn’t run yet. When it does, the numbers will go here, and they’ll be theirs, not ours.

Running ponds, lagoons, or a collection system against a SCADA you’d rather not replace? Tell us what you run and we’ll tell you what it takes to get wireless readings into it: request pricing below or call (385) 534-8200.